F is for Friends and Family

Family has been very important to me for a long time and has always taken priority over everything else. Needless to say, so have friends. I do not have 876554 friends on my FB profile but I have a few VERY good friends. In fact,  I can almost count them on my fingers. When I count my blessings,  I  would count my family and friends first. But I digress. This post is about something else.

When I was expecting Pickles, like all expectant moms, I had a plan. My in-laws were supposed to arrive at the end of the 8th month to have the baby shower and stay on until a week or so before the due date. My parents would arrive just as the in-laws would leave and then stay on for a couple of months. So, in any case, the plan was to have either set of parents around when the baby came. But Pickles, I guess, had other plans.

So, when I was somewhere in my 8th month of pregnancy and having a good time with friends, I thought I felt my amniotic fluid (water bag) leak and went to see my doctor at the hospital. Just to be safe, they admitted me and said I had to be on bedrest until the baby came. The baby, however, did not want me to be on bedrest for too long and arrived that very night!(more on that on another day). His arrival caught R and me totally off guard. We had not even decided on a name for him, not to mention, done any baby shopping for him at all. Since he was premature, he had to be in the NICU for a couple of weeks. I, on the other hand, was discharged the next day. I had no family around to help. I had a tiny baby in the NICU, who I had no clue what to do with. And I came back home from the hospital, minus the bump but without a baby. It goes without saying that I was terribly depressed.

I had no clue what I was going to do now. My parents couldn't travel immediately due to my dad's health and for reasons I can't remember, neither could my in-laws. In some sense, I was glad that Pickles was in the NICU, because had he been sent home, I would have freaked out because I had absolutely no idea how to take care of him.

When I came home, I had my friend, A, who did a small ritual to welcome me home, like my mum would have, had she been with me. I remember being so touched, that I held on to her and bawled my eyes out. She left after making sure I was ok and that I had food and after giving specific instructions to R about how to care for me. In the next few days, I went to A's place for several meals like she insisted. The only thing I kept doing was pumping breastmilk like I was advised to, every three hours, and promptly ferry it to the hospital, so that they could feed Pickles. It also helped that A lived closer to my hospital, so travelling back and forth was not so hard, between pumping sessions.

The next few days after that are like a crazy dream. Days just whizzed past with repeated daily visits to the NICU and trying to do some preparation to make  the home ready for the baby. It was at this point that my other friend P, who had her hands full with a 5-month old and another toddler, made sure she sent home-cooked meals for me. Not only that, she made sure she cooked nutritious food like she was given when she had just given birth. How she managed all this with two kids, is really beyond me. Even though I told her I was ok, she just kept sending food until the family arrived.

In between this, I had another friend, Sayesha, who went one step further. Because she lives far away from us, she decided she could not do much from being afar. She arrived with her little girl, Xena and stayed with us for a few days. She cooked meals for me, gave me moral support and also helped me shop for the gazillion things that needed to be bought for the baby. Since she had been through a similar ordeal, her being there provided a lot of comfort for me. At this point, I have to mention Xena, who was my personal stress buster. Having her around helped distract me from the yoyo of depression that I was going through.

Those few days were the hardest days of my life. Watching my little helpless baby in the NICU, dealing with the health issues that come with having a premature baby, dealing with the feelings of guilt that I was somehow responsible for his early arrival, all this was not easy. But I pulled through, thanks to my friends! Eventually, the in-laws arrived just on the day we were supposed to bring Pickles home. Later on, Sayesha even had a post-baby baby shower for me, because I had missed my baby shower. Do I have the greatest friends or what?!

I remember speaking to my mother everyday. She herself was feeling very depressed and helpless because she could not be there. And I would give her detailed accounts of what I ate and what I did etc. She always said "You are blessed to have friends like these. With them around, I'm sure you don't miss family at all." I am indeed blessed. I remember that when I came to Singapore, I used to think I'll never feel at home here. Now, I think, I feel at home and it is not because I'm used to the place. It is the people I met here, my friends, my family!

