Intent can be the Ugliest Thing

“I have never found violence exciting or interesting. Sometimes, the ugliest thing at the scene of a terrorist attack is not the blood and the bodies, but the intent. It’s something that is almost still hanging in the air.” – From Sally Sara’s (ABC’s Kabul correspondent) farewell to Afghanistan

I just read this and there’s nothing more I can write today.

 

Tagged

I’ve been tagged for the first time ever! Thank you Elisa and sorry for the delay in posting.

I’m copying the rules right off her page (including her tweaks) and have add a few changes of my own, purely in the interests of making this post a readable length:

1. Post the rules.

2. Post 12 5 fun facts about yourself in the blog post.

3. Answer the questions the tagger has set for you in their post and create 12 10 5 new questions for the fellow bloggers you plan to tag.

4. Tag 12 6 3 people and link to them on your blog.

5. Let them know you tagged them.

Five facts about me:

1. I looooooooooooove reading. There’s nothing that makes me happier than a new book to read

2. I’m attempting to complete my first novel.

3. My dream is to start a bookshop, with a cafe and a small art gallery to promote local artists.

4. I don’t consider myself maternal but now I can’t wait to have another baby, though I don’t know how I’m going to manage my daily schedule.

5. I adore travelling and love the journey as much as I do reaching a much anticipated  destination.

Elisa’s 10 questions for me (yay!):

1. You have an unlimited budget and free use of a jet for 24 hours. Where would you go and how would you spend your time?

I would buy my way onto an archaeological dig preferable in old Egypt. My secret love is ancient history and archaeology.

2. What do you never get tired of?

Reading or rather books.

3. You are stranded on a desert island. You can pick 3 people to be your fellow islanders: one celebrity, one fictional character and one person from your circle of family and friends (past and present). Who would you pick and why?

Celebrity – Wilbur Smith – He is the best author I have ever read and there is so much I want to ask him and learn from him. Plus I’m sure he’ll be able to spin enough stories to stave of boredom.

Fictional Character – Phoebe Buffy from friends, she’s smart, has a great sense of humour, is a little quirky and has a real figure (she’s hot and curvy, so I won’t feel weird like a baby elephant in my swimwear).

Family/Friends – My family is so large and made up of so many different personalities, that it’s difficult to choose. I’ll go with my dad, because we never get bored when together, even if we are just silent,  and he is the my pillar of strength and my hero (a complete necessity when stranded on a desert island and awaiting rescue).

4. What is the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to you or done for you?

It’s in the everyday unexpected things that the techie does to make my life a little bit easier (and this from a completely unromantic person). If I have to choose one incident it would be, taking me to Egypt on our honeymoon and booking the Royal Oberoi Lodge that is literally right in front of the Pyramids, followed by five days on the Nile.

5. We all have memories that never lose the power to make us cringe or make us feel embarrassed, no matter how many years have passed. Tell me one of yours.

I have so many, so will share the most recent one. A month back a whole group of us went on a 10k trail run in support of a charity. Out of all the 1000+ participants I was the only one to end up in a ditch. Seriously embarrassing when kids and people above the age of 60 were part of the run and none of them had any accidents. One minute I was on the trail and the next minute in a ditch and had to be helped out by a group of teenagers who took pity on me.

6. Call it: the best cheap brand/store ever and the absolute worst expensive one.

I’ll skip this question since I don’t have any particular experiences that stand out in my memory.

7. Finish this sentence: “I don’t care if it’s a cliché, I love(d)…”

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

8. Your best quality and your worst one.

My best quality (according to the techie) is that I’m easy to please in a material sense. Yes, I appreciate comfort and beauty but I’m also happy with what I have at the moment while striving towards what I want or think I need. My worst, my inability to resurface when caught up in a book. I am even liable to forget I’m a mother.

9. “… I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don’t feel so bad” sang Julie Andrews. What is the thing(s) that never fails to make you smile and raise your spirits?

