Asides

 

In a dream

I took

(my husband)

 

(to)

your apartment

 

looking for

proof

of

(a different) life

 

all the pictures

you had

were of your brother

 

But you’d saved

(a colony of chittering mice

for) me

_

Order

The body is meek

weak

 

The winter is deep

deeper than water

 

Liquid with drink

are eyes, are ayes,

are yes

_

Fragment 1

Singing you who have lost it

tell me where you will find it

 

Inside his chest

the chirp of birds

inside his breath

 needles of air

_

Time was / Time is past

delight wheels like prayer

flinging night like doubt

on the parapet of dawn

our details are all spent

Nine

She knows that

the child and his friend

--another child--

read her words.

 

She hides small

messages

of hope

and love

 

Hardy as pebbles

as natural

shaking like leafy hands

on summer trees.

_

To the Sea

Water alive with the shuffle of crabs

my body rolled over by the waves

then cleaned to sea change

grotesque as rags,

familiar as reeds

coral laced up by eels

 

But brilliant showers

of triumph

of clarinet

Of abruptness--

steps missed in the dark.

Then the piano bares its teeth.

_

Dicta

Trees suffer

this year’s work

to fall to the ground

leaves curl and cup

like beggar palms

Even their fruit

rotates rotten

but the seed inside

clear, the future.

 

But really

you know

even balloons,

birth-day

party streamers

sometimes die

with the slow

delicate agony

of flowers

Mother

She never fails to mention

that the child is adopted.

Snows translucent as sleep.

 

Her secret about wanting to die

swims in her breath

a sly brutal eel,

 

reclines in her

motherhood

while

all she does

in the daytime

is wait for night.

 

Her bewildered pleasure

in the alchemy of these children

in these precise children

such inaccurate precis of her

of the signs of competence

she generates, grows

_

My Practice

Lights are

ecstatic explosions

lights

turn on with soft blinks

 

And rain so hard

it makes muddy

flesh wounds

in the earth

 

And us,

telling stories

impassionate as

furniture listings

 

on Craigslist.

Turning,

running

gone.

_

Morning

Sunrise is all dragon fire

skies, translucent breath,

and absent headed

 

searching for keys

to rooms held open.

The fresh heft of friends

 

in snow, after holiday.

And like all stories,

made of truth

 

mischief and boredom.

What does it make of me?

What does it mean to you?

_

Snowstorm

You gently lift the baby

slung across my chest,

take her from me,

with more tenderness for me

than our baby.

This is your way.

 

The other little one

curls warm under the arm

that I drape over him

like a wing stapled close

But really it is your breadth

that shelters us all. Lives.

 

Snow enslaves all

we walk with staves,

you look like someone

out of the Old Testament.

Your anger when it comes

is just, but still just anger.

 

Snow is inevitable,

wondrous in volume.

These words turn in me

cold as a key in the lock.

There’s no turning back now.

No. No taking them back.

_

 

Take

Love, certain parts of me

are almost yours. Started

mine, now given to you.

 

For your care and time

the sway of your stare

your plea, your pledge

your touch like breath

our every pause a womb

where love is born

 

Make

every breath

is so much wind-rinsed dust

every breath

begins a thought unsaid

 

till sweetness

turns speech in two-three tongues

till dreams

drop like calm climbing touch

 

on legs

galloping deep in the night

to legs

that blossom asleep in bed

_

‘Night

It takes her a moment

to figure things out:

the clock didn’t stop working;

it really is 3:52 in the morning.

 

When’s the last time you caught

the clock staring at 3:52?

Too early. Still night,

not yet morning. Be still night.

 

The rattling of the house

lulls her sleep to deep;

then capriciously,

wakes her up again.

 

She says: fuck that.

without anger.

Tastes the calm relish

of expecting nothing.

_

Often

Often there are strangers’ voices

speaking sounds not words

Often there are men in the house

their fists rising like voices

 

Nobody notices that I am gone

sleeping and eating like an animal

in the ditch curved protectively

around the house

 

And often, I have the power 

to make them disappear

simply, stealthily putting

my palms to my eyes, my ears.

__

End Ice

 

Rain makes

unanticipated patterns

on the windows

like broken glass.

And on the street

windshields

like cobwebby ice.

The old man inside

is laughing.

Or coughing.

