Battle of the .....

That thin girl is how i was described for the better part of my live.Then somewhere in my 30s I started putting on weight.It gains at such slow pace that one doesn't notice it until its too late.I am a great one for comfort so my clothes were more towards comfort than style and that meant loose and comfy.No wonder i didn't notice.Well by the time i did ,it was time for drastic action.Now at best of times i am a lazy laid back person so getting into routine especially if the goal is something as uninspiring as loosing weight,well it just doesn't work for me.I started with walking but when one has to rush to office and ensure that breakfast is done,lunch packed etc etc,its no surprise that that fell by the wayside.Then it was yoga.For a while that fact that a fat body could actually accomplish such convoluted postures,had its own attraction but that also fell by the wayside.I was beginning to understand the true meaning of "the battle of the bulge".While i experimented and tried and failed at various things,the weight itself was doing rather well.It was getting the upper hand.Obviously the body and mind were two different things and the thing that was to keep them together was missing all along.By the time I was ready to give up work life and try and get some balance to my life,the scales were shifting at an alarming pace and balance seemed to have been the victim.Four years on,I have been fairly consistent .It started with yoga (yes i went back to it thanks to a patient teacher and a kind friend with similar issues).That took up three days of my week and the results were encouraging.While the whole world was finding peace and happiness,weight loss and a lot of other things besides,that's to yoga,I was just happy that i could make it to class three days a week.Huge achievement.Then I learnt swimming and discovered the joys of floating in trashing through water.I had found a new love.It left me feeling refreshed in the otherwise oppressive heat of my city and it didn't leave me tired.Along the way i also made a few friends.Then November rolls around and the visitors come along and all good intentions go for a toss.Add to it that my exercise companion had developed wheels on her feet and is forever on some travel agenda or the other so those days I cant get to do much.Clever woman that we are we have discovered a new way to keep our walks interesting.In the last two months we have discovered our entire neighbourhood,its many streets,we know who are the good gardeners,the lazy ones,the ones with no taste and the ones with too much money.We are having a blast.Now at the rate at which we have been exercising one would imagine we have lost enough weight to model for a fitness place.(most people with our routine would have qualified).Ever heard of exceptions to the rule?....well looks like we are those.After years of varied exercise and experiments we are still at the same weight we started off at.The only balance we have achieved is that our weight has been arrested (please not we didn't loose any just stoped the juggernaut from making any headway).So we continue in our quest and have gained enough experience to write a regular health column but the actual results leave a lot to be desired,but we tarry on and don't give up.Now if that's not discipline then what is?

The young and the old

Visits to hospitals and clinics are not my favourite chore but it has to be done when one has old parents staying with one.Every time I go to a hospital I marvel at the fact that most of the patients are in their thirties and forties with a few fifties and sixties thrown in but very few people in their eighties and ninenties.I am not sure if its because our population is so much younger than the rest of the world.I am not sure of our old people are not cared for as much but what ever the reason my mother seems to be part of a minority group.Hospitals today are also very high tech and full of machines and technology,doctors area also young ones who are too busy to spend more than five minutes with the patient.The people who operate the machines are even younger.All this is fine until they have to deal with someone old who finds it difficult to deal with machines.Some one who may be hard of hearing,someone who may not understand instructions too well or someone too slow to keep pace.Yesterday we went to get my mothers eyes checked.She had to go through various tests on various machines all more high tech that the next.All precision machines which would cry foul and error the moment any one of their instructions are not followed to the T.A young boy of around twenty got on with the tests but his patience was soon tried as my mother simple could not or was too slow to follow his instructions.I had to repeat each instruction gently to her so as not to get her too anxious,by which time the machine had cried "error".The boy now was telling me that the test would not be accurate as she wasn 't quick enough.I told him that he needed to realise that the test would not be a hundred percent accurate when old people are involved and that a certain amount of error much be factored in on parameters such as age and infirmity.He didnt seem convinced though he did conseed that he may not live to be her age.The same case with the doctor.I was told that there was far too much damage to her optic nerve and there was nothing they could do about it.Of course she didnt think it was a big deal after all the patient was in her 80s (this wasnt said in so may words but the body language was clear).I have met with such situations so many times now that I wonder why we fail to see that age has nothing to do with living.One can be in thei 80s or 90s and still want to stay healthy and happy albeit a bit slow.Isnt it time for our medical profession to learn to have the patience and kindness and the empathy to deal with the older generation.Why is it that in the quest for better machines and better medican we forget that a good bedside manner is a far more important asset than all the help machines and such can give us.A good doctor is one who can make a diagonosis even when none of the technology is at his or her disposal.A good doctor is one who can spend time and listen to a patient and find out a lot more than  what a questionnaire can throw up and finally a good doctor is one who can deal with all age groups and still manage to get to the heart of the problem.I wonder if that will ever happen

