in your sweet swallow
a grand chord of operatic importance
in my proud voice
a thrusting interjection of breasts
between worn sheets
a satisfaction of promised seduction
i'd seen it all in my head
two days after we'd met
_
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Saturday, January 31, 2009
The 25 things meme
Today's post was easy, lifted straight from my Facebook exercise of yesterday. Try it; it's interesting to see what comes up when you let your mind wander...
1. Culturally, I've always been something of an outsider/diasporan all my life. Even when i was an Indian living in India, i was of the Telegu diaspora in a Tamizh state.
2. I've been engaged twice as many times as i've been married. And i've been married more than once.
3. I used to be terrified of the paranormal. Then one night (which in my melodramatic, adolescent state i no doubt termed "a dark night of my soul") i faced my terrors down in the dark with a stray wolf for company, and some unexpected, nearly drunk college kids in the parking lot at the bottom of the hill.
4. Before anorexia was widely diagnosed in India, i was anorexic for three years out of a sense of exacerbated solidarity with the human condition in general and famine in Africa in particular. I started to put on weight again out of vanity. This is counter to most anorectic case histories and incredibly bathetic.
5. I don't think i really understand that i can control my monetary status. When i have it, i spend it; when i don't have it, i don't. I have been well to do and i have been fairly poor. I cannot imagine being wealthy.
6. My sister is my rock. We share a shorthand of memory and linguistics. And unconditional love.
7. My parents claim that they never find any but their own kids (that's me and my sister) cute, sweet, virtuous, etc. On the contrary, I haven't met a kid i didn't find fascinating.
8. I have memories of my dad helping my mom wax off her underarm hair, but my parents deny this. But i remember the horrible chemical smell.
9. My earliest recurrent dream since i was around three involves me running down a flight of stairs holding in my hand a spindle that grows as it rolls around in my hand. I'm not frightened by this dream, mostly repulsed. I began wondering recently given the phallic nature of the dream symbols if some adult male had exposed himself to me when i was a child.
10. I used to have really thick hair and a maid used to help me wash it twice a week. My husband thinks this is hilariously privileged.
11. My mother told me once that even if God himself told her so, she wouldn't believe that my dad could have an affair. I was so impressed by the trust she had in my dad. Until she added, "He really hates to spend money."
12. My father claims that the most beautiful women he has ever seen are his wife and daughters. He's not right, of course; but he's not fibbing about how he really believes it.
13. I want to be able to raise my kids to be happy, loving, confident people who will make a difference in the world.
14. When i was little, unsolicited soothsayers told me that (a) my son would be as beautiful as the young Lord Murugan [true] (b) that he would change the world. [i hope.] They didn't say anything about my daughter. But i know she's beautiful and hope she changes the world too.
15. I would be happy if my daughter chose to be lesbian. I think that heterosexual unions come with embedded hierarchical differences that are difficult to negotiate and impossible to overcome.
16. I used to be a near omnivore. I've eaten goat's hooves and tongue and i *enjoyed* eating goat's brains (egh!!) as a kid. Now i'm on the road to veganism. (O chocolate, why must you have dairy in it?) (And while we are at it, why is there no good soy cheese?)
17. I worry at any putative (or imaginary) harm that may befall my babies. If i had one superpower, it would be to make it so all the kids in the world were fed, healthy, and happy.
19. I can listen to my parents' stories all day and all night. And i can argue with their politics all day and all night too. When i visit my parents i like to climb into the space between them and listen to stories of their childhood.
20. The level of marital discourse between me and A is infinitely infantile. I cannot imagine either of us living without the other. I can cry thinking about how much *he* would cry if something were to happen to me.
21. I seem to have incredible good fortune in landing awesome mothers-in-law.
22. I went through two or three paperbacks a day as a kid. I read de Sade, Joe Orton, and a lot of Martin Amis when i was thirteen. It was in hardback and my parents didn't investigate. Now, thoroughly grown up, I sometimes still read Enid Blytons.
23. I'm confused by why it is "thoroughfare" and not "through-fare" when clearly it refers to passing through and not to being thorough.
24. Are we there yet?
25. When i yell, "family conference" it usually involves everyone piling into bed to snuggle.
1. Culturally, I've always been something of an outsider/diasporan all my life. Even when i was an Indian living in India, i was of the Telegu diaspora in a Tamizh state.