__

Dust falls like words, whose

shadows, shadowy images

distend the dawn

You do not know how

our life is claimed

by my memories

that you cannot see

My small self crouches there

in a wet, shrunken 

world

Burning like litanies

to firedrakes

tending volcanoes

bridging basalt

Beyond the imagined fire

is hurt, sharp

as cold

My father told me stories

of courage and justice

that I remembered 

long after he forgot

Stories you never knew

now you can never color

in your own childhood

with brave human love

Volcano mouths close

easy as eyes, memory

makes of us a midden

_

Actually, intellect

Last night I dreamt I was at a party with Tom Stoppard. 

Um. Actually, I was married to him and he was alternately showing me off, arm-candy style, while also patronizing me in an arch, I-can-only-describe-it-as-British way. I, correspondingly, alternated between blase indifference and intense irritation leavened with the odd moments of begrudging astonishment at his always breathtaking wit.

At some point in our private conversation (albeit conducted in the presence of a highly interested audience), he told me that theater was sometimes "converse prose," and I woke up clutching that strange phrase like a talisman rubbed raw.

When I told Big A, he said, 

Well, you've always been good at crushing on elderly intellectuals.

I wonder how intellectual I look when my mouth is hanging open.

__

TO, FROM

Morning’s journey through the smoke of birds,

the flat sheets of faded sky, is mine alone

but my small companions also wake early

to be fed and bundled for the day

the scent, strength, and reach of their arms

tucked into my head. We move ahead.

 

And though I may seem to—

No. Do forget to chart or care

about them under the stern pace

of university windows and computer screens

like differently uniformed, shutter-eyed guards,

I captain this journey too, alone. Too alone.

 

But the mornings, getting to there--

It might as well be that it is

her dimpled fists that grasp the wheel 

his bejewelled eyes that watch the road.

their voices and breaths that map me

as I make my way. Make my way away.

_

NIGHT TRIPPING

Threads like

nerves like roads

like pathways

 

stars like

chinks like holes

like winks

 

children like

dolls like bodies

like souls

 

journeys like

hope like ends

like tension

 

Like like

click like love

like how

(About FB)

OVERHEARD (YSWC Day 2)

 

 

It’s different here she asserts

it’s cold in here he insists

 

have you eaten? (she)

I had to turn the heat on in the house today (he)

 

I’m going out of town this week (he)

See, I—(she)

 

I’m visiting my son in Cincinatti (h)

Yes, you said so this morning (s)

 

I like travelling (h)

I do too. (s) (I do too.)

 

Where is the-- (mumble)

You could look in the-- (something)

 

Don’t worry about it.

_

YSWC (Day One)

exciting

lightning

 

like flash

like forward

 

like brilliance

and burn.

 

torque

makes of torture

talk

like revolutions. 

_

Zizek describes the Israeli occupation as Kafkaesque

He misspells Saree Makdisi. But nevermind that, he says this: 

On Israel’s end, what goes on is the incessant slow work of taking the land from the Palestinians in the West Bank: the gradual strangling of the Palestinian economy, the parcelling of their land, the building of new settlements, the pressure on farmers to make them abandon their land—all supported by a Kafkaesque network of legal regulations.

I'm still puzzling out this sign-off statement which has the ambitious glaze of greatness about it: 

And, to avoid any kind of misunderstanding, taking all this into account in no way implies an “understanding” for inexcusable terrorist acts. On the contrary, it provides the only ground from which one can condemn the terrorist attacks without hypocrisy.

The "only" ground? Is he sure? There appears to be plenty of other "grounds" for condemnation.

_

Explaining 9/11 to a Muslim Child

Over at NYT's Motherlode parenting blog, regular Lisa Belkin turns the climacteric responsibility of explaining 9/11 to a Muslim child over to a Muslim mother bringing up her child as a Muslim. 

Belkin's well-intentioned side-step aside, the article itself is quite unsatisfactory. Moina Noor, the guest blogger, merely gives her child and her readers an unsatisfactory recitation, "bad guys attack, buildings collapse. Don’t worry, I assured him, we’ll get the bad guys so they won’t do it again." 

The child is eight, that he is only now curious about this phrase so rife in the public imagination, is indicative of the protective bubble that Noor considers necessary to Muslim parenting. That she describes it in such cartoonish terms gives him no respect. Or protection; it does not prepare the child for either playground taunts or religious school misinformation.

The hermeneutic guilt, media-assigned and Muslim-internalized and the resultant contrition, extraneous and so unnecessary,  is writ so large in the Muslim consciousness, and in Noor's, that she fails. She is so busy explaining her Muslim upbringing ("devout but weren’t necessarily interested in teaching their neighbors about Islam."), Defensively interpreting her Muslim faith, ("We are like you. Islam is peaceful."), Vigilantly establishing her motherhood ("how do I, as a parent, explain the slaughter of innocent people in the name of a religion that I am trying to pass on to my boy?"), that there is little time or space left to formulate any real argument. Yes, the article lacks value, but it is because American society has decided not to value its Muslim citizens to such a dimension that this woman is unable to speak directly to her projected readers or honestly with her child.

