The other day I noticed Kutty wearing a chemise beneath a thick school shirt beneath a pinafore and I bristled. Did she imagine she lived in Siberia, I asked. “History Miss says we should wear a slip beneath our shirt, Ma,” she explained to me. This history teacher surely lives in Victorian England.

“No more of this,” I said in my stubborn mule tone and the girl knew better than to argue with me. She’s terrified at the thought of me stomping down to her school and telling her teacher what I thought of her dress code.

I’ve actually hidden all her chemises so that she doesn’t wear them on the sly. The teacher will never know because in any case the uniform is as thick as a tree bark.

There’s worse.

Yesterday the husband noticed his dear daughter walking like a hippo in labor and demanded that I probe. Some investigation revealed that the girl has rashes on her thighs. I arrived at the cause in no time at all – she wears a pair of bloomers + tights + a thick uniform. All that sweat and lack of air is giving the poor thing rashes.

I was FURIOUS. Why is this pre-adolescent child made to wear tights considering it’s not part of her school uniform? That’s because her moronic PT teacher insists on it. “There are boys no, Ma? So Miss says we should wear tights,” Kutty reasoned with me.

So poor little virginal male minds uncorrupted by MTV, Sun Music and Maanaada Mayilaada will get corrupted by the sight of my baby’s modest polka-dot bloomers.

In that case, bloody PT teacher, make the boys wear blinkers or gorge their eyes out. I don’t care. Spare my child this quasi-purdah.

Today I put my foot down and insisted that Kutty will go without tights. “If your teacher scolds I will come over and talk to her,” I said firmly. The girl, smart IIM-A material that she is, wriggled out of the situation by taking the tights in her bag and promising to wear it only during PT.

I love them. They smell good, are easy to wash off and do not make tall claims about nourishing my hair, preventing hair fall or removing dandruff. Their sole assignment is to make my hair squeaky clean and that they do well. They come in cute little containers and what’s more – they are complimentary.

“Dabbu laedhu”. I’m sick of saying this to my kids, ‘Tuppperware’ friend, salary-advance-seeking maid, and just anybody who asks. I honestly mean it. With a huge home loan EMI gorging into our salaries, the husband and I seem to perennially fall short of funds these days.

This is when I look back at my parents with renewed awe. With a single modest monthly income and no inheritance on either side – apart from a few bronze urulis and silver lotas – they did a fantastic job of bringing us up. They built an independent house and educated and married off two daughters without borrowing a single pie.

That’s probably because back then we hardly spent anything. No pizzas, no b’day parties, no weekend getaways, nothing. Cinema meant movie tickets plus a packet of popcorn (most of which would be un-popped) shared by us sisters. We traveled second-class and stayed at relatives’ houses. Often these relatives were random people we barely knew otherwise but somehow they never minded. After all, we would similarly play host to them at our place.

For all this frugality, I don’t remember being unhappy at all. We were told horror stories of how our parents – in their younger days – had even lesser than what we did. No TV, no fan, no tube-light and no eating out, we were told. This made us immensely happy that we were born a good three decades later.

Two things we had unrestricted access to were food and books. Amma would ply us with a fantastic variety of dishes and fruits. Today, as a mother, I don’t seem to do a fraction of what she has done for us. We could visit the library any number of times and borrow any number of books. The budget for buying books was seemingly limitless.

Appa firmly believed we could operate with exactly two sets of clothes – one on us and one on the clothesline. For a good 15 years, apart from the Deepawali and birthday dresses, I was exclusively on hand-me-downs from my sister. This never upset me. In fact, I would often look desirously at her new clothes and look forward to inheriting them 3-4 years later. Once I hit mid-teens and grew taller than her, our lives became a little easier – we could pool our modest wardrobes, much to Amma’s chagrin.

Similarly, Appa was strictly against spending money on costume jewelry – what we call ‘pee porukku’. “You can save that money and invest in gold,” he would thunder at us if sis and I meandered towards Pondy Bazaar platform.

Today, I don’t buy any pee porukku either. For a different reason altogether – dabbu laedhu.

Generously inspired by this and this. Please don’t sue me for copyright.

