Ripples of my Reflections

I think, therefore I write

Page 4 of 66

A worthless gift

October 7, 2020 /

Something I wrote in a bleh state of mind, thinking about children of today who are to be the keepers of this world tomorrow.

Oh my precious little one, my hope was still bright
When you stepped into this world
Today, I am not so sure if I was right.

The world I gave you doesn’t seem so ideal
Most days, it does not show any promise of getting better
Nor does it promise you anything that’s real

The rational part of me says, this is not your battle to fight,
Do what you can to your best and teach as much
But I cringe, wondering if you even got your birthright.

Clear air, water and a place to live is all you need
Even those are hard to come by and,
Nature’s already looking for ways to trim the weed.

I really hope you get a chance to
Love what you have, and
Live how you want,
Cherish your life as you rest.

But hope is all I got,
For I am also one part of all this havoc,
Nothing else can I say except that I am sorry,
For giving you the world in this state.

Until later 🙁

Recreating memories

September 15, 2020 /

By this post, you would know that my interest in cooking is fairly recent. It still is a chore for me on most days but I manage to get by knowing that I can cook up a delicious meal, when needed. Anyway, as I made my way through different dishes from amma’s culinary repertoire, trying one at a time, I realized that the newly discovered interest has a backstory after all. One that’s so obvious that I am surprised that I missed it.

I miss my mom and her cooking.

Though this has happened when I first moved out from home to my hostel, then dealing with various cuisines of PG food (ugh!) throughout my spinster life and so on. I have missed amma’s cooking earlier too but that was different. This time, with each of us locked in different cities in the pandemic, it’s been a while since mom got a chance to pamper me and my daughter I got a dose of her pampering. It’s amazing how she never gets bored with cooking and always has the energy to cook up something delicious.

Anyway, this week as I tried my hand at making Vaazhaipoo urundai (A type of falafel made from banana flower), Vaazhaithandu adai (A patty with banana stem – a variant of the first dish), paruppu dosai (My favorite dish with coconut chutney, always ready when I visit home from hostel), Mushroom curry fry, Masala dosa and many more of mom’s signature dishes, the aromas wafting through my kitchen reminded me of my childhood memories, particularly around food that I enjoyed the most as I grew up. I could just close my eyes and see amma working her way around in that dingy kitchen of the monumental house that I grew up in.

Amma in the kitchen was the norm for us. I was a pathetic daughter who didn’t help around much, I did an odd chore here or there but that was it. Yes, I do feel bad that I didn’t do more for her. I would ask her why she keeps at it and how she is not bored day after day, doing the same chore and she would reply, “You enjoy the food, right?” I couldn’t imagine the level of selflessness it took to have that attitude, even if it is for one’s own daughter.

For more than 30 years, she has never tired of the kitchen and cooking. Every time I cook something, my mind automatically compares it with amma’s. The comfort of childhood memories with amma combined with the comfort of food just makes my heart fill with content to the brim. That’s probably what made the experience better for me with time – else I was unhappy that I had to work to develop the interest unlike amma for whom it just came naturally.

Of course, there is a benefactor to all this – my daughter. She is happy that she is getting a variety of dishes as opposed to the mundane routine of rice and sambhar. I don’t think I’ll ever get over amma’s cooking, no matter how old I get. I hope my daughter retains some of these memories as nostalgia when she’s all grown up. I am surprised that she, unlike me, shows an interest in cooking and household chores at such an young age. She loves sitting in the kitchen and watching me cook. And narrating the recipe to her as I cook does make the chore less boring. Sometimes, I put on music and we do a bit of dancing jumping around as well.

So if my daughter looks back at one of these evenings and thinks of it as fondly as I think of my mom in the kitchen, I’d consider it my greatest reward.

Until later 🙂

P.S: Maybe, I should start posting some recipes. Lemme think about it.

Drunk

August 3, 2020 / 
Out of all the ways to get drunk, 
I chose to get drunk on you
And your memories

I do admit, it's an incredible way
To get high, high on the emotions
And the way you made me feel

I laughed right in the face of closure
And didn't even bother moving on
Surprisingly, no regrets there

I liked the trance, the trance of feeling
How I wanted to feel, how it felt to feel
The desire, going wild with no reigns

 Even now, it's like age old wine
 All it takes is a tiny sip
 To get intoxicated once again

Until later 🙂

Yay on the gaming

July 12, 2020 /

Gaming was never my cup of tea. Even as a 90’s kid, I used to try and play simple games like tetris, pacman but even mario was too much for me. I used to be interested but I struggled to work the controls. Maybe not enough hand-eye-brain coordination. In college, farm frenzy was a craze and a group of friends playing it hunched over a laptop made it easy enough for me.