Hospital visits

Visits to hospitals and clinics are not my favourite chore but it has to be done when one has old parents staying with one.Every time I go to a hospital I marvel at the fact that most of the patients are in their thirties and forties with a few fifties and sixties thrown in but very few people in their eighties and ninenties.I am not sure if its because our population is so much younger than the rest of the world.I am not sure of our old people are not cared for as much but what ever the reason my mother seems to be part of a minority group.Hospitals today are also very high tech and full of machines and technology,doctors area also young ones who are too busy to spend more than five minutes with the patient.The people who operate the machines are even younger.All this is fine until they have to deal with someone old who finds it difficult to deal with machines.Some one who may be hard of hearing,someone who may not understand instructions too well or someone too slow to keep pace.Yesterday we went to get my mothers eyes checked.She had to go through various tests on various machines all more high tech that the next.All precision machines which would cry foul and error the moment any one of their instructions are not followed to the T.A young boy of around twenty got on with the tests but his patience was soon tried as my mother simple could not or was too slow to follow his instructions.I had to repeat each instruction gently to her so as not to get her too anxious,by which time the machine had cried "error".The boy now was telling me that the test would not be accurate as she wasn 't quick enough.I told him that he needed to realise that the test would not be a hundred percent accurate when old people are involved and that a certain amount of error much be factored in on parameters such as age and infirmity.He didnt seem convinced though he did conseed that he may not live to be her age.The same case with the doctor.I was told that there was far too much damage to her optic nerve and there was nothing they could do about it.Of course she didnt think it was a big deal after all the patient was in her 80s (this wasnt said in so may words but the body language was clear).I have met with such situations so many times now that I wonder why we fail to see that age has nothing to do with living.One can be in the 80s or 90s and still want to stay healthy and happy albeit a bit slow.Isnt it time for our medical profession to learn to have the patience and kindness and the empathy to deal with the older generation.Why is it that in the quest for better machines and better medican we forget that a good bedside manner is a far more important asset than all the help machines and such can give us.A good doctor is one who can make a diagnosis even when none of the technology is at his or her disposal.A good doctor is one who can spend time and listen to a patient and find out a lot more than  what a questionnaire can throw up and finally a good doctor is one who can deal with all age groups and still manage to get to the heart of the problem.I wonder if that will ever happen

The little things in life

Its been four years and more since I retired from corporate life in India and chose to be a home bird.The reasons were two fold.First of all I was getting more and more tired of corporate work culture in India with its overemphasis on youth,stress and no work life balance.Secondly my mother came to live with us and she needed someone to be around to help her readjust to life as a single woman living with her daughter.
In these many years I have managed to work around the constraints of having an old person (my mother is in her 80s) living with me,the adjustments between mother and the husband,the many guests who now frequent our home,the many hospital visits etc.
Three months ago my maid left and since then I have decided to go the western way and do all the housework myself,considering that I do have time to do it and not living in too big a house the task is not impossible.I also realised that maids are soon going to be a thing of the past and it may be wise to get used to being maid less as soon as possible.
Suddenly it struck me that I wasn't doing anything that I enjoyed (though what I enjoy is also a big question to which I am still searching for answers).My life was all of a sudden a long line of chores,cooking cleaning etc etc.In my opinion nothing constructive.My home is clean and neat but I don't seem too happy with it.So there I was cribbing about my plight,the fact that I cant take a holiday when I want (I am dependant on sisters of mine to stay with my mother) the fact that I cant party in the evenings etc.I fretted about all of my misfortunes until this afternoon when I saw my mother in the kitchen.There she was preparing our lunch after which we had a cup of tea (our daily morning routine) and then after we had all had lunch she started to clean the kitchen.When I told her that she had done enough for the day her answer was that she was doing it anyway as I had to clean the rest of the house and she was just pitching in.It takesher a lot longer than it would take me but she does it anyway.I watched her and realised that she has been at it from her 20s.Bringing up three children in times when husbands were of no help,through financial rough times,through stresses and all the health issues that she has had and there she was not questioning it even once.She belongs to a generation that simply got down and got on with it.Half her age and I was already cribbing about all the things i had to do and all the fun i couldn't have and it took  an 80 year old to let me see that life is not about what one doesn't have but the simple things that one does have.To have my mother here with me to gossip to chat to argue,to cook together and have our daily teas and cribbing sessions.These are all the things I will miss when she is not around.Holidays I can always take,parties will always be around the time spent with my mother is precious.We don't say these things to each other we don't need to i think.Its kind of understood that when we need each other we will always be there despite the small cribs the small bouts of depression and the low days,there is much to count ones blessing about and this is what I learnt today and it makes me humble.