E is for Escapade

Would you believe me if I told you that I ran away from home when I was 15. I almost started to write out the whole story as it happened, when it occurred to me that I could make this more fun. I’ve made up some part of the story but most of it really happened. I will leave it to your imagination to figure what is fiction and what actually happened.

This story is about young girls from a small town in India. But our protagonists were anything but ‘small-town girls’. They were all of 15 years old. I spent a good deal of time thinking of a name for them; fearless (they were not!), fun adventurous (which they were) etc. but none of them did justice. In the end, I decided on ‘Jackdaws’. Like the birds,  they can easily be mistaken for normal crows but they are very different in being keenly inquisitive, high spirited and gregarious in nature. To be honest, the name is also inspired by Ken Follet’s book with the same name. In the book, the Jackdaws are an all female group of reniassance fighters. The girls I’m talking about had all the above characteristics and more. Let me first introduce you to the Jackdaws: I will just call them Soo, Shee, Vee and Mee.

Soo a.k.a the fearless one:

The most gutsy character of the group, she was almost fearless. She would stand up for her friends, whatever the cost. She was tall and pretty but on the flip side, a little daft as well.

Shee a.k.a the pretty one:

Very generous and kind hearted but because of which, she was super-gullible.

She was vain but also the prettiest of the lot. Born to a rich family, she had unlimited access to a lot of resources that the others didn’t.

Vee a.k.a the charming one:

Quite the charmer, she could talk her way through any situation. The story started thanks to her! Never one to follow rules, she was creative, fun-loving and a dreamer. She was the glue that held the pack together.

Mee a.k.a the smart one:

The most practical one in the group and the smart one as well. Always followed rules but the Jackdaws brought out the wild side of her. Extremely loyal and would always go the extra mile for friends.

The girls happened to meet in school. They got along like a house on fire and eventually got into a lot of trouble, both in and out of school. Soo and Shee grew up in the small town but Vee and Mee had both been brought up in the big city but had landed in the small town due to different circumstances. Now lets get to our story.

It all started when, due to family circumstances, Vee came to live with her aunt and uncle in the small town. Lets just call them the Evil Aunt K and Uncle Chot. Vee was very unhappy living with them. She hated the samll town and her aunt and uncle. She longed to go back to the city, to live with her parents again. Aunt K and Uncle Chot made life very difficult for Vee. But once she met the Jackdaws, life was bearable again. Aunt K and Uncle Chot did not approve of her friends and did all they could to stop her from seeing them often. Most of the adventures of the Jackdaws involved tricking and of course, making a fool of Aunt K and Uncle Chot.

One day, Uncle Chot told Vee that she to go to another city to visit her relatives. Vee suspected there was more to it than just ‘visiting’ although she did not know what. She suspected  that she was to be parceled off to another place but she didn’t want to leave her friends. When she voiced her dissent, he would have none of it. Her tickets had been booked and she would leave in the next two days. When Vee told the others, they were all heartbroken. She told them she didn’t want to go but she had no choice. They said their goodbyes and Vee told her friends not to come to the station to see her off, as Uncle Chot had warned her. He personally came to see her off to the bus stand, standing guard until the bus left.

Soo, Shee and Mee had decided they just had to say goodbye to their friend and see her one last time, no matter what. They stood hiding in the bus stand, and once the bus started, they started their bikes (I mean two-wheelers, not bicycles) and set off behind the bus. What followed was a very bollywood style bus-chase scene. Vee was so happy to see her friends but also sad that she was leaving them and waved goodbye. But the trio just kept following the bus. After about an hour, the bus stopped at the end of the town to pick up more passengers. The trio then went up to the bus and asked Vee to get off. Vee picked up her luggage and came down. By now, they were all in tears and in between hugs, they decided that Vee would just come back with them. And Vee did just that! And together, they just rode back to Shee’s place.