_

 

I think he's ready for his man-card

At begging us to let him change the baby’s diaper:

C’mon guys, I can do it,  I want to be a man!!

 

On hearing why I didn’t want to go to the pool:

Really? You have your period? But you’re not at all grumpy or anything.

_

Show us yer tits

Nope this is not about posting an FB profile picture of me that Li’l A took in which, what I took to be a long strand of hair was actually considerable cleavage. Nope.

 

It’s Baby A’s language. She needs someone better than her current giggly family to teach her that it’s just not okay to yell “TIT!”

 

Although to be fair, “tit” functions as a sort of suffix in her vocabulary right now.

Blantit = blanket (you can see how anyone could make this mistake.)

Naptit = napkin (it’s a bit of a listening comprehension fail here.)

Motit = monkey (and yes, it is pronounced “more tits.”)

Waltit = Walter, the protagonist of this book (how I knew she had a problem.)

 

__

In which the family’s ethnic affiliations are laid bare

A few weeks ago, just as we were getting used to the summery warmth, just as we were getting used to waking in the mornings knowing that we wouldn’t need our winter jackets, the days where we lay newly awakened with half smiles, exulting that perhaps we could pack winter jackets away, we were visited. By ants. Big, jet-black ones—the kind we used to call “bully ants” in the home country.

And while I’m prone to getting a bit mommy tiger when they get too close to chubby (yet such delicate) baby extremities, I nevertheless wanted to be somewhat Mother Earth about finding a non-chemical way of warding them off. And after a week in which I did nothing, Big A showed up with ant traps. And then gave us a lecture on the proper usage of said traps.

“Do not kill any more ants,” he said. Hmm, I was thinking—may be these traps have shrill, high-frequency beeps to send the ants as far as possible from where we live with kids who wear as few clothes on as possible. No.

“You can’t kill the ants, because the way this works is that one ant is tempted by the bait and becomes covered in it. Then he has to go back to the ant colony so that the other ants can get poisoned too. That’s how the colony dies off.”

Li’l A and I are shocked:

This doesn’t feel wrong to you? It’s like giving them small-pox blankets.

Yeah, dad—it’s a genocide.

_

QUARRELS

Eyebrows held like knitting needles
mouths braided with angusish
clouds bulbed like brains
drawn fleeced with thoughts
like water whipped by wind
rent like lightning
the ripped shelter of skies

so that in their rooms
children lie wakened
in fact, the children had been jumping in ther beds
in fact, the children slept throught the storm
in fact, the children had not yet been born

_

THE MEETING

Upon their faces
marks of worry
of weather
a simpering parsimony of words

In her face
the confidence of sexual power
(or only a mirage of
sexual power—

for there is too much
coy questioning about it
do you like me
my clothes, my hair?)

And this
still within
the formality of marriage,
the rude intimacy of it.

__

DROWNING

Drowning.
The logic of it,

its tranquility.
Sent to look

in the mirror
when

there’s no one there

To acknowledge

the water,
the water’s depth

to see it,
to die

Well, fancy seeing you here

Yes, I have some cheek showing up here after months and months and imagining i'm welcome.

But wait—we moved to a new house! I took up a new job! Li’l A had surgery! Baby A runs around talking up a storm! We’re in the mad midst of sudden Summer sociality! There’s too much fun to be had on Facebook—I just took a test to see which Hindu goddess I am! There’s been no time!

But I really want to come back here at the end of the day and blab blog, so here’s a start.

the stillness of
photos
their pause
then peace

his hair always
waves welcome
her walk is like laughter,
all over the place

See--even the sun
beams
as though
those two

are the sweet, buttery
heart,
where the universe
should start


_

Display only--not for consumption

I love to cook, and my favorite fantasy is about competing on Top Chef (I’m not at all that good; this is a fantasy). But I’ve never been successful at baking. I guess because baking is so precise, in measurements of ingredients and time, unlike cooking where I tweak and improvise to my heart’s content.

Still, there must be something of a pastry chef manqué inside me, because every time I change Baby A’s diaper, dusting her bottom with cornstarch makes me feel like I’m giving a cake a final dusting of powdered sugar and when I draw a precise line of diaper cream in her diaper, I feel as though I’m frosting some impossibly dainty patisserie.

