Hydraulic Force

"I was unable to transfer all my emotions into a verbal form, I guess thats why I cried", said I.

I was talking to a guy friend of mine, soon after I had patched up with my hubby after a week long fight. He asked me how I patched up, and my answer was - I don't know, I was confronting him & then I started crying. Maybe, my verbal skills were unable to match the rate at which the emotions were taking a ride. And, I burst into tears out of frustration for not being able to convert all these emotions into words!

The other day, someone else close to me had mentioned the same thing. They too patched up after she started crying. Now, thanks to 'Times of India', I know why. If you want to read the complete article, check the 'Banglore Times' dated Sept 23rd, 2009. They have an article titled, 'Crying is good for you'.

As per this article, crying is a highly evolved behavior. Tears give clues and reliable information about submission, needs & social attachments between one another! They also say that the 'efficiency' of crying depends on who we are with and the place we are at. That is, crying in office is not efficient .... Duh???!?!?!?

Fine! At least, the next time I cry amidst an argument & my husband gets irritated, I have an answer ... an actual answer that he would understand. But, my all time favorite definition for this process is ......

Tears : The hydraulic force by which masculine will-power is defeated by feminine water power.

Psst! Yes! this is how I get away with all the arguments. Otherwise, I don't see a reason why my marriage should have lasted this long!

Meeleparambil Aanveedu

This is the name of a Malayalam movie. The movie revolves around the characters in the house name Meeleparambhu. This house is famous because, this house has only men in it. The only female residing in that house is the mother.

Those were my brothers dreams too. Live in a house with just male relatives & mom. Unfortunately, Providence had something else in store for him! It all started on that unfortunate Friday night. He was eagerly waiting outside the room, waiting for his first recruit! But his mother thoroughly disappointed him. She gave him a baby girl inspite of his repeated requests for a boy. Starting from that unfortunate Friday, He was stuck with girls!

After that, he had his hopes pinned on his aunts, they were all able to meet his expectations, but the 'generation gap' moved in with them. They were all too young to be in his 'gang'. Moreover, he was able to meet them only during vacations. And again, since he was much older than us, he always had classes or extra-classes or entrance preparations or something looming over his head. So, whatever hopes he had on spending time with his boy cousins were also flushed down the drain.

We grew older & we moved to our home at Kochi(or Ernakulam or Cochin), there again he started nurturing his childhood dream now that it was my turn for entrance examinations.He was pinning his hopes on my clearing the exam & going away from home to study some place outside Kochi. After which, he could bring home all his guy cousins and christen our home as 'Meeleparambil Aanveedu'. Poor guy, little did he realize then there were engineering colleges in Kochi. Now, not only did he have to live with his mom & sis, BUT, his sister brought more sisters into the house - her friends. Can you hear the flushing sound in the background? I very well can!

Then he escaped to US of A. There he tried hard to get out of the girl circle. But, there too he was landed with more sisters - his friends' wives. And, being the big brother - he had to listen to all their woes too. Then came his turn to get married. Oh! yes! One more girl.

Finally, he is back in India. Luckily now the girl count is under control, but the girls aren't. God only knows why he has been branded with a piece of each - wife, mom, daughter, sis & niece. I can see the CG changing the name 'Meeleparambil Aanveedu' into 'Puthushery Pennvendu'.

local hartals

Like all Thursdays, last Thursday I called in a strike at home. Yeah, being a mallu coming from a leftist background, I have the liberty to call in strikes or hartals every now & then. And mind you, like the strikes in Kerala, I too go on strike every other day. I was beginning to get the feeling that, something was terribly wrong with me - I am always in the fighting mode.

During one of these 'hartal' days, I had visited my friend's place before going to office. The maid opened the door & let me in. While I was waiting for my friend in their living room, I could hear an extremely familiar conversation. It got me worried, did someone overhear me grumbling? Were they trying to mock me? Quite contrary to my character, I decided to wait for a couple of seconds, before I respond. And just then, I saw my friend storming out of her bedroom, took a pause, turned back to say the finishing line & walked out of the house with me.

Thats when it all came to me. The scenes & the dialogs were familiar to me, it just happened in my house just a couple of minutes back.

Yesterday, I was visiting another friend of mine and I just missed the familiar scene. The house was calm, calm like the ones before the storm. And, they were just holding it back, because both our kids were playing in the same room.