Passwords

Growing up as I did on a staple of Enid Blyton books its not surprising that my friends and I are familiar with the word "password".We replicated the secret society like the secret seven of our childhood stories and met in an unused shed at the bottom of our school playground.We changed the password depending on who we wanted to keep in or out.Some girls told their friends about the club but as we didn't always like all the girls we needed to change the password.Of course it was uncomplicated things ,usually the name of our favourite food or teacher and if one of us was feeling superior or intellectual then it got a bit more complicated.School days led us on to college and somewhere along the way we discovered new authors,new books and new pass times and the password and all the accompanying trappings were soon forgotten.

Then technology came into our lives and with it the password made a come back.I thought it would be a flashback on childhood and created my first password with some favourite word and thought this would give me right of passage.How sadly mistaken I was.It started by rejecting my user name (obviously there were too many people with my name or short forms of it).I had to try various combinations of my name and surname or choose something with no relevance to me as a person.Considering that at the best of times I have bad memory this had me confused but I did manage to get a user name that I may have no problem remembering.Thinking that the battle had been won I moved on to the password.Now having grown up with passwords I thought this would be child's play but again I was up against electronic fraud,surveillance,cookies  (which is not the biscuit that I thought it was,it had something to do with data) and whatever,this was critical.Not only did I need a password that I could remember but it also had to have numbers and letters mixed up,I needed to have different passwords for different things,so between the bank,the insurance,investments,booking tickets etc etc.it was proving to be a minefield that I was not equipped to handle.Thankfully they do have an option that lets you click on "forgot password" but the downside being that they would send an email to my email id and I would have to check it to get my new password.Didn't anyone think that I may have forgotten my email password also.This didn't end there.Banks expect you to change passwords at regular intervals.Security they say so there I am having to remember loads of numbers and word combinations that have me so confused that I wonder where it will all end.For instance here I was wanting to update a post on this blog but for the life of me I couldn't remember the password,so I was excluded from participating in something that I though was my own creation and had to seek assistance from some unknown human or alien (for all I know there is a machine somewhere that's programmed to deal with people like me).to get into this blog.Now if that  isn't pathetic what is.I though myself rather clever by writing down all my passwords in a little book very much like a telephone book but all hell broke loose when I mentioned this to some of my more tech savvy friends.According to them I was leaving myself open to being robbed,stalked or worse so the book had to be destroyed.With increasing age I shudder to think what will happen to me when I find myself penniless thanks to forgetting my bank password or being stranded in some airport or train station because there was no human being around to help me and all the machines needed passwords.I think I will simply retire to some far off place with no access to technology where I can live off produce from the wild and hitch hike if I need to travel.So much for all the excitement of passwords when I was a child.Did we ever think that with all the ease that technology offers,it would also complicate our lives so much?

Little acts of kindness

He came to thank us for all our help.He is around 75 and an active man.Every morning saw him out of the house running errands.His wife took a daily walk to the vegetable store and walked back.In the evenings they walked together to the part for their walk together.Our neighbours,they were very involved with each other and didn't bother any of us.The kept to themselves and talked to us if we met on the road on in the building,but by and large we could easily forget they were there.Until a year ago when the wife fell sick and stoped her walks and her shopping.We got regular updates from the daughter in law and none of them were good.The only son had to go abroad on work and the old folk found themselves alone with no support system,not that they worried about it.Life continued as usual.One night while we watched TV at home,we heard a pounding on our door and our neighbour was there besides himself with worry.His wife he said had collapsed while having dinner.We rushed across to find her lying on the floor her dinner half finished on the table.It was not a nice sight.I tried locating a pulse but couldn't fine one.The emergency services were called even though the neighbours,the husband and i were convinced it was all over.We eventually had to break the news to her husband who was besides himself with grief.We sat there making phone calls to relatives and the son abroad breaking tragic news on the phone to complete strangers while he cried like a child.I haven't seen too many people so involved with each other.He kept asking why she hadn't said goodbye.I watched and waited while the husband and neighbours made arrangements.My role was to comfort,make phone calls and handhold.I wondered was it better to have loved and lost than to not love at all.How does one feel to be left behind by someone whose company you enjoyed.Some relatives arrived and promised to take over looking after him till the son arrived.We made some arrangements for the funeral,paid for somethings and generally took over the initial arrangements.I made flasks of strong tea to help them through the night.The Hindu custom dictates that no food is made at home until the funeral is over so for the next three days tea went from our house.A cup of tea in the time of crisis is what keeps the world moving.Finally it was all over,the relatives had left,the house had been packed and emptied and the old man was on his own,to fend for himself for the rest of his days.He hasn't come to terms with it as yet though we keep telling him that time is a great healer (even though we have no clue how one can deal with a loss of a partner that you cared for ).He drops in or calls and always goes over the event of the day.He says again and again how he couldn't have got through those days without our help.I never stoped to think that we were making a big difference but it obviously made a difference.It is important for him  to talk to us as we were the ones on the spot there.We share an experience however tragic and that will always bind us together,strangers for most part of the six years that they lived in the flat but friends for some small acts of kindness.I can only hope that we can all do little thing for others that will make a difference even though we may never know how much it mattered