To the daughter who thinks she’s old enough to handle her own hair:

No, at nine, you aren’t that old. C’mon, you aren’t even a teen yet! As your paati would’ve said, “molachchu moonu ela paayala”.

No, I will not let you chop off that beautiful waist-length hair. That stupid friend of yours went for a stupid bob cut – most unsuitable for Chennai climate – because her stupid mother is too lazy to maintain her child’s long hair.

Yes, I’m a horrible, stubborn, bulldozing mother. But I care for you, tresses included.

Yes, maybe I do view your hair as if it were my very own acreage of agricultural land. After all, I’ve ploughed it with almond oil, weeded out lice, massaged it, washed it meticulously and groomed it for the past nine years. You bloody well shall shut up and keep your bloody hands off it.

I’m sick of saying all this to you in nice, polite language. If you ever get to read my blog, please note that I’m actually capable of more meanness than what you currently accuse me of.

Lots of love (really)

Amma

That’s my mum’s favorite theory. She firmly believes that every man, given a chance, will let his eyes rove. And his hands – or at least his mind – would like to follow suit soon after. Aeka pathni vratham, she says, is a vratham after all – not at all the norm and a tough stance to maintain.

Amma insists that every man would like to have at least two wives – one to feed him, produce his progeny and tend to his parents, and one to cater to him at an intellectual level. The other requirements fall on the concurrent list.

The Usman Road jewel merchant and the vella-vaetti politician can afford two wives each – the former thanks to his financial strength (which can provide for very many sons and their respective harems) and the latter because he cares two hoots for what you and I think of his moral values. The rest of mankind gapes at these men, with a sneer on their face and grudging admiration at heart.

Now why did I start on this topic? Especially given that the dear husband is Sriramachandramurthy personified, if you discount some occasional harmless ogling.

Well, I thought my mum’s gnyan should be written somewhere for posterity, since she herself doesn’t blog. Maybe some naïve wife who happens to read this gem will decide to sue her philanderer husband instead of calling him a ‘gentleman’.

I honestly don’t know why I do this year in and year out. Every Janmashtami I crib and cringe over the bakshanam torture and then end up slaving it out in the kitchen, as I did yesterday.

At least earlier I had little choice – my MIL would have none of this Janmashtami-with-milk-and-fruits-alone business. But now I have the choice of stopping with a payasam and vadai but I go all out and make uppu seedai, vella seedai, adhirasam, mullu murukku, paal payasam, aval kesari, siguli and vadai. The only thing I skipped this year is sugiyan.

Anyway, here are the spoils

Adhirasam, paal payasam, siguli, vella seedai, mullu murukku and uppu seedai. The aval kesari and vadai were prepared later

And now the confessions. The uppu seedai and vadai exchanged characters. While the seedai turned out soft inside, the vadai was firm and sturdy all over. I gave up on the vadai but re-fried the seedai and reformed it into something edible. It got badly tanned in the process. Makes an awful sight but tastes good.

Appam has become so passé that I decided to make adhirasam instead this year. The first few rounds got screwed up thus

Early avatar of adhirasam

The purpose of posting this photo here is to remind me for posterity that I should be CAUTIOUS while making adhirasams – let it cook slowly, do not trouble it with the ladle too early, etc etc. And hopefully make just payasam and vadai for Janmashtami.

With Facebooking, Orkutting and What-not-ting, I’m suddenly getting in touch with a plethora of henna-haired, Talwalkars-shaped ophthalmologists, Montessori teachers, investment bankers and mid-level executives who were once my schoolmates.

For someone like me who sucks at networking, this is turning out to be one big bore. Now, if it’s just keying in a polite, two-line email I don’t mind it all. But these people insist on asking me for my number and actually calling up.

After the initial 4-5 lines (are you still alive? you married? kids? where on earth are you? do you still eat that stinky maahali kazhangu? etc) I clam up. The next 10 minutes on the phone simply drag, and I hate every nanosecond of it. I don’t want to talk about teachers who are now 70 plus if not already dead. I don’t want to know which idiot is working for which conglomerate. Why, I’ve become so fossilized that I’m not even bothered about who married whom.

These telecons often take more alarming routes – these ex-classmates actually suggest meetings. Maybe I should seriously think of shifting to sub-Saharan Africa.