Shee’s home was a big place. She had a room to herself and could go in and out of the house without anyone finding out. So, quitely they all went there and plonked themselves on the giant bed in Shee’s room. Everyone was super happy and danced away for a while. Eventually, Soo and Mee had to go home. It was then that they began to realise the enormity of what they had just done. They had just helped their friend run away. The next morning, the relatives would call Uncle Chot and tell him that Vee was not on the bus. What now? Vee could hide here for a while but what after a few days. Uncle Chot would know they had smething to do with Vee’s disappearance and would come looking for her. They didn’t have a plan yet but they had to think of something. And fast!

To be continued.

Writing this post has inspired me to start a series called the ‘Escapades of the Jackdaws’. This is only part I of the story.

D is for Dreams

And I’m not talking about the REM kind but about the ones that we envision with our eyes wide open. I’m not exactly who you would call a ‘dreamer’. I like to think that I am a practical person, always only yearning for such things that I foresee can come true in the future. I tell myself that I shouldn’t be bound by such rules but that is who I am.

From a young age, I’d dreamt of becoming a doctor. I was always in awe of doctors and how they could actually know what is wrong with you just by listening to your heartbeat and listening to your symptoms. And they could also save lives. I was fascinated by science and particularly, medical science. I remember being very interested in Biology in school. At my plus 2 levels, I chose to major in Botany and Zoology. I was all the time prepping myself to do well in the Common Entrance Test, which is the entrance exam for medical and engineering schools in the place I grew up in. I did reasonably well too.

And then the inevitable happened. I found out about the fees. It was, what seemed to be to me then, a humongous amount, even for a merit seat . I had sleepless nights  just thinking about how my parents could ill afford my fees and how it would affect my sisters’ education after me, if I decided to go ahead. I knew that my parents would never say no, if  I wanted to enroll into medical school. And then I made a very silly but important decision. In my naivety, I didn’t tell them what I was thinking. I just said I don’t want to enroll into medical school any more. I said I just wanted to do my Bachelor’s in Biology. My mom was surprised. She coaxed me a little to try and consider engineering at least but I would have none of it. So finally, I went and enrolled into a college for a Bachelor’s degree in Microbiology. I remember dad had to pay my fees for the entire three years upfront, as the college was worried that someone with such high marks will enroll and then quit the moment they got admission into med/engineering college.

And just like that, I gave up my dream. Looking back, it was such a silly decision. I could have taken a loan that I could have paid back in due course. There are so many things that I could have done. I should have at least spoken to my parents about it. But I was scared that they wouldn’t let me ‘sacrifice’ and would make me go to medical school. But don’t let that make you feel sorry for me. I ended up in a good great place.

When I come to think about it, I am so happy I didn’t enroll into med school. If I had, I would never have met R. And I’m happy with my life now, just the way it is. I have a doctorate, just not the medical one. I ended up doing a PhD , which I think is pretty good too. I am now involved in understanding what else is happening in the human body and making drugs that can enable the doctors to cure illnesses. I like to think that I am still in my own small way contributing towards making the world a better place.

Then again, one is never too old to dream a new dream. When old dreams get lost, newer ones make their way into that space.

C is for Culinary skills

My earliest relationship with the kitchen was one of hate. When I was a kid, a yell from the kitchen meant an errand or a chore and I would turn and run in the other direction. My mom eventually figured it out that I hated it and would never ask me to do anything food-related, other than eating it. I was excused from the chopping and the cleaning and my sisters filled in nicely. Instead, I would get all the shopping lists. I still have memories of shopping for vegetables and groceries and coming back with a big bag hanging on the handlebar of my bicycle.