2. I've been engaged twice as many times as i've been married. And i've been married more than once.
3. I used to be terrified of the paranormal. Then one night (which in my melodramatic, adolescent state i no doubt termed "a dark night of my soul") i faced my terrors down in the dark with a stray wolf for company, and some unexpected, nearly drunk college kids in the parking lot at the bottom of the hill.
4. Before anorexia was widely diagnosed in India, i was anorexic for three years out of a sense of exacerbated solidarity with the human condition in general and famine in Africa in particular. I started to put on weight again out of vanity. This is counter to most anorectic case histories and incredibly bathetic.
5. I don't think i really understand that i can control my monetary status. When i have it, i spend it; when i don't have it, i don't. I have been well to do and i have been fairly poor. I cannot imagine being wealthy.
6. My sister is my rock. We share a shorthand of memory and linguistics. And unconditional love.
7. My parents claim that they never find any but their own kids (that's me and my sister) cute, sweet, virtuous, etc. On the contrary, I haven't met a kid i didn't find fascinating.
8. I have memories of my dad helping my mom wax off her underarm hair, but my parents deny this. But i remember the horrible chemical smell.
9. My earliest recurrent dream since i was around three involves me running down a flight of stairs holding in my hand a spindle that grows as it rolls around in my hand. I'm not frightened by this dream, mostly repulsed. I began wondering recently given the phallic nature of the dream symbols if some adult male had exposed himself to me when i was a child.
10. I used to have really thick hair and a maid used to help me wash it twice a week. My husband thinks this is hilariously privileged.
11. My mother told me once that even if God himself told her so, she wouldn't believe that my dad could have an affair. I was so impressed by the trust she had in my dad. Until she added, "He really hates to spend money."
12. My father claims that the most beautiful women he has ever seen are his wife and daughters. He's not right, of course; but he's not fibbing about how he really believes it.
13. I want to be able to raise my kids to be happy, loving, confident people who will make a difference in the world.
14. When i was little, unsolicited soothsayers told me that (a) my son would be as beautiful as the young Lord Murugan [true] (b) that he would change the world. [i hope.] They didn't say anything about my daughter. But i know she's beautiful and hope she changes the world too.
15. I would be happy if my daughter chose to be lesbian. I think that heterosexual unions come with embedded hierarchical differences that are difficult to negotiate and impossible to overcome.
16. I used to be a near omnivore. I've eaten goat's hooves and tongue and i *enjoyed* eating goat's brains (egh!!) as a kid. Now i'm on the road to veganism. (O chocolate, why must you have dairy in it?) (And while we are at it, why is there no good soy cheese?)
17. I worry at any putative (or imaginary) harm that may befall my babies. If i had one superpower, it would be to make it so all the kids in the world were fed, healthy, and happy.
19. I can listen to my parents' stories all day and all night. And i can argue with their politics all day and all night too. When i visit my parents i like to climb into the space between them and listen to stories of their childhood.
20. The level of marital discourse between me and A is infinitely infantile. I cannot imagine either of us living without the other. I can cry thinking about how much *he* would cry if something were to happen to me.
21. I seem to have incredible good fortune in landing awesome mothers-in-law.
22. I went through two or three paperbacks a day as a kid. I read de Sade, Joe Orton, and a lot of Martin Amis when i was thirteen. It was in hardback and my parents didn't investigate. Now, thoroughly grown up, I sometimes still read Enid Blytons.
23. I'm confused by why it is "thoroughfare" and not "through-fare" when clearly it refers to passing through and not to being thorough.
24. Are we there yet?
25. When i yell, "family conference" it usually involves everyone piling into bed to snuggle.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Tweenager
Me to Li'l A while making his breakfast and he's puttering around starting the Suprabhatam, punching out the date on the calendar, and grumping around:
Li'l A super mopey from having been refused another snow-related stay-at-home day.
Hey, did you know that today's the day Mahatma Gandhi was shot and assassinated?
Li'l A super mopey from having been refused another snow-related stay-at-home day.
No, but yeah. That's exactly what i needed to hear to make my day all bright and cheery.
_
Thursday, January 15, 2009
A new name for an age-old job
I think we’ve found Baby A’s new nanny. Her name is Carol. Guess what our old nanny’s name was? Carol. Neat huh? And we didn’t even deign or design it that way.