mango season woes

Its April and the heat is just getting stronger,the gooseberry tree is heavy with fruit as are the mangoes.We have neither of these trees in our building but our neighbours do and since the trees are close to our compound walls,the fruits hang temptingly within reach.My mother has a great fascination for plucking tree ripe fruits and will spend all her time looking at the fruit and trying to pluck them.Being all of 4 ft nothing this is a daunting task but she wont give up.In desperation I will then have to reach out and pluck what ever i can.Only then will she rest .The mango tree is in line with our bedroom windows and our car park just below.Everyday from three in the afternoon to around five while the whole neighbourhood sleeps,school children from all the neighbouring schools will trow large stones to get at the mangoes.This means that with great regularity large stones will shatter out window panes,crash into our bedroom (god forbid any of us is sleeping near the window) and there is the every present danger that our car window will smash or one of us will end with head injury.Unfortunately no one cares and there is no solution.We shout ,threaten and run down the stairs but the boys are nimble and fast and get away real fast.I did suggest we adopt a stray dog and let him keep guard but what happens if the dog is stoned (cant live with that).We did think of buying an air gun in the fond hope that it might scare the boys but that seems like a stupid suggestion (neither of us is a great shot ).Should we ask for police protection (oh dear that is a joke if the city police are to be depended on to help).So in the absence of any solution we pray that the mangoes will fall or the neighbour will pluck them.Its at times like this when I fantasise that I live in places like America.I would have by now sued my neighbour for his tree wreaking havoc with my home and life.I would have got a license to get a gun and use it in self defence or I could have sent all the boys to a juvenile home but alas I live in India where these are all part of the mad summer season,its part of childhood to trow stones at mangoes,and not bother if a few window panes break after all these kids are poor,and come from homes where mere survival is a big fight so do I have a right to be cribbing about a few expenses coming my way....I am not at all sure but this if the dilemma that we face every summer and much as I love mangoes,I hate the mango season

car rides and the husband

It seems that every car ride today to do the simplest of jobs like grocery shopping or going to the bank,ends with the husband and me arguing all along the way on things we have no control over.The husbands pet topic is traffic indiscipline (this is a generic problem if you live in India and not likely to improve in the next hundred years),followed by the way he thinks the city traffic police should do their jobs,followed by so called building violations.He will point to any number of building which have encroached on to the roads  and will wax eloquent on how the government ought to withdraw building permission or demolish the building itself.I sit silently with an occasional hmm or an appropriate noise.Our next big problem is that he always drives (I am more than happy to be a passenger especially when the heat is unbearable) and will take routes that I think are too long when shorter ones are available,and not one to keep my mouth shut I will suggest routes and ways to get to our destination which almost always is the exact opposite route that he chooses,so I am told to keep my suggestions to myself which after much grumbling I do.By now we are almost half way across our journey and my temper is frayed and the heat is getting to me.Our visits to fruit markets are pretty harrowing.I insist on picking and choosing and hate to be hurried but the husband is always in a rush (invariably there is no parking available).Of course when it comes to food shopping I cant make up my mind despite writing lists.I will see a shop and remember that I need something there but by the time I shout for him to stop we have overshot the place so then we have yet another argument....by the time we have reached home,he is on an all time high having had his say on everything that ails this city and I am in such bad mood that I wonder why i took the trouble to go along.Despite all of this we continue to shop together,drive together and argue all the time.Why don't we just do are own thing you may well ask....well the strange part is that we love each others company and imagine how dull a car ride would be if we were always agreeing on things and if we never has our fight.