Eventually, I discovered my love of good food, eating it that is. And I remember asking a friend’s mom for the recipe of a tomato chutney that I had absolutely loved at their home. And I came back armed with the recipe. My mom wanted nothing to do with it. She said, if you want to eat it, you’ll have to cook it yourself. With too much pride at stake, I marched into the kitchen portraying a confidence that I didn’t really have (my earlier experiences in the kitchen had been limited to just boiling some water and cooking maggi for a quick snack). But I still managed to follow the instructions for the recipe. I know you’re expecting to hear about the disaster next, but it didn’t happen. The chutney actually turned out pretty well.  And it felt really good to eat something that I had made on my own, not to mention the generous compliments I got at dinner from my family. Now I know that it is really a fool-proof recipe for chutney, but then it really boosted my morale and thus began my journey of culinary adventures.

After that, I started cooking random dishes for dinner and sometimes, when I felt like it,  even a full course meal. I have to mention that my sisters loved it that I was cooking. It just meant that they would get to eat something unusual. So they were all supportive and actually would even help by chopping the vegetables and cleaning  up afterward. I would, of course, get all the credit if the dish turned out well. I remember the one thing that I cooked many a times was butter chicken. Today I can make awesome butter chicken evenif I say so myself. But it is only because my guniea pigs/sisters lapped up every single morsel of the million attempts I made before I perfected the recipe.

And then, I moved  to Singapore. Now I had to cook if I wanted to have a home-cooked meal. And what’s worse was that I had no help whatsoever. I had to start from scratch and actually even clean up after myself. But it was also an exciting time because it meant I could buy stuff for my very own kitchen. I started small. I remember I had one little wok in the beginning and if I was cooking two dishes, I had to cook one, transfer it to a serving bowl/plate and then cook the next one. Slowly, I started investing in my kitchen. But even with fewer utensils I had, my cooking has fed quite a few mouths. Friends used to drop by for a meal and happily agreed to be guinea pigs for any new experiment.

Singapore also exposed me to a variety of cuisines. Until then, my idea to world cuisine had been limited to  Indian-Chinese food and well, pizza! In Singapore, started my journey of experimenting with all kinds of new food and newer ingredients. I started getting addicted to a lot of cooking shows and trying out newer recipes. It was also around this time that I met a bunch of other foodies, Shub, Sayesha and Pizzadude. We’d catch up for a meal or two every week and try different restaurants, not to mention different cuisines. Although we miss Shub now (she  moved far away, breaking all our collective hearts), we still have our brunch/lunch/dinner meetings, wailing babies and jumping toddlers and all. Our potluck meals are great too. We also have cookathons (I just coined that!). We’re all super enthusiastic and I don’t know what is more fun, cooking together or eating the food later!

And did I mention, I love frequenting the kitchen-tools section in supermarkets. Thanks to the frequent visits and some weak moments of excessive splurging, I now have a decent set of kitchen tools, which are among my most precious belongings. And yes, more importantly, I am a decent cook now and I can put together a great full course meal. People I meet after many years are surprised when I invite them for a meal. But I guess, its not that difficult to figure. To cook good food, you must love to eat good food, which I most definintely do. And ultimately, cooking is all about getting the proportions right. I guess that is almost second nature to me because of all toiling for so many years in the lab.

I guess it all comes down to that one little incident that started me off on this amazing journey. I never thought I’d say this but thanks Ma, for saying no.

B is for Blah blah

And I neither mean the song nor the album. What I’m talking about is the good old gift of the gab, which I suppose we all have. It’s just a matter of the company we are with.

What inspired this post is a long chat with my bestie, who is miles away right now. We haven’t spoken to each other in ages but whenever we chat, we can pick  up right from where we had left off. We chat endlessly, giggling like a couple of school girls, laughing over silly memories and at each other, even hurling insults like no one else can or will dare to. After an hour-long conversation, when R asked me what we were chatting about, I didn’t have any specifics to give him.  I guess that is what is special. The fact is that we can go blah blah for hours on end but with no specific topic in mind.

I love my weekly chats with my mom, where I fill her in on the latest gossip in my life, complain about work or discuss anything under the sun and take notes for recipes that I want to try for the weekend. Of course, it is incomplete without some gyan and admonishment from ma for the mischievous things I admit to her.