_

KARMA

in this room lit only by far off planets
bleak as a poorly attended meeting
now imagine a poem, and nurture it
while downstairs the vendors cry

downstairs the baby cries and
downstairs the mother cries too
flies sibilate happiness
or staticky radio messages

my body is out on the street
bright as light bulbs, falling
inwards, charred on a log fire
an eternal series, persistent

as the flash of television's reality
chronicling tiny, enduring details
food for the gods though not fit for them
speckled skies, four kinds of dogfights

_

Wait, Wait--don't tell me

So i finally watched Waitress--Adrienne Shelley's posthumously released film about a pregnant, pie-baking waitress. I saw the previews when i was at the cinema to watch The Namesake and wanted to see it but never got around to it because no one would see it with me. I watched it by myself last night; it was free on HBO.

Like Juno--that other movie that seems to have been built around a prosthetic belly--i liked Waitress for the most part, and Keri Russell is radiant, while the guy who played her husband is suitably smarmy and disgusting. But there were too many out of character slips in the screenplay. The protagonist, for instance sneaks in hiply, ironic repartee that seems more in tune with her hip, ironic creator rather than herself. And though i'm a sucker for they-just-can't-help-themselves type passionate encounters, the disaffection and deceit engendered by *two* adulterous spouses seems rather heavy-handed.

And i won't tell you the end in case you've waited to see this film too. But i have to record my disaffection for two overly neat resolutions, such as (don't click if you'd rather not know) this and this, which tie the dangly ends of the film into a big, stylized bow.

Stay tuned. At this rate, i should have a Slumdog review in 2011.

ANNIVERSARY

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

_

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.

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:

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.

_

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 :).

___

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.

_

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.

_

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?

____

What seems to be the problem, Officer?

First thing today, I was face to face with a suspicious policeman with a flashlight in the freezing darkness. Also, hopping from foot to foot because I was still in the tee and chuddies I’d worn to bed. The saving grace: I only had the top half of the Dutch door open, so hopefully he didn’t see the superman logo on my undies--my superhero identity is safe.

A few minutes earlier, the security alarm had gone off and I hadn’t responded promptly enough because I thought it was just Big A letting himself in after work.

A few months earlier, Big A started grumbling about how installing a security system in a college town where crime is non-existent “is a waste of resources.” He still occasionally grumbles. But little A’s bedroom is on the floor below us and the baby’s room has a large window, and I’m paranoid.

And the policeman--he was so disappointed when I told him it was a false alarm. A few minutes earlier, he'd looked as eager as Li’l A at three, who would describe how he would “pachack” the bad guys as i put him to bed.*

____
* This was in Oxford, in the tiny little two-story flat the college had given the two of us. The sad, cold, cell-like, lonely flat that for some reason I just made myself really nostalgic about.

My daughter is a fighter not a lover

The first day, before i realized Baby A was sick, i was congratulating myself on having changed a squirmy baby most likely to push you away before you even got to the beginning of a satisfying hug into a champion snuggler. Because all she wanted to do that first day she was sick was collapse on my chest and sleep there like she hasn't done since she was a mewling infant a whole year ago.

And then the next day when Tylenol couldn't tamp down her fever of 105 and i rushed her to the Urgent Care Clinic, she still clung to me, but she was all, "I'll cut you, beyotch" to any nurse or doctor who even dared to look at her. And she fought them on everything. Not just intrusive stuff like droppers of medicine, or the temperature thing they stick in your ear, but everything. Even the stethoscope. I really never thought anyone would object to that. 

It took two nurses plus me to hold her down while another nurse... checked her ears. At the end of which, my daughter was still yelling curses in toddlerese and i was crying snottily, and the nurse said: Well, it's a good thing she's a fighter.

And i think i was crying not not just because my baby was sick and i had to hold her down while strangers did something she didn't want. It was also because my head is sick with the things i read and hear, and holding her scared, fighting body reminded me of all the terrible things that happen to babies and children and girls, because you can get three other people and hold them down.

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I thought i would dream about the dead bird

I didn't dream about the dead bird. 

But i kept on and on thinking about it. Because although i try not to believe in signs and portents, my attempts at rationality disappear when there's a very sick baby in the house. 

Long ago, before i had--or even thought about kids of my own--i knew a Tamizh teacher who told me that she got pregnant after/because a house sparrow built a nest inside her house. And a couple of years ago, i even blogged about how house sparrows were trying to nest in our home, but i didn't think about any connection until i was well and truly pregnant with Baby A. 