Ageing parents

Parents....most of our lives they have cared for us without too much acknowledgment from kids,yet they go on at it during all the highs and lows of life.We have our battles at every stage in life and its only when one reaches a certain age and parents start to grow old that we realise how much they mean to us,what a big part they play in our lives never mind how old we are.My mother as long as I can remember has always been cooking up great meals.She is the kind who cant keep still for too long and is always doing something or the other related to food.Or she watches loads of tv and then we have great battles on those subjects,never agreeing on anything.When she has a bit of time she will read the newspaper cover to cover (very much the way my dad did in his old age).My mother is 80 and that's pretty old but for the life of me I cant come to terms with her being old,for me she has to be busy,I cant deal with it when she is ill or a bit under the weather,then my whole day is spoilt.I know something is wrong when she is not out and about the house.Today I actually took a good look at her face (most days we are busy arguing with each other or just chatting that I have never noticed small details).I saw the fine lines,the papery skin ,the grey hair,the fading eyes and my heart turns cold.Maybe its my inability to deal with my own mortality,or the inability that one day she too must pass.Mothers for some reason are more a part of our lives that fathers (at least to some of my generation).She knows all my friends and the little details of their lives,she know all my sorrows and my pain,she knows my moods and she just knows me better than most.So why is it that for me its so important that she makes the tea at 5pm.Its my indicator that all is well with her.I need to see her at 9.30am making the first cup of tea ...Tea isn't the big deal here but I just need to see her there.Am I asking too much of an 80 year old.Am I just not willing to face the reality that people do get old and frail.I am being morbid and silly at times but my mother being ill or out of sorts is the most stressful thing in life at the moment.We have lived with each other for all my life and a good part of hers.The house is mine but most of the stuff in it is hers,that's how much our lives are woven into each others.Most people I know with old parents go through this crisis,we look out for each other despite getting on each others nerves at times.We all jump at those midnight phone calls,we sleep light if there are old parents at home and some lucky ones like me have them under ones roof but what of my friends who live in far away countries and have only the phone to keep in touch,what do they do when conversations become impossible when parents loose their hearing?,what happens when they are too far to be there when they are most needed and what about the parents themselves?.How terrible to be all alone when one is old especially the ones with families children,grandchildren etc but no one to talk to.That is real loneliness and like it or not we will all have to face it one day.How we cope is really what matters in the end.

Garden psychology

In the heat of good old madras with temperatures reaching 40degrees c,I try very hard to have some green space in my home.A small balcony therefore is brimming with plants in greens and purple along with a basil and thyme (brought in from cold and lovely ooty).My terrace has ladies finger and bitter gourd along with cactus and all manner of other plants.The cactus is the result of a great ambition to have a cactus garden but having no clue how to grow them I dilly dallied on the decision to grow them.Then along came a niece with some cactus plants given to her by some avid gardener and here she was a girl with zero interest in gardening,so they found their way into my home and not having a clue like I mentioned,they were bunched together in one pot.Some more cactus came along on trips to ooty but they died protesting the heat of madras,some came from Bangalore and had a lot more spirit as they thrived and got along so well with some others that they soon bangalored the rest.All of the plants have their own personalities and some of them are great sulks,they can sulk if I forget to water them for a day (I can understand when its really hot but why sulk in winter?).In sheer exasperation with this constant sulking I ignored them a few days and some bug got hold of them and eat up all their leaves.Feeling a bit guilty I continued to water despite not being too optimistic about the two but wonder of wonders after a few months (I think this was a new way of protest) the leaves were back and they were looking rather good.The good news is that this new avatar doesn't sulk.I am still trying to figure out the psychology of these plants.The aloe vera on the other hand will bloom and grow even if they outgrow their pot,they have their own attitude.My basil and thyme make me rather proud.The heat has just begun and perhaps I talk too soon but they have grit their teeth and are pulling along very well and braving the heat.On the whole all my plants have learnt to adapt to daily watering even when some of them in normal circumstances don't need to be watered daily.The seem to have realised that to co exist with others very different from themselves,they need to make a few compromises,so bravely they adapt and live and give me great pleasure and teach me small lessons in life that only a thriving garden in how ever small a space can teach you.