Anything with colour and a family holiday.

10. Let’s talk books. Specifically, tell me one book everyone should read.

Without doubt, Wilbur Smith’s River God. I introduced the techie to it on our Egyptian honeymoon , while sailing down the Nile.

I’m tagging:

Sanjana at Travel and Other Life Changing Pursuits (a girl after my own heart)

Naina at STYLE’N (she know’s her style)

Simon at Sweet and Weak (he makes you think and laugh, a deadly combination)

My list of questions:

1. What one incident/person could make you drop whatever you were doing and fly halfway across the world?
2. Given a choice where would you opt to live on this gorgeous planet of ours and why?
3. Your guilty pleasure. What is it? Do you hide it or are you open about it?
4. Which book do you think no one must ever miss reading?
5. Family or friends, which one do you prefer spending time with? Reasons please.

There I’m done. Now it’s time to sit back and wait for the others to share their deep, dark secrets with us.

 

Instant Pick-Me-Ups

I have been away so long, that I almost forgot my password! The longer I stayed away, the tougher it was to get back. So much has been going on at work (the deal we were working on for a year closed this month!) and at home ( my cousin’s getting married and the whole family is flying in from all over the world), plus the little one’s having her summer hols, so though I had fully formed posts running through my head, there just wasn’t enough energy at the end of the day to actual type it out. In fact, I’ve been a lurker on my favourite blogs, reading them as I doze off in the night and not leaving my usually chatty comments (sorry).

Anyway, all that’s hopefully in the past and I’m going to get back to regular programming this week. To start with here are five things that have cheered me up this month:

• Finding a Wilbur Smith book I have never read! I’m crazy about this author and thought I had read every single book by him. What a pleasant surprise to discover that I had missed one over the years
• Taking a 36 hour trip with my dad. V and the techie joined in at the last moment, but I still managed some quality father daughter time on the road
• Dancing the night away at V’s 4th birthday. The party was planned and executed in 48 hours, after multiple plans fell through,  however, it turned out to be a super success
• Finding V’s iPad after I thought I had lost it. Major high that one hour
• Celebrating a girlfriend’s birthday with the new set of girlfriends I made over the last year (remember my Girlfriend Search? I need to update you all on that). A sure fire stress buster

What are your pick-me ups?

P.S. – Elisa I apologise for the delay in doing the tagged post. Next up for sure.

 

Summer Dates

As I’ve often written here, I had an idyllic childhood. I am completely aware of how blessed I was to lead the kind of life Disney stories are based on, a modern equivalent of living in the Hundred Acre Wood. Unlike most other kids, I never wanted to grow-up and given a chance and a time travel machine, even today, I’d go right back to the 1980s-90s in a flash. Three aspects, in my limited opinion, probably contributed to this, as yet, unmatched state of affairs: my parent’s steadfast belief that childhood is short and should be worry free (as in adult responsibilities were not the concern of children), my brother (we adore/d each other, though we also had our separate lives) and being lucky enough to live in the beautiful city of Dubai.

Since leaving home for good at the age of 24 (when I got married) I have always had a nagging feeling of homesickness. No, that does not mean I mope around for days on end. In fact I’m a pretty happy person. The problem is when I have those rare ten minutes to myself at the end of a long day, the feeling of homesickness pops up and hits me unexpectedly. Initially, I just used to ignore it or distract myself and when it was very bad, I’d lock myself in the bathroom, cry my eyes out, freshen-up and get back to my life, taking care of everyone and everything. Now, I’ve found a new way to deal with it; I tell V stories about growing-up in Dubai with her namnam (my mom), thathu (my dad) and R (my brother). They make for great bed time stories for V, with places and people she can relate to (I occasionally throw in the values I supposedly possessed as a child). For the mommy (that’s me) , these sessions help relieve her childhood without bringing on a complete emotional breakdown.