However, one of the perks of being married to an avid gamer is that it does not matter that you suck at playing most commonly played games. He finds you games that you can handle and yet are challenging and interesting enough. Adit even found my category – I do well with tower defense, time management, and business games. I never realized that I had a type with gaming until he proved it to me.

He slowly started buying me games that felt interesting enough for me and I had a chance of succeeding which made me want to play more. Then he sneaked in playing co-op. I never imagined that a hard core gamer like him would even enjoy co-op games such as overcooked but we had a blast with it. We became addicted so much to it that we played late into nights after our toddler falls asleep. We’d be so tired yet we’d want to play. We also had some real fights over something as silly as a game – when the levels got so hard that losing out on a level because one of us couldn’t do something right got intolerable. We fought, made up, then fought some more.. you get how it went 🙂

So after a stream of Overcooked (both versions), Kingdom rush (all PC versions), Plants vs. Zombies, Train valley (both versions), Stardew valley, a bit of Age of Empires (I didn’t persist enough with this one), world of goo, and now trying out the co-op game “Moving out” – I think I am getting interested in gaming. Just that, I am really interested in staying with my type. I don’t like 3D, life-like or violent games but the ones that have a bit of a distance from the game and maybe a bit childish, those are fun for me.

So that’s one more for Adit, his persistence in wearing me down to try new things has a track record that’s almost unbeatable. And I am not complaining 😀

Until later 🙂

Inexplicable

July 11, 2020 /

When it comes to social skills, I am kind of stuck in between an introvert and an extrovert. I would want to be a social person but I cannot be the kind who initiates a conversation or keeps it going for the most part – I would require the other person also to be equally talkative or sometimes, more talkative than me. This may be the reason for me not being able to keep in touch with my school and college friends. In addition to moving through the gears of time and life, the distance between me and my friends robbed me of my comfort zone and I let it slip away. I didn’t feel much of the pang because I got married to my childhood sweetheart – I had him, forever with me, to reminisce. So life just went on.

All this changed, oh so suddenly, when I stumbled upon a couple of my school friends Facebook profiles and messages. I wanted to talk to them but was skeptical if they would feel the same, after all these contact-less years. Nevertheless, I started talking to a couple of them and we started a Whatsapp group – all the while wondering if others will feel comfortable connecting after such a long time. How would everyone react? Will they be as involved and interested?

As for my tingling doubts about people’s reactions, boy, was I wrong! Everyone connected and pulled in more people seamlessly. We could get in touch with almost everyone in 2 days and our group flooded with messages. So much so that all of us were stuck to our mobiles through day and night. The emotions, excitement and joy was almost tangible even though we were only texting. For once, I believed technology and social media has done something useful, in creating as much joy and happiness in a bunch of people, especially during this hopeless time of a pandemic.

In less than a week, we planned and met virtually over a conference call with our families. We had just planned a trial run to see if we can find a suitable time for a real one. But again, almost everyone made it and the reactions on our faces said everything. Amidst talking over each other, talking at the same time, catching up on each other’s lives, managing to get our kids to talk and then be quiet, we enjoyed everything. We didn’t even know how the hour went by. There was so much to talk and so little time.

All of us remembered and reminisced about the joyful memories, our teachers, our daily school lives that we led as naive kids. To me, it felt like something that was frozen in time and memory had been thawed by friendship and brought back to life. Such was the feeling – it was truly inexplicable. It’s true what they say, meeting school friends after a long time and feeling nothing really has changed in the friendship is the best feeling. And especially childhood friends, there’s something about them that you cannot replace.

As the hour went by and our family lives pulled us back into each our lives, we bid adieu, with a promise to stay in touch and do this more often. I know we will, for every one of us had felt the pang of missing our friends. And now we know how great it could be, to stay in touch, to feel and connect with our younger selves. And I hope that I could keep this feeling that I fail to express even with writing, close to my heart, and treasure it for as long as possible.

Until later 🙂

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