Cook,eat,live

This family loves food and most of us in it love to cook but our ways are so different one would never imagine we are sisters.My mom is the best cook of the lot,she has a mine of information about food,tricks to salvage all those kitchen disasters and loads of healthy dishes that even taste fantastic.Now in her 80s she has forgotten most of them and its my job to jog her memory.Some of the ingredients she wants have gone away with the old lifestyle of being close to nature,so we have to learn to do without them and stick to supermarket stuff or grow our own food (very difficult in hot climates and no garden space)My middle sister is what one would call a perfect cook.She hates cooking but lives in a world that requires a woman to be a good host and therefore serve good food and with formal settings.She entertains much more than me but you can be sure to get starter,main course and desert at her home.She can follow a recipe book to the tea and will churn out good food but god forbid you share kitchen space with her.You cant carry on a conversation as she hates to be distracted,she will measure every bit of what goes into the dish and is terrified of loosing count so we cant ask any questions.Best left to herself you can be sure of good food though you may wonder why it took so long

My eldest sister is a great cook if one is to go by what all her hangers on and friends claim.She can stir up a three or four course meal in minutes and with what ever is available in the house but she is a suspect cook in some ways.Sometimes I wonder if she gets away with it because she live in a world that's full of foreigners,she being the few Indians around.She usually cooks for large groups of 30 to 40 people and will have many dishes on the table,but when I think of chips and junk food listed as dishes I shudder to think what her guest have let themselves in for.My mother refuses to have anything to do with her cooking as she is convinced that her eldest daughter has learnt a mish mash of things with no logical sequence or just no sense.Two days ago when she told me that she was using low quality rice to make a meal and then told me later that it tasted like a lovely risotto,I decided that I will cook for myself when I visit her.But she does have plenty of good food up her sleeve but make sure you get invited when its just her and her husband and the need to play to the gallery is not there.She love a performance and has taken Shakespeare to heart so to her all the worlds a stage including her kitchen.

Me,I learnt cooking late in life only because I married someone who had no clue about cooking and I had no intention of starving to death.It was s skill born out of necessity.The only things i knew when I started were the dishes that BBC good food put on air and being of the English kind it didn't go down well with the husband.In a effort to save our marriage from culinary disaster I learnt to cook by calling my mother everyday and having recipes dictated on the phone.If that failed I called my mother in law for her kind of recipes (polar opposites of what I was used to ).Having to learn vegetarian cooking was also a big deal.Having been a meat and fish person,who ate non vegetarian food for all meals it was somewhat a shock to discover that there are people who don't eat meat ( I knew then of course but never had to live with one).Lentils my pet hate soon started becoming a staple on out table,while i settled for curd.Today some fourteen years later we actually eat all kind of vegetables and I cook them .Recently when I was told that my chicken curry sucks,I discovered to my utter horror that I may be on the way to becoming a total vegetarian cook.Well i hope not but I must admit that there are times when I do dish up a all vegetarian meal and can surprise myself on how good it tasted.But the final verdict is that for all our experiments and our differences as cooks,my mother still wins hands down when it comes to taste.

Battle of the bulge

Its been four years now since I started on a fitness regime.What was the reason?...well suddenly i was beginning to look like dawn french minus the pretty face,and also because I had to do something to keep healthy.Having been thin as in really thin for the better part of my life it just didn't seem right to seem so fat so with all good intentions I hit the gym for three years,started yoga and continued for two years and learnt to swim and have been doing three of the above regularly.I also read most of the articles on diet and health and the papers are full of them so one cant really ignore it.Today for instance there was this article which had a headline that really caught my eye.It was about how to loose a flabby tum and wobbly thighs.Considering that this is a battle that i don't seem to be winning ,I decided to read the fine print.Stupid me to think that solutions come in newspapers.Well needless to say that after reading it with all the good advice about Mediterranean diets and exercise,I was deeply disappointed.Now the conclusion is that either I am and exception to every diet and exercise rule,or my body has a total mind of its own and I need to accept that I have no control over that mind.How else does one explain why I( who do a full 60 to 90 minutes of exercise everyday and don't eat junk food and don't drink power drinks and don't eat out etc etc) am still struggling with the same problems that are supposed to be zapped with all the good advice that I follow.It obviously means that I should ignore all of these diet and exercise advice and do exactly what i want to do and not worry about the weight.Like someone said its all about staying fit,but how would i know I am fit until I drop dead.Pretty obvious that this is a subject that most people worry about hence the reams of newsprint and tv time spent on this topic....discouraging it is but I shall keep trying.