I know that it is one of the special reasons why I love shopping with my girlfriends or have a meal with them. It is not so much the shopping or the food (well, it is that too) but what I love most is the conversations we have. It doesn’t have to be about anything important or specific even. Just that the tête-à-têtes don’t stop until we have to split for the day, and even after. Then again, isn’t that what determines whether you can be friends at all in the first place?

Of course, there is nothing like the good old-fashioned in-person, heart-to-heart, a stay-up-all-night blah-blah session. But with so many miles in between friends, a phone-call, a skype chat or a whatsapp chat is almost just as good.

I also have a strong bond with my first friends i.e. my sisters and cousins. I have not one two but 6 sisters who love me very fiercely. I have a different bond with each of them, one is my mentor, one is my role model, and one is my partner in crime in the family and so on…. you get the picture. So every time, depending on the issue at hand, I know which of them to call. I really have a support system that works overtime. Whether it is to bitch about R during a fight or to get a boost when I’m feeling low, I know it is there.

Speaking of R, he and I started off as very good friends first, who could talk endlessly about anything and everything. We started talking 16 years ago and we never stopped. We will grow old together and as long as the conversation flows, I know we’ll be ok.

Someone once told me, “ Food is the one thing that you enjoy at all stages in your life. It can make everything alright.” To that I say, "Food may not always do the trick but a pep talk from the appropriate person will right almost everything."

A is for Achievements

If you had asked me a few years ago, what my biggest achievement in life was, I would have said different things depending on the time.

In my school years, I would have said it is that I was the school topper. When I was older and in college, I would have still said something along those lines. You see, education was given top priority in my growing years. But maybe in college, I would have also said that I have the coolest friends circle and told you how much of a rebel I was and what I had done to show for it. 

Much later I would have told you that I was one of the best at my job. I would also probably tell you that I had bought a bike with my own money after much rebellion and it was the single biggest achievement of my life. I was incredibly proud of it.

Until last year, I would have said that I am proudest of my Phd. It was also something that I had worked the hardest for.

But all that changed last year when I had Pickles. Last year was the hardest year of my life. Having him was the single most important achievement, I don’t even know if I would call him that. He is more like the trophy I got after all the hardship. But I do know that having him was the hardest thing I have ever done and everything else I’d done in life simply pales in comparison. 

If I thought having him was hard, bringing him up seems even harder. Parenthood is hard. But it is also sweet. Like a good friend once told me, “It is about extreme happiness and extreme pain, all put together into one little package”.

Today, I think that if I can make a decent human being out of this little guy; then I’d consider it ‘the’ achievement of my life.

Lets start over

Hello, there!

It has been a long time. I had almost forgotten about the existence of this blog. I said almost! I wont blame you if you had too.

It has been almost two three years since I blogged here. In this long hiatus, among other things, I graduated with a Phd, found myself a real job and also made a little person. This little person (I suppose will eventually feature here) has pretty much taken over my life now.

Ever since some sanity has resurfaced, I have been thinking about blogging again. So, when some good friends (who, btw will also feature on the blog eventually) decided to do the April A-to-Z blogging challenge, I didn't need much persuasion to join right in. It's probably not a great time to be doing this, considering that with the new job, and baby, I have my hands full. Which is why it will be a challenge. But one post a day, everyday?! A bit much for someone who has been gone for so long, you say. True. But I'm hoping that since I have committed to it, I will finish it. Also, the little amount of discipline that it will need may help me focus on other projects eventually.

I'm nervous, but also very excited. Nervous because I have no clue how I will do this. And excited to be blogging again. Excited to read more blogposts too. Also, I am definitely not going to stick to a theme. So, you will find a lot of randomness coming this way.

For those of you, who are reading this, drop me a line when you can. It might just help to keep me going.

So,  *takes a deep breath* lets do this!