So now we are at the point where i have a very sick baby lying face down on my chest and a dead house sparrow lying on the window sill with its legs curling upwards pathetically. And i keep on returning to that equation and assuming the worst. Later on, my mother part coaxes, part bullies me past this image. 

My mom: Did Big A dispose of the bird?

Yes.

Oracle Mom: I think that means you've just rid yourself of any danger stalking Baby. 

I'll take it.

FTW Mom: Also, remember that your first house sparrow didn't actually nest or hatch in the house. It wanted to, you chased it away, and you still had a baby.

I love her. And i have to admire the way she can turn anything on its head with the best contemporary theorists.

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It's my party

I'm a sick puppy. No, really--i'm sick. And  i haven't been sick in what seems like years now, so this flu-like discomfort makes me want to cower with my head under the sheets and cry. But i can't because it's the weekend and the kids are home from school but Big A--my crucial partner parent-- is off working a late night shift. And my phone is dead so nobody knows or can come around with soup. Or hug the kids. Because my babies didn't get hugged very much as i spent a lot of time trying not to hold them and breathe my germs on them too much. 

But i think Baby A is sick anyway. I've put her to bed five times this evening and each time she's woken up having barfed on herself from coughing. So that's five times i've changed the sheets. Although, i gave up on giving her a bath after the second time and instead merely sponge her down, change her jammies, pat her all over with hand-sanitizer and call it clean. She's upstairs now coughing in her sleep and whimpering without waking up because she's frustrated that she can't fully fall asleep. That in itself is enough to make a person cry. 

Li'l A is in bed after what's got to be the lamest weekend ever--one where he tried to wait on me: Do you want Vicks? When your throat lozenges are gone JUST tell ME, I'LL get them for you! And played with "his baby" for hours on end while i mostly sat limp and dizzy on the floor. He also entertained the low appetite baby while i spoon-fed her mashed up fruit --in retrospect, i really wish we hadn't done that.

But all the baby barfing gave me a guilt-free pass to hold her all i want. And while i'm ready to cry from exhaustion, it also makes me laugh when i get to her room and sure enough, she's sitting there in barfbarfybarf--but when she sees me come in, turn on the lights, and pick her up: she's ready to party. 

I want my Amma too.

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TODAY

Li'l one

we're the first ones awake and we

walk to school in feathery snow

you glance up at me all twinkly eyes

and warm, knitted hat: "My feet have a beat

and now so do my teeth."

Baby

I scramble you some eggs and cheese

and sing you, "There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly"

I really wish i knew what you think that song is really about

because you bop along to it, yelling periodically,

with most approving enthusiasm: "Eat CAT!!"

Love

you drive yourself to the doctor

i've turned uncharacteristically quiet

so you run your palm over my hair, my shoulders

the knife is minutes away from you. But it's me you ask:

"Baby, are you alright?"

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He dreams of lesbians

I woke up extra early this morning to call college admin in England and intuiting my absence in our bed, Big A's subconscious threw up this dream:

For some undeterminable reason* i was mad at him so i invited all the lesbians i knew over for a huge party and served vegan tomato-spinach soup. So that when Big A turned up wanting to eat some Honey Bunches (HB being his favorite cereal) there were no bowls to be had! The lesbians had taken all the bowls! It made him feel very unloved! Waa!

This kept me giggling all day because i would keep flashing back to this woebegone look on his face when he was telling me that "but there were no bowls!" 

And i really don't want to get into the gritty analysis of what "Honey Bunches" and "bowls" imply in the context of the much feared "lesbians." And if you're thinking this has something to do with this--Just. Don't. Even go there.

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* And of course i resourcefully (and ever so usefully) asked him *what* he had done in his dream to make me so mad at him. Because i'm so much more rational these days and don't get mad at him anymore for stuff he did in *my* dreams. 

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Illusions. O Bummer.

My cousin N sent me the article titled, "Obamania: The factory of illusions," in an attempt to temper my Obama euphoria. It makes a fair enough request, although much of it (and this could simply be the the effect of translation) seemed unconvincingly and ploddingly argued and is frequently fallacious. The gist of the essay being that this recent election is not "the most relevant single event in 2 (sic) million years of human existence."

I take the view from my sometimes favorite philosopher, who incisively argues that 

[the] reason Obama's victory generated such enthusiasm is not only that, against all odds, it really happened: it demonstrated the possibility of such a  thing happening. The same goes for all great historical ruptures--think of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although we all knew about the rotten inefficiency of the Communist regimes, we didn't really believe that they would disintegrate--like Kissinger, we were all victims of cynical pragmatism. Obama's victory was clearly predictable for at least two weeks before the election, but it was still experienced as a surprise.