Bobbin battles

At the best of times needlepoint and me are poles apart.I went to an all girl school that had needlepoint as a subject.The headmistress has this mistaken notion that we would all end up industrious young woman who would make our own clothes and sew out own curtains.Her confidence wasnt misplaced.Many of the girls ended up doing just that and are very good at it,but some like me fell by the way side.In the last year of school when an exam paper asked that we make aprons,my desperation to get out of school and enter university no no bounds.For the first and the last time ,I cheated at this exam.Having spent the better part of my life outside the classroom punished for bad craftsmanship,I was doomed to failure.The long and short of it was that my friend bailed me out.So why am I not surprised that for a month now I have been struggling to master that great art of bobbin threading.Now lets face it this is after all a sewing machine with standard features and understanding how a bobbin works cant be rocket science....or perhaps it is when the person is me.I have watched every video on you tube,read as many pages on the science of the bobbin but to no avail.I have developed a permanent lop sided look that has my head at a strange angle,and i am pretty sure I have become cross eyed also but the bobbin only threads after five tries and when I have said a prayer or two.Nothing less than divine intervention gets it going.Not the type to give up easily I continue my battle with the bobbin and have already amassed a few in my utilities box thanks mainly to the fact that its not expensive.So today wonder of wonders the bobbin behaved itself and i managed to get some sewing done but the main needle has started playing up.As a firm believer in one god I have a nasty feeling that he is likely to ignore my requests if they get far too many so before the good lord gives up on me ....may i master the bobbin and the machine.

The politics of personalities

Cricket is not a religion to me,despite living in a country that is cricket obsessed.I am not a fan of any of the players either simply because I don't relate to the game.So don't be surprised if this blog is about cricket.Its simply that the news is full of our star player who is out of form and who should or shouldn't be in the team.Of course the issue I am concerned with is not to do with cricket but with the politics of it all.In our country we respect individuals even if the job requires a team.Sports,politics,corporate life whatever....are all littered with stories of individuals who made it big,people who's personalities dominate their respective fields.People who have contributed largely to the path they have chosen.However we as a nation worship the demi gods,we create them (for good reason) and then they become larger than life so we cant kill our own creation,so we have cricketers who hang on long after their sell by date,ageing actors who don wigs and dance around woman young enough to be their grand children,corporate honchos who run companies like their personal fiefdom and so on and so forth.Of course behind close doors we will crib about them but do we have the guts to confront them,do we dare to topple them off the pedestal we set up for them.Of course not.So why blame some one who hangs on long after his out of form states makes us a lesser team.Can we dare to tell our star player that perhaps its time to sit on the sidelines.And if some brave soul does do so,will we as a nation let him live.....of course not this in India....land of god men,devotees and demi gods.We will continue to be so but dream of becoming professionals....it will remain a dream until we can separate personalities from the job on hand

Parenting in the time of change

Time was when my parents told me stories of the good old days of their childhood,the lamented the fact that values had come down and the world had changed etc etc.I always wondered how it would feel to be in their position.Well somewhere at the half way mark I understand how they did feel.In my days (to use their phrase) things were different.We actually had a lot of freedom to take decisions,we learnt to cope with life and all its problems,we learnt to make friends and enemies and accept that the world is not always filled with people we like.We also learnt to ignore what we didn't like and to appreciate what we did.My parents did not have any coaching to be parents but they muddled along and did a fairly decent job of it.Of course I have my share of complaints but on the whole I cant complain.

It looks like its my lot to observe parents on a day to day basis and I come away horrified at them and their children.My daily walk takes me through a park on my way to the swimming pool.The park has a skating rink and its full of children in the age group of six to twelve.The come fitted out with the best clothes,head gear,knee pads etc and their adoring parents sit on the sidelines keeping watch over them.Of course most of the parents are in their twenties and thirties and its mostly mothers.Fathers have better things to do like earning a living and looks like parenting is the sole responsibility of the mothers (this in India after all).The other day a kid wanted to pee ,so what does this educated and reasonably well off mother do (I am guessing they are well of by the clothes and gear )She gets the child to pee right there on the lawn (used by a number of people on their daily walks).I wonder why she cant walk five hundred yards or so to the toilets which are clean and open for exactly this purpose.The child is being taught early that the whole world is his toilet.Move on to the swimming pool.Its my cross to bear that every time I go for a swim the pool is full of children in the same age group mentioned above,along with the same adoring mothers and in some cases fathers.All the parents crowd around the pool some shouting instructions (they will never enter the pool with their kids and teach them),some yelling at them to improve (the parents are all under pressure to make their off spring the very best at any cost) and some will watch adoringly while children jump into the water regardless of who is swimming or if anyone is in danger of having a child land on their backs.In desperation we tried explaining to a parent the dangers of such behaviour (we though that this would help but we obviously should have known better) but she shrugged her shoulder and continued to encourage her kids to jump(so what if someone is killed to maimed? after all she did pay to use the pool and to hell with the rest).Some of them get aggressive if any instructions are given ,some get defensive and some just ignore all things.All they are interested in are their kids.(very commendable that they can spend so much time with them).I wonder what these little horrors will grow up to.Why am i not surprised that kids today will commit suicide at the slightest hint of pressure,will kill their teachers if reprimanded,will rape their fellow students in a false sense of power and generally grow up to be the worst kind of society we will inherit.