Getting to the point, I decided to record the memories I talk to her about here, so that, she can come and read them again, if she ever wants to. Plus, when I’m old and grey, I can refresh my memory in preparation for telling my grandchildren stories (jumping a bit ahead of myself here).

Since V will be starting on her summer soon, we were discussing options and activities. That naturally brought us to our Dubai school summers in the scorching desert heat. Unlike a lot of families, my mom would never agree to go off on a long vacation with my dad just visiting us for a few weeks. Whatever we did we did as four and the same applied to our summer vacations. So this was our usual vacation format: a few weeks visiting both sides of the family, a week to ten days at some new foreign location (my parents believed that travel was the best form of education)  and a month in our very own city of Dubai.

During the four odd weeks in Dubai, we were free to roam the streets in our area drinking fresh fruit juices at Jabal Al Noor (a very popular cafeteria and juice bar); swimming or playing at our sports club; hanging out at the ice ring, local snooker joint or cinema; sneaking around Karama for bargains or haunting Lamcy or Al Ghurair (the two oldest malls) and later City Center. The difference between a summer in Dubai and any other semi-developed city was that, as you went about your summer activities, you could sustain yourself with the juiciest of dates for free!

The date palm is the national tree of the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E) and it’s grown every where. Road dividers or medians used to have lines of palm tress running down the center. So if you were waiting to cross the road, you could just pick a few of those ripe fruits and stuff your mouth, while sticking your hand out to ask cars to give you way on the zebra crossing. We used to take a short cut through Al Nasr Leisure land and pillage their date tress, which they never really reprimanded us for (sweet people). The government had only one rule with respect to all this eating of public property, you could eat your fill on the spot, even stuff your pockets with it, however, you were not allowed to cart it away in large containers of any sort. This seemed and still seems very fair and generous to me.

Dates eaten fresh and the packed ones differ so massively in taste, that initially, when I moved out of the U.A.E., I couldn’t look at a packed date (I still find it difficult to eat compressed, packed ones). The ripe ones off the tress are usually a dark pre-brown yellow with dark brown soft bits and literally are waiting to burst out of their skin. They are also massive in size, not just fat, but long and luscious. You just have to put a little bit of pressure at the base and the sweet fruit pops out of the crackly skin and straight into your mouth, bursting into an unbelievably sweet harmony of tender flesh and gooey juice. Of course,you had to search for the almost ripe ready to drop ones among the yellow partially ripened fruits (which were also pretty yummy, though a bit tougher).

See the yellow-brown ones. That's what I'm talking about.

As the city started growing and developing the number of date tress came down and I as a teenager, who was almost done with high school, didn’t really have the time to go around picking fruit off trees. In addition, the bunches of ripening dates were protected by muslin cloth bags once they started to reach the harvest stage and were not as accessible as before. Like all good things, I didn’t realise that I was not destined to live around these abundant tress my whole life or I would have eaten those dates everyday till I left Dubai.

Now when I go back I crave those sweet summer dates right off the tree, but the nearest I get is a bunch on the stem from Spinneys (our local supermarket), which to be fair are very good, though not exactly that crackly juicy fruit of my childhood. At other times, my dad orders a crate from a friend’s farm, which I fall on like a starving refugee and finish before anyone else can even think about asking me for a single piece to taste. Satiated I sit back and start telling my shocked (and slightly scared) child about the summers I used to eat this very fruit off the trees outside my home.

Maybe next year I’ll book myself into a farm in Al Ain during the date picking season. They may then just issue a nationwide ban on me the following year.

P.S. – V wants lots and lots of Dubai stories now that I have started. As I try to think up memories (is that phrase correct), let me know if there are any specific questions you have on growing up in Dubai. For my Dubai friends, let me know if there’s anything specific you remember and would like to see here.

P.P.S. – I lost the link for this picture. If anyone does find out where it’s from, please do let me know so that I can give credit where it’s due.