Years and years ago when my sister and I were little kids and we lived in Vizag, my dad worked for a British company—I gather the pay wasn’t as much as it ought to have been (vide my parents), but because it was a socially prominent position the job came with a huge house on five acres, and a household of servants, including a butler and a cook. At some point the offices of the butler and the cook conflated into the same person—albeit still with differently accessorized personae. When we moved in, an aproned and hatted Raju would cook in the kitchen and wear a poly-silk vest to wait on us at the table as a butler.
But Raju had another persona too—a secret one that kept him absent while he got drunk off company liquor. Consequently he was fired. His family who’d lived in one of the outhouses on the property had to leave too. And I remember being sad about that because I used to play with his kids a fair bit when my mom was too busy to catch me.
I’ll say this here: My mother is mellower now. Kinder, more generous, more charitable, very humanitarian. Back then she was a fresh twenty-something who suddenly had to learn to socialize with the extremely wealthy and big name royalty and foreign visitors. In old-fashioned middle-class families like that of both my grandmothers’ the domestic help were addressed with relationship tags like “bai,” or “akka,” or “amma.” But details like that must have been difficult to remember in a new milieu where no one lived with their in laws and everyone seemed impossibly sophisticated. So my sister and I were taught to call the domestic help by name. “Baldly” as some of the older ones would complain to us when we were older.
But that week, I was still five, my sister still two, and my parents were interviewing other candidates for Raju’s job—it was openly just one slash job by now. And they liked this man whose name happened to be something rather long. Something like Panduranga or Pentalayya. And their final question to him was this: Would he be willing to have us call him Raju? Because, you understand, the kids are used to calling for Raju and your name is so long?
The new "Raju" took the job. But he was quite bitter. Whether because of the mandated name change or for more secret reasons, I don’t know. He taught me a couple of snide things to say to my parents when I was six (I remember telling them that money comes and goes at God’s will—a lesson we sure learned later if not right then) and tutored me to pretend that I was having a past-life memory (I had to pretend that my doll was a baby I had lost in a previous life—the scenario came from a Telugu movie). My parents breezed by both of those incidents without paying them any attention. I was relieved about the snide thing but quite crushed about the possession thing--I was kind of looking forward to seeing them shocked and scared. But I guess my line delivery and acting skills have always been consistent: abysmal.
Anyway… hopefully, we won’t have to deal with all of that with the new Carol. For one, her parents already had named her Carol. And for another, she's way more propertied than we are :).
___
Years and years ago when my sister and I were little kids and we lived in Vizag, my dad worked for a British company—I gather the pay wasn’t as much as it ought to have been (vide my parents), but because it was a socially prominent position the job came with a huge house on five acres, and a household of servants, including a butler and a cook. At some point the offices of the butler and the cook conflated into the same person—albeit still with differently accessorized personae. When we moved in, an aproned and hatted Raju would cook in the kitchen and wear a poly-silk vest to wait on us at the table as a butler.
But Raju had another persona too—a secret one that kept him absent while he got drunk off company liquor. Consequently he was fired. His family who’d lived in one of the outhouses on the property had to leave too. And I remember being sad about that because I used to play with his kids a fair bit when my mom was too busy to catch me.
I’ll say this here: My mother is mellower now. Kinder, more generous, more charitable, very humanitarian. Back then she was a fresh twenty-something who suddenly had to learn to socialize with the extremely wealthy and big name royalty and foreign visitors. In old-fashioned middle-class families like that of both my grandmothers’ the domestic help were addressed with relationship tags like “bai,” or “akka,” or “amma.” But details like that must have been difficult to remember in a new milieu where no one lived with their in laws and everyone seemed impossibly sophisticated. So my sister and I were taught to call the domestic help by name. “Baldly” as some of the older ones would complain to us when we were older.
But that week, I was still five, my sister still two, and my parents were interviewing other candidates for Raju’s job—it was openly just one slash job by now. And they liked this man whose name happened to be something rather long. Something like Panduranga or Pentalayya. And their final question to him was this: Would he be willing to have us call him Raju? Because, you understand, the kids are used to calling for Raju and your name is so long?
The new "Raju" took the job. But he was quite bitter. Whether because of the mandated name change or for more secret reasons, I don’t know. He taught me a couple of snide things to say to my parents when I was six (I remember telling them that money comes and goes at God’s will—a lesson we sure learned later if not right then) and tutored me to pretend that I was having a past-life memory (I had to pretend that my doll was a baby I had lost in a previous life—the scenario came from a Telugu movie). My parents breezed by both of those incidents without paying them any attention. I was relieved about the snide thing but quite crushed about the possession thing--I was kind of looking forward to seeing them shocked and scared. But I guess my line delivery and acting skills have always been consistent: abysmal.