Full text from LRB here. Arguably, there is a translation lag in the latter quote as well, but it's one that is swept away by the sheer energetic conviction of SZ.

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I love my husband.

Just really, really, really love, love, love.

Because most people think i dote on our kids, i surprise myself when i admit that in a non Ayelet Waldman sense, i love him more than i love our kids even. In a fire, i'd, obv, grab the tots first because they're so small and helpless and sleep so soundly and Big A jolly well save his own butt and a few others besides. And yes, my kids are delicious and funny, and so squeezy as to seem boneless, and their eyes are the shiniest orbs in the universe and their laughter is the trippiest ever...

But the best days are the ones when Big A is off from work and the kids are off at (baby or elementary) school and we get to go back to bed and hang out and get brunch and nap some more and lie in bed dreaming of big plans and undertaking huge house projects before the monkeys return at three.

The only thing ruining our "naptimes" is our proclivity to make babies if we so much as look at each other. Knowing how much i dislike hormonal contraception, Big A is getting a vasectomy this week. The "little snip-snip" as our friends call it. And the best part: I didn't make any suggestions, throw out any hints. He came up with it calmly, lovingly, by himself. No talk of sacrifice, just how very much he loves me, how my happiness is the most important thing in his life.

We do make exceedingly cute babies though, and there's an irrational part of me that's sad that i will never be pregnant again. But hopefully, there will be more babies--when our adoption papers come through.

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Cached up

Where I’ve been in the last couple of months:

*Knocking on doors for the Obama campaign.

* Reading e-mails from the Obama campaign. (And consequently, developing a bit of a crush on David Plouffe.)

*Attending Obama Rallies.

*Hosting Presidential debate parties (okay just one, no--two).

*Donating money to the Obama campaign.

*Making phone calls for the Obama campaign.

*Facebooking for the Obama campaign.

*Giving my internet time to the Obama campaign. (This was different from donating my time. No one asked me to do this and it benefited no one. It mostly involved me refreshing fivethirtyeight.com, and fuming every time another Palin story broke.)

*Attending an election-night dinner. 

*Watching the actual results with an impromptu bunch.

* Celebrating the election victory.

* Watching several self-congratulatory episodes of Bill Maher.

*Giving more internet time and leaving comments on a bunch of blogs.

Read a bunch of books when the election sent me too close to the brink of insanity. But everything else just had to wait. Including stuff like writing to the admin secretary at the university to figure out remaining paperwork, and unpacking my clothes. We moved here in August? That’s right.

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THREE WEEKS TO GO

Showing eyes phosphorescent

in fear, muddied with

dread lie our

heavy heads

our throats

are thunderclouds

for fear breaks

off—

flakes. And this October

is shrill silence

as bats cringe

inches from the skin.

_

a new nickname

In the process of moving and packing I found of bunch of stuff I’d forgotten about. One of them is this greenish kuffiyeh that I‘d gotten a while ago and stopped wearing when kuffiyehs became less about supporting Palestine and more of a hipster badge. I’m wearing it now to keep the hair out of my eyes while I unpack our boxes and Big A likes to ask if it’s from my Baby Arafat line. Get it? Pretend it’s spelled with a “ph.” :)

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Sushila Atha

Sushila Atha, I think of you frequently. I wanted to name my daughter with your name. I would be thinking of you all the time if I had.

You’re not my atha, of course, you are my Amma’s. Her father’s only sister. Her mother has a sister named Sushila too, so I think I was nearly ten before I realized that mentions of you were different from conversations about Sushila Pinni.

You were the first girl in the family to attend college, but Amma was the first to graduate, a whole generation later. Because you were married before you could. Were married off. And then one day, Amma says, you returned to your parents’ house. Pregnant. Refused to return to your in-laws. Married women aren’t welcome at their birth houses without their husbands, you were told. You ran into the backyard, past the cows bellowing at the camphor flames, and jumped into the well. You were dead before they found a servant who could swim, who could save you. Amma says you were very beautiful. Hair past your knees. Accomplished. There are needlepoint pillowcases somewhere to prove it. Amma has never actually seen you either.

I’m sorry I wasn’t there. We could have gone to classes together, graduated, found jobs, brought our babies up together. (We’d do needlepoint or grow our hair only if we felt like it.) It’s not very difficult, they’ll let you bring your babies to class even, most of the time. They say your mother wanted to intervene but she was too afraid of her Gadadoss husband to do so. Gadadoss husbands still have that reputation. The Gadadoss women are, most of them, subversively feminist because of it.