 

Mummy Tummy

I was getting dressed this morning in my regulation Saturday work outfit – black leggings, a camisole and a long formalish tunic. V, who has no time to observe me on school days, usually lounges around as I get ready for work on Saturdays chatting with me. Today, she looked at me as I slipped on my camisole and said, “Mummy when you wear that pink vest, you look funny, like you have lot of tummies.” As I pulled my tunic on hurriedly (so that she got minimum viewing time) I guess she noticed that my smile had kind of frozen. As my confidence plummeted and I tried not to look in the mirror, she ran to me and hugged me with a, “Now you look beautiful mummy. See you only have to cover your tummies.” I managed to choke out a strangled “Thank you darling”, while I vowed to get her to pay for my therapy sessions when she starts earning.

 

Pretending to be Royalty

There’s one situation which all of us face at least once in our life. The context, place, degree of detail may vary greatly, but the central idea is the same. I’m talking about that one certainity apart from birth and death, the one question we all have to face either in grade school or on our college applications or at our job interviews or while trying to get the world (literary agents) to read our books. The dreaded ‘Write a few lines about yourself’.

My first ever attempt was at primary school and went something like this:

“My name is Nmaha. I am a big girl because I can write my own name*. I love painting and reading books. I like pink and my baby brother. I am ‘x’ years old and am in ‘y’ class. Thank you for reading this.”

We were asked to write five-six sentences and the tough part was trying to find different ways to start a sentence. Obviously, I wasn’t very successful as four out of the six sentences started with ‘I’.

Over the years, while my choice of content improved (as I become a slightly more interesting person), the dilemma of how to phrase that content wasn’t really resolved. Finally, I decided to give into the third person style, which makes me feel like I should have a crown (actually I prefer a tiara**) and a throne. It also has the techie in stitches when I read out my notes to him.

Anyway, today I am in the same situation as the primary school me and this is the ‘About Me’ section of my concept note to a literary agent:

“Nmaha is a Chartered Accountant by profession and currently runs a healthcare diagnostics business with her husband. She attempts to juggle motherhood, running a business and her passion for writing, while miserably dropping the ball at regular intervals. Nmaha celebrated her 30^th birthday this year by embarking on a year-long exercise to move her current life closer to the life she actually wants. Read about her efforts on creating a balanced and synergistic life at www.seekingsynergy.wordpress.com.”

Not much improvement in 25 odd years right? I just seem to have replaced “I like pink and my baby brother” with a slightly more grown-up version.

Oh! I almost forgot, “Nmaha grants you the right to refer to her as ‘Her Royal Highness’ from today”.

*My real name is very difficult for a 5-7 year old child to spell. I actually had a little pocket book in which I spent hours practicing writing my name correctly.

**I wonder if I can get Tiffany to sponsor it.

 

Shout It Out

You know what I hate about being an adult? I mean apart from the fact that I’m an adult and have to shoulder Atlas type loads of responsibility and would gladly go off to school, given a choice, leaving all said loads behind. Okay, as usual I digress and will forcibly drag myself back to the topic on hand.

I hate the fact that as an adult it’s NOT ACCEPTABLE TO EXPRESS DISAPPOINTMENT IN A SATISFYING MANNER. As you can see I am fairly frustrated with a lack of avenues to really blow my top. I agree that everybody has to face their fair share of disappointments in life, and this includes children as well. My problem here is not with being disappointed. (Of course it is, who am I fooling. What I mean to say is it’s not the only problem.) I have a problem with the fact that we are expected to face facts, accept that things have not gone the way we planned, maybe come up with an alternative solution and then walk away calmly, probably with a set of key takeaways (talk about rubbing salt into a wound).

Why, I ask, can’t we express ourselves like children when disappointed. With maybe a tantrum or denial or a good old sulk or even a bout of healing tears; and then forget about it (or at least some of it). Actually come to think of it, it’s not acceptable today, even for kids to express themselves this way. But what the heck they still do, so I’m sticking to my guns here.