Amidst boring course material (I’m doing an MA via distance education) I found something very interesting – on how children, especially girls, should not be discouraged to talk loudly.

The author says Nature has given girls a shrill and clear voice as a self-defence tool. By insisting that they talk softly, we’re essentially blunting that tool.

This point is valid even today. Though we don’t expect to get raped by cavemen in the deep jungle we’re hardly safe in schools, hospitals, pubs and even at home. So if a loud voice comes in handy, why not?

Come to think of it, talking loudly is not as big a sin as our mothers and teachers made it out to be – people are not made social outcasts for their decibel levels. Looks at the pluses: the husband wouldn’t dare argue with you in public; the bus conductor can hear you above the din; you have better chances of being heard in a meeting, extra-irritating ILs would be slightly scared of you… I could go on.

So after reading this I became orrey reformed and looked fondly at Kutty (who does have a rather loud voice) whenever she turned up her in-built volume control knob. Now it’s back to routine – I rudely call her mike-throat, thondaila loud-speaker, etc. There’s only so much noise I can put up with.

Thanks to the flu and the accompanying panic-demic, the kids are under house arrest for nearly a week and that means I am under kitchen-arrest.

To fill up my cup of joy, Kutty developed a nagging stomach pain and fever yesterday. I knew it was not The Fever but she did have to be taken to the doc. Thus began the drama.

We went to our family physician, who was watching TV, sprawled on a sofa in his living room (his flat houses his clinic as well). He lazily rose up on seeing us and said, “Give her a paracetamol and come back in the evening.” And watch my daughter writhe in pain till then?

I marched next to my kids’ pediatrician – one of the leading ones in the city who prescribes at least five strong, costly medicines for a cold and charges a hefty Rs. 350 per visit. Even if you happen to visit him three days in a row for the same cold. His clinic was akin to Central Station, with kids, mothers, the rare fathers and ayahs packed like sardines across the waiting room, garden and the road. Apparently, people are rushing kids down at the slightest hint of a cough, sneeze, burp and fart. “You may have to wait for 4-5 hours and finally go without seeing him. If you insist, wait, else go the hospital and a duty doctor will attend to you,” his assistant informed me in the tone of an answering machine.

The sentimental fool in me did not want to take the kid to the said hospital – the one that has reported Chennai’s sole swine flu death to date.

Finally we landed at another clinic, which again was jam-packed but not too much. This lady doc – an excellent one – happens to cater to the local slum at discounted rates, hence the crowd. There was this young woman whose 10-month-old baby was happily crawling on the platform outside the clinic and exploring various pieces of garbage. The woman was distributing her attention between her baby and mega-serial Thiruppavai in the ratio of 10:90. The baby peed and another patient begged the mother to pick her up. The mother picked her up, eyes carefully glued to the TV screen, removed her panties, swatted her baby’s bum dry with a rough towel (note use of towel) and put her back, bare-bum, on the platform, where the baby resumed chewing a Halls wrapper.

About 10 minutes later, Kutty gave a mild cough – more of a throat clearing exercise. The woman bounced out of her seat, pulled her baby into her arms, covered her nose with the afore-mentioned towel and, to a good measure, covered her face with her sari. Well, all the “Pandri kaaychalai” news bulletins have not gone waste.

After all the drama, Kutty’s stomach pain was diagnosed as mild spasms, and it subsided with half a Cyclopam.

There is a bright spot, however. My kids are playing a lot of indoor games together plus table-tennis on the dining table. Suddenly, they seem to be bridging their six-year age gap and developing a new camaraderie with each other for want of socializing with the local kids. Of course, it helps that both the 15-year-old and 9-year-old have the mental maturity of a 3-year-old.

What do you call a person who’s bored to tears with her job, which she has been at for the past 5 years, but won’t quit?

I call her Inba.

I’d always prided myself at doing whatever I loved and doing something only if I loved it. And last month I suddenly noticed that I’m quite bored with what I’m presently doing. What’s worse, I can’t seem to find anything that’ll match my present job in terms of nature of work, hours of work required, and pay.

*Grumble! Grumble!* *Sob! Sob!*