Dec 29th 2008

.. It has been 10 years since my father passed away, and so much has changed. I miss him even now, but I have good memories so I consider myself extremely lucky. At 17 I didn't think how it would be a year later or 10 years later. For a very long period of time I think I lived day by day without any aspirations. Now I look forward to the future, I wonder how my life will be next year, and the years after that. I wonder in which country will I grow old? Will I have my own home? How many kids will I have? Will I be healthy for the next 30-40 years?

I am looking forward to the coming year with much excitement. My husband and I are going to be parents for the first time. As a future parent I look at my own childhood and at the way my cousins were raised to get an idea what our parents did right or wrong. Some of the people I know are have more quirks than others. I want to be a good parent and have a good kid ( the lesser the quirks the better). I don't think there is something such as a perfect parent or a perfect kid. Everything is circumstantial and depends on fate. If my husband, our baby and I are lucky things will be good. I believe that everyone has their shares of problems in life, and the way the problems are dealt with show what a person really is.

I don't think it makes sense to think a great deal and plan extensively for something that is most likely out of our control. It is good to be prepared, but there is no point ever regretting any decision or choice that was made in the past. There is only so much that a person can do, regardless of whether the person is a parent or a child. My mother's voice echoes in my head.. "you can take the horse to the water, but you cannot drink the water for the horse".

I believe that my brother and I turned pretty good, we are not insensitive people. Other than hurting our mother's feelings occasionally we wouldn't have said anything nasty to anyone else. Coming from my family.. that says something :). We work hard, we have a good time, we are moderately religious. Last but not least we are doing everything in our capacities to ensure a good future for ourselves. I would say that my parents gave us good values and brought us up well. They never argued or fought in front of us. They didn't pamper us or tell us that we were the smartest kids in the world. They respected their elders and made sure we did too. I think my brother and I gave our parents a hard time when it came to our diets, but we are not skinny or obese people yet :). If I have to grade my folks on the way they raised me I would most likely give them an A+.

I think I have grown as a person, instead of mourning and thinking about the trip to the hospital and many other things that I used to, I can only admire both my parents, their efforts and the results of their efforts.

Shri Ram Jayam

Lakshmi was writing Shri Ram Jayam in her 6x8 cardboard bound book in which she had drawn vertical lines using a pencil and scale. She wrote Shri Ram jayam every morning. She could smell the Sambar and Rasam in the kitchen and the vendekai curry. After she had written the Shri Ram jayam she kept the book away in her Godrej with her Silk sarees.

"Kumar, Bharat has not yet said when he is coming this year." Lakshmi, complained to her second son.
"Hmmm", replied Kumar looking at his mother, " It is too late to call him now ma, in the evening we will make the ISD call ok."
"No hurry Kumar. I know the kids look forward to Bharat's coming every year, we can wait till Saturday and then talk.", said Lakshmi.
"Here have the paanagam prasadam", said Lakshmi as she offered Kumar a glass of the brown drink.

Lakshmi was extremely proud of herself right now, they would talk to Bharat, her fourth son who was in America on Saturday, by making the call on a weekend they would save money and she would get more time to convince him to come and stay for a longer time.

Kumar smiled at his mom, she was 65 years old and she wouldn't ever say that she missed her son or needed him. She had five sons and she tried to spend time with all of them, each of them them were special to her in a different way. Poor Bharat he was so far away. Kumar hoped that whatever Bharat was doing kept him very happy. He knew he couldn't be happy without talking to his mother at least once a week.

That summer Bharat and his family came for 6 weeks just as Lakshmi wanted. She had a great time coordinating activities for all her children. She believed she was the glue that held them together. They were good boys they didn't fight with each other. She had done a great job raising them. Lakshmi had motivated her boys to study.They had nothing but the education she had provided them. Now they each had their own house, car etc and all their children were going to english medium schools. She had sent only two of her sons to english medium schools.

After Bharat's trip she wrote in her diary that she had gifted him 1000Rs for his birthday on August 3rd. It was important to keep note of all expenses, it kept her mind alert.