On this blog, I’ve spoken about all the efforts I’m taking to create the life I want, but I want to be honest too. The previous year, the previous month and even the previous day (and today, for the record) have presented me with a string of disappointments. Disappointments that I’m obviously not accepting so easily and am fighting against like mad, however, a good show of how disappointed I am would really go along way in easing my stress and frustration. Failures are the stepping tone to success, if you don’t die of stress induced diseases first.

Bottom line,  I want to be free to let people know that I don’t feel like smiling and actually want to throw something or shout the house down (though obviously not in general public).

How do you deal with disappointment as an adult? What would you suggest for an overloaded girlfriend here?

 

Extreme Randomness

Crazy little fish

I feel like those little fish.

Things are crazy around here. I’m not talking normal crazy. This is an all out, first time in my life, ever, crazy. Crazy that makes you neglect friends (sorry, you guys know who you are), send the little one on vacation with the grandparents (V and the grandparents are over the moon), forget all holidays and occasions (we don’t know what weekends are), sleep walk through bootcamp (I got an email from the coach yesterday inquiring about my stress levels) crazy.

So in lieu of actually writing a post, I hope you’ll forgive me if, I give you:

A few V quotes

V (After waiting for a trip home for 11 months): Mummy, just get on the plane with me to Dubai. Give me to thathu (her grandad) and go back to office on the same plane. You can eat lunch in the office.

*********

While playing the animal word game with V (without the last alphabet connect)
V: Anaconda
Me: Hyena
V: Mummy that’s a living place with the long high wall
Me: That’s China darling not Hyena
V: I know that’s what I said China. Hyena is the dog that laughs and acts like your friend but then becomes wild and bites you when you go near it

*********

Random observations of a stressed out mind

Gossip Girl
Are those really high school kids? I don’t think so
Am I learning anything? Not really, except what not to do as a parent or rather what to dread when my daughter grows up
Will I continue watching it? Of course, the clothes are gorgeous and who doesn’t like watching b***** high-society high-school kids one up each other

*********

During a working week when we had no access to banking services

Banks closed for five days? How do they expect the economy to run! Next they’ll have summer holidays. I want to work at a bank.

*********

On restarting bootcamp

I do adore bootcamp, but all those burpees make it too expensive to maintain my manicure, *sigh*, chipped nails and calloused hands for the next three months, it is.

*********

Now, I’ll stop boring you and myself. Hopefully I’ll soon be talking sense again. Thanks for hanging around.

 

Blogger Flashback

I started blogging in April 2010 for a multitude of reasons. Today, I went back to my old blog to see if my focus as a blogger has really changed. Funny thing was, I can’ t really judge, maybe I’m too close to the situation, so I thought I’ll share my first ever post with all of you and ask you to be the judge. Please do share your thoughts, I’m sure they’ll be interesting and enlightening. 

Writing has always been my chosen form of self-expression. Up until I became a mom, writing in my diary was satisfying enough. But when I entered this new phase of life, I realized that I wanted to connect with other people who were going through the same stuff. And that’s what I hope to do through this blog, make a whole bunch of new friends who can guide me or at the minimum commensurate and celebrate with me.

Being a mummmy is by far the toughest thing I have ever had to do. I have a gorgeous and sweet-tempered baby, however, I absolutely hated the first year of being a mom (more about that in another entry). I don’t think my daughter is to blame for this, it’s totally because of the kind of person I am:
- I love spending time on my own – reading, painting (you don’t get much of this when you have a baby or toddler attached to you). Even after I got married, if my husband was busy I would happily take off to go have lunch at a coffee shop with just my book for company.
- I have to ‘do’ something fun or exciting everyday, or at least every weekend. I can’t stand having one day be exactly like the next
- I love working. I just can’t be a housewife or a stay at home mom. I tried being a housewife for three months, during my first year of marriage. I drove my husband crazy and he begged me to go do whatever makes me happy.
Am I a freak or are there other mummy’s out there like me? Can you love your baby with all your heart and still want to go to work, leaving her behind everyday. Because if I’m honest, though I need to work for the financial comfort it gives me, I also want to work (even though my husband is willing to be the sole breadwinner).

