Media Bumps

Friends have been sending me all sorts of pregnancy-related links lately. Here are two that popped yesterday.

First is Christine Coppa’s blog at Glamour magazine. She’s being touted as the original Knocked Up girl (if you haven’t seen Judd Apatow’s side-splitting movie yet, go already!). Like the Knocked Up protagonist, Christine is single, she is pregnant, and she is having the baby.

While all the name dropping (Bugaboo strollers, Seven Prego jeans) makes me wonder if there’s a product placement tie-in, I also have to admire her courage in going for the baby she wants. Although I do wonder why a seemingly smart 26-year-old would have had unprotected sex with a casual sex partner. Whatever—none of my business anyway. And I’ll wish her luck—with all the haters out there and a baby on the way that’s something she’ll need plenty of.

Second is this picture of Natalia Vodianova, the supermodel, with her bump. No—I do NOT look like her now—I was never that fabulous to begin with : ). She's wearing magenta, has really skinny limbs, and looks radiant. A N D the only way you can even tell she has a bump at all is by the uneven hang of the hem.

As for me, I did fit into one of my size 0 pre-preg dresses this morning, but only because it’s cut roomy in a very giving jersey blend. And then Big A sat on the floor to inspect and massage my gams because he’s wary of them sneaky thromboses. Nope, not fabulous at all. But awfully nice nevertheless.

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Salman: The Musical (When Life Goes Bad and Art Grows Worse.)

Yup. I know you don’t want to look (but you will anyway).

Fragments from Ben Greenman’s portrait of Rushdie après Padma Lakshmi breakup here.

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Our House (in the middle of the street)

A long-time Baltimore resident’s verdict on our new ‘hood: “It’s quite safe there; you could get mugged, but you won’t get shot.”

Nice to know :).

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Look-See

Sunday’s shoot went well. As far as I can tell :).

Li’l A got in on the action towards the end with a shot where his dimpled, baby hands are on either side of my belly and his mouth is all scrunched up to kiss my belly-button. Big A was working and wasn’t there :/.

On Monday, I went into the city for a look-see and had to explain to Li’l A what that meant. He was incredulous: “You mean, they’ll look at you and say whether they want you or not?” Exactly.

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Be More

And incidentally, we’re in Baltimore this month.

Big A is honing his Shock and Trauma skillz here. Li’l A and I are along for the crabcakes and cred and because, despite the lack of back-up evidence, I’m convinced that I’m very handy at fighting crime and that my presence is crucial to Big A’s safety.

And also because we have nothing better to do!! Summer vacation—remember that biotechs :)?

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Fake a Pose

Because of the pregnancy, there’s been no modeling. The first photog I e-mailed with news of my impending and inevitable weight gain wrote me back: "Well that just kills it [the project]. But congratulations anyway.” The unreserved rejection implicit in every word and—the independent cruelty of the words “kills” and “anyway”--made my eyes prickle with tears.

But don’t go and feel too sorry for me :). Everything made my eyes prickle with tears back then and I’ve since been too busy with nausea or schoolwork and alternating between anxiety and euphoria about the baby to miss modeling too much. Although I must say that I missed (and do miss miss miss) the easy money.

But lately I’ve learnt to appreciate the touchingly comical and vulnerable way my belly triumphantly leads the way. And think that it might be nice to have a few pictures from this time.

So I’ve let my agency hook me up with a few projects. I’ll record how it goes. My first shoot is this Sunday; if you’re reading, please wish me luck!

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Assumptions About the Parrot in the Office

One week when I was five, I became aware that my parents were animatedly conferring about someone called Tilak.

Since he’d been dispatched by corporate HQ to visit my father‘s outpost, my mother assumed that having the perfect dinner party and the right kind of evenings at the club were crucial to ensure a favorable report.

My always-so-earnest father assumed the worst and found himself entirely unable to relax. So much so that when Tilak asked him, during one of those evenings my mother had planned, what “numbers” (colloquial in those times for songs, I’m told) he liked--my father, perhaps still thinking of ledgers and requisitions, blanked and then replied ever so judiciously that he didn’t discriminate.

Most of the time, I played under the dining table or was being sent off to bed while my parents had these urgent discussions. But i in turn assumed, given the proximity of Tilak’s name to the Telugu word for parrot--chilaka--that he perched on a swing beside my father’s giant desk at the office, pecking away at a green chilli, and chirping his numbers in a most annoying way.

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