A week before Bharat had come she had found a mistake in her Bank of India passbook. Lakshmi had called her brother Selvan, who worked at the bank, and told him there was a mistake on the entry made on May 3rd.
"Sister you are becoming old the bank cannot be wrong", said Selvan.
Lakshmi pushed her glasses up and scowled at him, she took her diary, check receipts and the passbook and explained to him. Selvan couldn't believe it, at 65 his sister had detected a mistake by the bank.
"Ok ok I will fix it ", he mumbled.

Five years later Lakshmi died in her sleep. Bharat flew in from America and the five brothers together performed her last rites. The following summer Bharat came again with his family and the brothers had a good summer break planned. Shortly after Bharat came they decided to open Lakshmi's Godrej and sort through some of her stuff.

The five men and their wives were surprised and teary eyed to find a complete shelf of diaries and little cardboard books. In the diaries Lakshmi had documented all her expenses for the last 20 years, the son's wedding expenses, money spent on buying sweets for her siblings, dakshina to the pundit. All the cardboard books had Shri Ram Jayam written in them, from end to end, on all pages but the outer cover of the book.

Seetha can cook !!

Seetha is a cosmopolitan Indian women. Through most of her life she has been compared with others. As a child she was compared with her cousins and asked to eat like them. In her critical school years she was compared with her classmates and asked to perform better than them. When it was time for her to get married, she had to look better than the other girls and find the best guy out there. After getting married she had to be better than all her sister-in-laws in running a house and cooking etc. When Seetha had a kid there was pressure to see if she was raising the kid right. At 25 Seetha was used to being faced by challenges and meeting them, she had become a fighter. Seetha wasn't a freak and she didn't go searching for challenges but the challenges kept coming her way..

Seetha and her husband had a group of friends, there were 12 of them totally, 6 couples. On more than three occasions Seetha noticed that her friends always wanted to have a potluck when they were invited to her house or her husband would cook. Seetha didn't mind really it was extremely convenient and it gave her time to take up other interesting activities like listening to music. But in three years she realized her friends had cooked at least once a year for everyone, her husband had cooked twice and she had pot-lucked twice. An alarm went off in her head, maybe they don't like my cooking she thought. How dare they, it was time to show them she was the best. The only way to do that was by having a surprise party and having the food ready. This would rule out any chance of her friends requesting for a potluck or a chance to eat out.

Seetha took her husband into the plan and told him to stay out of the kitchen. He could clean the house while she cooked. Seetha planned everything meticulously, there would be 8 dishes, Paneer mutter, Stuffed tomatoes, Kashmiri Aloo, Peas pulao, Panchvati Dal, Dahi Vada, Raita, Custard and fruit salad. Everyone's coming was doubtful initially, but by 2pm she had confirmation that they would all come. The plan was to meet up at 7pm and head out for dinner after that. Seetha started cooking at 3pm and was done by 5:30pm. The food was perfect. Everyone came and ate well and showered Seetha with compliments on the amazing food. Seetha had proved to her friends that she could cook. She slept well that night, waiting for a new challenge.

journey across the seven seas.. for what ?

People tend to travel for different reasons, some for entertainment, some for earning a living, some for health reasons. It is difficult to determine how much travel is too much travel, when can you know that you have moved too far away.

I traveled across seven seas to get education. Perhaps that was just an excuse and the main motivation was independence. Like thousands of others I settled into a comfortable lifestyle, good job, reasonable pay, loving husband and now a child too. At the end of the day I sometimes stop and think what I must do to go back. This is an extremely tough question for me to answer. The bitter truth is I am lazy and scared. Eight years ago I had no fear, because I had no where to go but up. Now I must think of my family, will the three of us survive a transition back across the seven seas? Can I work hard enough to have a lifestyle like the one I lead here now? My own car, dishwasher, washing machine, good health care, being the boss of my house !!, eating out at least twice a week, 24 hr Internet, working for 8 hours a day on a average and getting three weeks of paid vacation, 5 days of sick time, couple of vacations a year ( last year we went on 5 vacations).

Two of my colleagues made the move back and I know half a dozen others who did it too. If they could do it, so can we I think and I give myself confidence, hide the guilt and, buy myself some more time.