So, what do you think? Has my style and/or focus changed?

 

Estate Life – Galle – Part 3

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It’s been an extremely long weekend of almost five days here (though we only got a day and a half off, which is a lot by our standards). It got me thinking about weekend breaks and that’s when I realised, I never really gave you all the low-down on the rest of our Sri Lankan holiday. I know it’s been quite sometime since I wrote the first two posts, sorry for the delay. If you are new, or want to catch-up on part one and two of the Sri Lankan tales, please head over to Within the Battlements and Walking the Ramparts.

Since the whole Sri Lankan stay was planned by my globe trotting little brother, R, he rejected all the usual stay options and put a lot of effort into picking places that would give us a completely different experience. The second place that he chose was for little V. She is crazy about any kind of animal, insect and plant life and so home two was an estate. The Apavilla Illuketia, which is a two hundred year old plantation house and is surrounded by ten acres of tropical gardens and paddy fields. We chose to stay at the Pond House, where V and her grandfather had great fun swinging over the lotus lake and threatening to jump in if we troubled them.

As part of the activities available, we had the option of visiting tea estates, a traditional Sinhalese village, cycling along country lanes or riding a motorcycle through the paddy fields. Our little munchkin made the decision for us, she wanted to spend the day with her animal friends on the plantation. At breakfast time she fed the fish that swam in the moat around the main house, as I quickly shoveled eggs and porridge with fresh palm sugar treacle into her little mouth. (Sri Lanka was a food nightmare for me, since every time V saw the variety of fruit and fresh produce available she refused to eat grains in any form.) She picked up little frogs and plopped them back in the water so that they could ‘spend time’ with their tadpole brothers and sisters.

Early that morning, we were lucky to catch a glimpse of a monitor lizard swimming lazily across the lotus lake and then slinking away among the lotus leaves. This got V so excited that she insisted on R taking her swimming in the pool (no not the lake), in the hope that a monitor lizard would join them. To my relief only three other children from the main house got into the pool. The best part of this property is that they have only six rooms and you have a lot of space and privacy, ideal for families with kids or honeymooners.

The afternoon was spent walking around the plantation and picking and tasting everything from pepper corns to passion fruit right off the tree, talk about the freshest of produce, literally. We caught and release colourful butterflies, watched  monkeys chattering and swinging under a bright blue sky and made flower chains and crowns for oursleves. Lunch was followed by a game of football on the spacious lawns, while my mother caught up on her Gita reading and cautioned us to play carefully. R had asked for a delicious chocolate truffle cake that we cut to celebrate the reason for the trip, my mother’s 50th birthday, and then shared with everyone, staff and guests, on the property. It was a real celebration.

During tea in the lobby/ library, we leafed through old editions of Time, Vanity Fair and Harpers Bazaar, while making plans for the evening. For dinner we decided to try the other popular dining destination in the city, The Fortress. When we got there I was slightly disappointed to see, that contrary to the images the name conjures up, The Fortress is a completely new five star property on the beach.  The food was of course delicious, we went for the curry along with a mix of exotic cocktails, and the service was impeccable. What really stole the show was the hidden tank, behind the pizza chef’s workplace, where a fully grown turtle was leisurely swimming around while recuperating from an injury. Most places in Sri Lanka participate in the turtle protection and conservation project, which is great to hear. When it got a bit too hot and humid for my mom outdoor’s the staff gave us seating within the cool wine cellar, which was a unique experience.

As on the previous days we headed back home by ten pm and while the older and younger members dozed off, R and I spent time catching-up over an exceptionally bad bollywood movie and a bottle of bubbly. Siblings rock.

I don’t think time can get more relaxed than this. Just looking at these pictures and going over that day in my head is taking me to my zen place.