I have to say, I was a little relieved to witness these 'private' moments. I am not completely different from other couples. Of course, the degree of bitterness varies, but am happy that deviation from the normal has reduced. The issues are all similar - women say something & men translate them into something completely different.

One heck of an Onam celebration!!!!

Like all mallus stationed outside Kerala, we - all mallus from our apartment - too decided to celebrate it on a weekend instead of the actual Thiruvonam day! And, as any Onam, our celebrations too had to have couple of basic items - one traditional dance form, some songs to go with the theme & a skit/drama - if not more.

A couple of Mommy friends & myself had signed up for these programs. It all started as a fun thing. But the day before the celebrations, all of us went into a panic attack. The last time I felt the same was before my university exams! Two nights before the exams, all of us would be frantically ringing each other to check out what all are the important points to be revised, what all can be completely skipped, which all modules have been completed by who all, etc etc. This time the phone calls included - did you buy the bangles for the dance, what kind of necklace should we be wearing, who will buy the flowers, are all your costumes ready.

Amongst this confusion, someone mentioned their teenage story on stage fright - her mouth dried up, she went completely blank & fainted. Since none of us had been on stage or had felt the pressure of being judged for a long time, we were all having second thoughts - were we right in signing up? The practise sessions were fine, but getting on stage? That too, when the audience were friends & family... oh! ooo! not a good thought. And now its too late to drop out!

In any case, everything went fine. Though we could feel our mouth going dry, nobody fainted. Just like in exams, after the first five minutes of 'stiffness', all the answers came in automatically from somewhere deep within. In this case, we started dancing a few seconds into the music :) Of course, there were glitches. We have no clue on how the audience felt about the program, but we definitely felt happy after the performance! In fact, we are all looking forward to the next event to get on stage again :)

the listner in me ....

Yesterday, one of my friends left her 3year old son at my place with my daughter. The stay was not intentional. He saw a completely new set of toys & decided to explore them! It was only after 10 mins that the child realized that his mom was serious about leaving him & going out to finish her errands. And the moment he realized that, he started crying. Being used my daughters screeching wails, I didn't notice any difference in the beginning. It took a couple of mins to ring the bell - He was crying. Then I hugged him and tried my best in explaining that his mom will be back soon & that I'll try to call her & ask her to rush back.

All this while, my daughter was watching me. When he stopped crying, she took him to her room & started playing. After a while, he enquired about his mom again. And, this time, my daughter handled it wonderfully. I have to say, her approach was more systematic. First she explained, where his mother is currently(gone out for doing some stuff). Then she explained, why she had to go out(like, lets say, she has to go out to get cookies). Next came the consequences IF his mom doesn't do whatever shes doing rite now(like, if she doesn't buy cookies he won't be able to have). And, to my surprise, he didn't ask for his mom after this real long explanation.

I don't know, if its the mom in me speaking, but .... I was thoroughly impressed. She applied the same approach for helping him out with new toys - how the toy works, what you need to do to make it work, etc.

Epilogue ...
They played happily for almost an hour. After that, their interests in each other & the toys died out and were on the path to become normal children(ie. fighting/blaming mode). Luckily, his mom reached before an actual fight started out :)

Special Thanks to J.Ammai & Kutti's Achan who takes time in explaining things to my daughter :)

into the loo ....

When I was being introduced to the 'real' my hubby, by his family, one thing caught my attention. That was his dad's 'handout' on his routines -

5 songs in the bathroom = morning rituals complete
another 6 songs = bathing complete
another 4 songs = hes all set to come out

Until I married, there weren't any guy living in the house. In my maternal home, the men of the house - my dad & my bro - who were working &/or studying outside Kerala, were mere visitors. So, I could never comprehend the 'need' to be in the bathroom for this long.

I thought, may be, my hubby is different ... after all he was brave enough to marry me! Now, that I have a larger circle of married friends, I get the same response from all the lady friends. Their guy spends more time in the loo than anywhere else!

Maybe, its a guy thing - may be they feel secure there?!?!? Like the algebraic formulas I was asked to accept, I am to accept these new formulas too. I remember, one of my aunts complaining about her son taking the newspaper to the loo. But, now as technology has progressed, they take PSPs & laptops to the loo. Oh! yes! whenever my hubby configures a wireless router, loo is the first place he checks for connectivity!!