Parenting may no longer be the so called easy job it was for our parents (though I suspect it was difficult for them too),the world changes and with more affluence,parents are always under pressure,but what a lot of them seem to be forgetting is that a bad child is really a reflection on bad parents.Why is it that while parents have so much time to send their kids to every coaching class and make them excel in every sport or activity that money can buy,why do they forget that time spent in communicating and teaching by example are a far far better investment in the future.I shudder every time I look at those brats and their parents as I pass along like and I can only thank God that I knew my limitations and didn't inflict society with a child.Thank god I had the sense to not become a parent.

I must admit that in the course of my life I have met some excellent parents who put their money where their mouth is and bring up very well behaved children who excel in things that they have an aptitude for and enjoy many different facets of life and to those parents and children I can only say,may your breed increase.

Dealing with his Mother

Well over a year now I have been giving advice on and off to friends on how to handle mothers in law.Now one might wonder whats so unique about this particular relationship but if the universal truth be known there are very few good relationships between mothers in law and daughters in law,more so if one is in an Indian family.Reasons are many and the degrees of hostility or friendliness as the case may be can vary depending a lot on the family itself.

In our culture,boys are important,so much so that a son kind of makes a woman feel complete (this seems to be changing very slowly over the years).Mothers tend to hold on to their sons,take care of their every whim and most men are tied to their mothers apron strings.Strangely its not so much the sons problem as his wife's when a marriage takes place.Most girls brought up in our society (there are a lot of exceptions to the rule and i know of some very good relationships also) believe that its their role to "adjust".This is considered a good reflection on their own parents parenting skills as also on the character of the girls themselves.Keeping with this belief its not strange to see girls integrate well into families (very positive thing i must admit) and go the whole nine yards to make herself well loved by one and all.The trouble really is with expectations.If the girl expects her mother in law to love her or accept her a hundred percent then one is asking for trouble.I don't quiet know the psychology of it but suspect it has something to do with letting go.Most mothers don't want to let go of their sons and believe its their birthright to control every aspect of his life well after a wife comes along.The wife in question then believes that the onus is on the husband to make for smooth passage where his mother and wife are concerned.I believe this is the first mistake.Like i tell my friends,its foolhardy to interfere in a mother son relationship.Mothers in law are best dealt with on a one on one basis with out the son being part of the equation.Lets face it the man in the middle will never win,he either ends up hurting the mother or the wife or both.Now coming to the wife,once again my rule of thumb is that one must not expect the mother in law to either love you are accept you a hundred percent.Accept this fact of life and one is bound to end up with a happy relationship.If the wife chooses to live with her in laws then she must accept that it will be their rules at all times,if she decides to live independently with the husband then the rules of the house are her rules and these must be stated or implied clearly.To feel bitter at the slightest perceived insult is to bring trouble on ones self.As my mother very wisely put it to me one day( after she made a scathing attack on the condition of my kitchen and house in general) we daughters in law tend to take our mothers in law too seriously,we will take the most nasty comments from our mothers and shrug it off as a bad day but god forbid the mother in law says the same thing (even if there is truth in it).We will get on the high horse,rave to our husbands about what we think of his mother and in the end end up feeling betrayed because he didn't take our side....Honestly is it all worth it.Not really.I do believe that the best relationships are when you accept that however perfect you may be ,you will never be the daughter of the house,nor will you mother in law be as comfortable with you as she will be with her own daughters.Remember you will always be the woman who took her son away so learn to share him without compromising your position as his wife.Remember that if you respect yourself others will respect you and last but not least,every relationship is about two people who give and take and as a woman you don't have to be a doormat to win the game.Stand up for yourself and remember in life you may have to loose some battles to win the war.