Amma was horrified that I’d give my daughter your name. But it wasn’t to revisit your history upon her. It was the dream of reworking it, a chance to do your life differently. To let you roam the house raucously, gurgly, never expecting you to be demure. To let you be confident, independent. To keep you happy. To remember you always; you who are usually so secret, from tumbling further away from memory.


_

Baby Immunity

Baby A is fascinated by kids, so instead of looking for a nanny here in our new town, we found her a place in a great group care for children under three. She seems to like it there. There‘re lots more people to boss, plus--extra walks, new toys, cheerios anytime she feels like it--the perks are great. But after three days there, she came home on Wednesday with a runny nose and has been running a temperature with a hacking cough and full-blown cold since.

And because she’s been trailing a toxic river of snot, her brother and father are sick too. And their coughing has led to some quality kneeling time at the commode, so the boys are barf-brothers now.

Me? I’m hearty as a gundu-rayi (the proverbial grinding stone). Despite frequently rubbing noses with the original and subsequent rivers of snot. Big A says: Not every one can be lucky enough to grow up in the “third world.”

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Baby Talk 2: The too tasty

Talking about baby talk with T reminded me of this.

Li’l A used to eat a kichri that I used to make him (with rice, and lentils and garlic and peppercorns and chicken and veggies, almonds, and olive oil, pressure cooked and mashed) every day for lunch. When I left him with my mom in Bangalore while I finished up a few things in Oxford, my mother made him this kichri (under my urgent request because this was the only thing in the whole world that would meet all his nutritional needs). Ammama probably futzed around with my rather no-frills recipe a bit. Because after the first spoonful, Li’l A smacked his lips and told her: Ammama, too tasty! Too tasty!

My mother took this as endorsement of her superior cooking skills. Whereas in fact as she found out when he refused to eat any further, he meant it literally. It was too tasty--there were too many tastes in it.

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Baby talk 1: The boom-boom

Baby A is nine months old. She’s not talking yet, but there are plenty of words she seems to recognize. Her name for instance. And “no;” at which she’ll pause, acknowledge our stuffy parental opinion with an indulgent yet rebellious smile, and resume business. And (this is SO cute!) “pet,” upon which she’ll pet-pet-pet your hair, “dance” upon which she‘ll bop on her butt, and “clean” to which she‘ll use whatever‘s handy to wipe a nearby surface clean.

And she has words too. To be precise, she has a very versatile, “boom-boom.” I think she likes the way it feels in her mouth, so she uses it for everything. Even when she’s feeling lonely in the back seat of the car all by herself and goes boom-boom, waaah-waaah, boom-boom, wah-WAH! We’ll have to talk to her about that; it’s completely unconvincing as a heartrending cry for help. Boom-boom.

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The Veggie Update

I received far too much praise for the post I wrote about how my family and I were going to go vegan/ovo-lactarian vegetarians. Uhm… now I have to come back and divulge that it wasn’t the great and lasting success that I anticipated it would be when I wrote about it a week or so into the experiment. The Big and Li’l As have decamped to meat in many forms. Baby A enjoys the taste of all things including veggie burritos, earthworms, and garden dirt. As of today, I still ate cheese. As of last month, I still took one last sushi trip.

Lets detail. Cheese: We were temporarily living with my MIL, who is the sweetest and makes sure that there’s some form of vegetarian protein for me on the table come dinner time. It seems kinda mean to tell her that I don’t eat cheese. Also cheese, it‘s kinda nice; the soy version just doesn’t compare. Sushi: We were moving to what JOAT once called “Holy Middle Earth” which means not very many Sushi restaurants, very few good ones, and no sushi places that would deliver at all--so I had sushi before it got taken away from me. I’ve resisted sushi the last three or four times opportunity has presented itself though. Also, I eat chocolate, but unless it’s made from the eyeballs of wailing baby lambkins, don’t even talk to me about giving it up.

How the family did. Let’s just leave Baby A out of this. She’s into cannibalistically biting everyone lately and just wouldn’t understand about sparing other species. Big A was enthusiastic about the venture; Li’l A was always unhappy about it. But the food that I cooked just didn’t taste right after I removed meat from it. Commenter Amit suggested that meat could be replaced with TVP, but there weren’t too many fans of that at home. I also keep getting asked if I miss meat. I don’t. I used to, back when I used to give it up as a penance or vrath. But this time around, I have zero cravings and actually get a little cranky with all the recipe suggestions for fake meat and substitution.

