The Mommy Returns

Be afraid, be very afraid.

I've been practicing the eye-rolling and the exasperated sighing, only this time, the problem is likely to be slightly bigger than grimy masala bottles or recalcitrant maids.

I am being interrogated as to why, after a whole year of being married, I do not have anything substantial (i.e. a baby. or two, or three) to show for it.

My mother is strangely obsessed with babies. Strangely, I say, because people, she has had *five* of her own. Five. And like that's not enough? She now has four grandchildren. It seems that no matter how many babies there are in her immediate vicinity, there is always room for more*.

And whose job is it to fill up the empty-baby spaces? You guessed it! Yours truly.

Now, Yours Truly is rather partial to the creatures; she loves their little pudgy hands, their toothless grins and their small wiggly-ness, but has seen enough of them to know that babies are just little bundles of TNT, camouflaged in cuteness.

So while she might someday be persuaded to see her present life collapse like a house of cards, (only to be picked up, chewed, and drooled over), today is not that day.

And the next three years don't look like it either.


*You could stick my mother in a room full of babies and over the gurgling and crying and cooing, you would still hear her saying, "Send in the babies! We need more babies!!"

Because I am *nothing*, if not courteous.

Dear Spambots*,

I wouldn't know what tramadol, diet(?!) phentermine or carisoprodol were if they jumped up collectively and bit me. If they did, I would probably just wonder, "What are these things that have jumped up out of nowhere and why are they biting me?".

Yes, I'm slow that way.

But one thing I do know, is that I have never, at any point in my life, ever worried about my, err...staying power.

So you can stop offering me all the goddamn Viagra.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Who Has Never Had to Worry About ED.


*If there's anybody out there who knows how to block/stop/destroy the damn things, help me! Please?

God is a Surly Cab Driver

Yesterday, after frantically running around in circles for a cab at Churchgate station, I find one, get into it and a little out of breath I ask the cab-driver:

Me: “Bhaiyya, aap Horniman Circle jaante ho?
Cab Driver: (in slow, deep, deadpan voice) “Main sab kuch jaanta hoon.”


There go my chances of ever getting into The Great Big Taxi in the Sky.

Blog-people, meet Henry, Henry, Blog-people.

Darlings! We’re back!

And oh it feels good to be back. A little strange also, because now we’re using a new computer (Henry), which is actually not new at all (and we mean that in the best way Henry, you know we always had a soft corner for the older ones), but it is much better than nothing.

Yes, that is it, my precious fluffy kittens. I was away because I was temporarily technology deprived - having quit old job and therefore, its accompanying spiffy laptop - and being back in employment limbo once again.

Somehow changing systems disorients me like nothing else - even if it involves moving higher up the technology pyramid.

I remember how strange it was to switch from a PC to Mac. My right hand index finger began to suffer from an identity crisis, all the keyboard shortcuts had to be re-wired in my brain and I had to get used to the CD drive as part of the monitor. That was the hardest part. I felt so guilty every time I inserted a CD into the drive, like I was violating my monitor in some horrible, unspeakable manner.

But then I got used to it and it got used to me and we got along well for almost two years. Until terminal wanderlust reared its ugly head and I was once again, forced to get used to a new computer – this time, a laptop.

The only thing I disliked about the laptop was the touch pad. I hated the unpredictability of it, the easiness of it. The darn thing worked no matter where you touched it, and even when you didn’t mean to. You know? Like it had no boundaries. You could never get comfortable with a touch pad; make friends with it, because it was always too aloof. There was just no sense of discovery, and…settling in and you know, familiarity. And it was just unnatural to have to use digits from both hands to click and drag things from one folder to another.

But I did love the whole oyster-shell-y-ness of it. The way it closed up and kept your secrets until the time you felt like raising its lid again. And of course, the fact that it took up so little space on our tiny dining table (which we have never, till date actually dined at) on which we keep everything else that that we don’t know where to keep.

So (sigh) I fell in love with laptop too and when it went away, I was beset by inexplicable urges to break my chooris against the nearest wall.

But now I have new-old system (Henry) and I’m happy again! Henry, blog-people, has a CPU! Isn’t that so adorably quaint? And a floppy drive (floppies! Do you have fond memories of floppies? I do)! And a keyboard that goes clickety-clack when I type and has, for some reason which I cannot fathom, a bright red ‘i’ key*. The mouse is huge compared to my last three mice (this sentence is beginning to sound inexplicably dirty to me) and my hand suddenly seems small in comparison.

I know now that the shift key on the right of the keyboard is on the shy side; she takes time to open up. Mr. Mouse is thankfully, not moody at all (unlike the last Mr. Mouse who needed to be picked up and shaken every few minutes to get the cursor to move) and I have dropped ceremonial cookie crumbs on the last row of keys.

This could be the beginning of beautiful friendship.


*A hint, you think? Does it mean I need to start talking about myself more? Is that possible? I think not.