Anyway… hopefully, we won’t have to deal with all of that with the new Carol. For one, her parents already had named her Carol. And for another, she's way more propertied than we are :).
___
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
HD Resolutions
Work with my new advisor towards the earliest completion of my dissertation and defense. And in the meantime write more and send out more submissions.
Take a multivitamin and eat an apple a day.
Meditate more, do yoga more.
Make the kids giggle more.
Stretch before running. Run longer distances.
Go outside more. Even when it’s cold outside.
Grow more plants—may be non tropical ones for a change.
Give more. Monthly instead of occasionally for starters.
Choose to cook new rather than tried dishes; feed more people.
Help Big A with the laundry.
Get more kids in the house. Hurry the adoptions; take in exchange students, something.
_
Take a multivitamin and eat an apple a day.
Meditate more, do yoga more.
Make the kids giggle more.
Stretch before running. Run longer distances.
Go outside more. Even when it’s cold outside.
Grow more plants—may be non tropical ones for a change.
Give more. Monthly instead of occasionally for starters.
Choose to cook new rather than tried dishes; feed more people.
Help Big A with the laundry.
Get more kids in the house. Hurry the adoptions; take in exchange students, something.
_
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Goodbye to all that
There's too much i've been holding on to from the past year. Too many fears, too many unhappinesses, too much imbalance, too much holding back.
And though we had a wonderful time at new year's road tripping and partying all day and all night (with me quaffing halfsies of champagne at lunchtime), i didn't get a chance to say goodbye to 2008.
We got home and it was same old Baby A daycare where she has been getting sick every week since we put her there, same old Li'l A school where he's in all the gifted programs but trying to drink Ensure instead of eating real food, same old me wondering where all the daytime goes and why i haven't published more.
Thankfully, being South Indian, i get another chance at a new start for 2009. Tomorrow is Pongal, the start of Thai, the most auspicious month in the Tamizh calendar. And today is Bhogi, the pre-Pongal bonfire of the the past year's dross. So i've made a metaphorical little bonfire of my fears and my regrets and let them go. I'll post my resolutions here tomorrow. But in the meantime, we're saying goodbye to daycare and have started interviewing nannies, we've made an appointment for the poor eater to get food counseling/therapy at the Children's Hospital and i'm going to write and submit more.
_
And though we had a wonderful time at new year's road tripping and partying all day and all night (with me quaffing halfsies of champagne at lunchtime), i didn't get a chance to say goodbye to 2008.
We got home and it was same old Baby A daycare where she has been getting sick every week since we put her there, same old Li'l A school where he's in all the gifted programs but trying to drink Ensure instead of eating real food, same old me wondering where all the daytime goes and why i haven't published more.
Thankfully, being South Indian, i get another chance at a new start for 2009. Tomorrow is Pongal, the start of Thai, the most auspicious month in the Tamizh calendar. And today is Bhogi, the pre-Pongal bonfire of the the past year's dross. So i've made a metaphorical little bonfire of my fears and my regrets and let them go. I'll post my resolutions here tomorrow. But in the meantime, we're saying goodbye to daycare and have started interviewing nannies, we've made an appointment for the poor eater to get food counseling/therapy at the Children's Hospital and i'm going to write and submit more.
_
Monday, January 12, 2009
Happy Stuff Day
(Offering me something wrapped in bathroom tissue as he exits his elementary school building.)
Li’l A:This is for you! It’s a present.
Me: (cautiously)
Oh, nice. What is it?
Li’l A: It’s a piece of ice! It has two ants and a worm frozen in it!
Me: Uhm. Really, you keep it, you’ll like it better.
Li’l A: You don’t want it?!? But why? Why don't you want it?
Anyone?
Anyone?
____
Li’l A:This is for you! It’s a present.
Me: (cautiously)
Oh, nice. What is it?
Li’l A: It’s a piece of ice! It has two ants and a worm frozen in it!
Me: Uhm. Really, you keep it, you’ll like it better.
Li’l A: You don’t want it?!? But why? Why don't you want it?
Anyone?
Anyone?
____
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Eye on London
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