So at the end of it we have one vegetarian who went vegan (except for cheese and milk chocolate), we have two gusty meaty eaters who tried vegetarianism and one baby who’s demonstrating a growing keenness for animal-based food. Our farm share veggies, which I was depending on to introduce us to an abundance of new veggie experiences are ‘orrible and mealy, but we live in a liberal college town where there are plenty of veggie and vegan choices on every menu.

Being vegan does make it a little difficult to go out for pizza or icecream as a family. And I’ve been opting out of such excursions because it feels weird, but it also feels weird to have them go without me. Much as Big A supports my decision, when I refuse a certain food, there is an unaware split-second, a flash of surprise and then resignation. I hate telling people that I’m vegan, because it sounds pious and as though I am going to sit at the table with them and disapprove of their food choices. So Big A is under strict instructions not to introduce me to anyone as a veggie. When we’re invited to dinner, I’d rather pick food that I am happy to eat without explanation.

I don’t see myself ever going back to animal products. My family eats less meat (esp. at home). It’s not what I’d call a revolutionary transformation, but a modification is blowing in the wind.

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Mahmoud Darwish 1942-2008

I didn't always agree with Darwish's philosophy and have sometimes quibbled about his craft. But his death is a too sudden loss. And i find myself recalling his charm, his insistence that conflict is absurd when all the possibilities for life--for love--exist.

From his 2002 poem A State of Siege: (You can hear Darwish read it here.)

[To a killer:] If you reflected upon the face
of the victim you slew, you would have remembered your mother in the room
full of gas. You would have freed yourself
of the bullet’s wisdom,
and changed your mind: ‘I will never find myself thus.’

[To another killer:] If you left the foetus thirty days
in its mother’s womb, things would have been different.
The occupation would be over and this suckling infant
would forget the time of the siege
and grow up a healthy child
reading at school, with one of your daughters
the ancient history of Asia.
They might even fall in love
and give birth to a daughter [she would be Jewish by birth].
What, then, have you done now?
Your daughter is now a widow
and your granddaughter an orphan.
What have you done with your scattered family?
And how have you slain three doves in one story?

...

_

Someone at CNN is snickering sophomoronically

CNN report:

Shanteau, 24, of Lilburn, Georgia, was diagnosed with testicular cancer June 19, a week before he left for the U.S. swim trials.

[down a few paragraphs]

….his girlfriend, Jeri Moss, who played the key role in discovering the cancer...

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Spam trek

Hot on the heels of having several of my online accounts (evite, netflix, gmail, blogger etc.,) hacked, I’m being hit with spam from every where. Even on Flickr.

Ever since I started as poetry editor at _i’m keeping it secret for now_, most of the trash in my trusty gmail spam folder is prefixed with the word “poetry.” Although there’s nothing particularly poetic about it.

You be the judge:

Alfonse Quinlan: For: poetry Britney Spears Shaves Head At Request Of Zombie Overlord
claiborn venkat? For: poetry Britney Spears To Be Adopted By African Child

Umm. Okay?

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Browser gender

I haven't been keeping up with the internets lately, so I don’t know if y'all have already done this test that guesses your gender (although it is expressed in sex rather than gender terms) based on your web browsing history.


Ha! Turns out that I’m well rounded and leap stereotypes at a single bound.

My result:
Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 50%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 50%

Sweet. Treats.

At the antique mall in front of a case of old toothpaste tubes.

Me to my MIL: I used to suck the toothpaste out of discarded tubes on my grandmother’s terrace roof.

MIL to me: Oh. So you wouldn’t eat your lunch (referring to my notorious eating habits), but you would eat toothpaste. Shakes her head at me despairingly.

Me: You don’t understand, my grandmother’s toothpaste was *minty*. My parents made us brush with Forhans--it came in an orange tube and was chalky and horrible. That's why i loved sucking on Colgate.

MIL: Good choice. Did you get all the flouride you wanted?

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Stalkin: I iz doin it

I pass slowly along the extreme side of the road staring hungrily at the house. Then I loop around the block and do it again. Some days I repeat this as many as four times. Sometimes to be discreet, I’ll split it up into two separate visits.

No, not Dave Chappelle’s house--him I’ve gotten used to seeing outside the coffee shop all day and all evening as he hangs with the other townies like a charming porrukki.

It’s the house itself I’m stalking. It won’t be ours until Aug 1. And clearly, I have trouble waiting.

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