Life is easy kya karein

Went to my Datun waali . She is not seen everyday under the bridge. She sits between the jalebi waala and the CD waala wearing a royal blue sari with a big red bindi and sindoor. She said she is there from six to nine thirty pm. Sells neem datun only at two rupees per long branch. I wonder how many people in Mumbai still use neem datun to brush their teeth. Asked her if her daughter-in-law cooks for her and she said she has four daughters only. She seemed to say that in a matter of fact way.No regrets about not having a son and no point to be proved with the daughters.They were her children and thats all.Elder daughter is married in her village. The younger three go to school. They also do wedding caterings. They serve food behind the counters wearing uniform and white gloves. Next time I attend a wedding and say at the food counter "kam daalna", I promise to look at their face and acknowledge the child in them. Devika s teacher s daughter has an interesting profession. She i...

Today when i start writing I am wondering how Mallishka RJ on red fm speak so well. Her Hindi and her accent is so shudh . Of course when she wants it to be. She is born and brought up Mumbai. I keep disliking Bambaiyya Hindi inspite of years in Mumbai. Then at a friend s house warming party, I met a lady who taught students Hindi and Urdu and accents and voice modulation. Sh e was from Delhi and i said oh that says it all. I asked her what made her shift to mumbai so recently. She said i moved because my daughter wanted to join movies. I almost choked on my Seven Up. Now you might think that i just drink Seven Up at parties. Let me tell you a few home truths- I hardly attend parties. I hate seven up. I love Thums Up. Thums Up is my all time favourite drink because it brings fresh childhood memories. Movies with jhaal Muri and Thums up. I could never eat those samosas. My children dont know non ac theatre kaisa hota hai. Like they dont know how to use an Indian toilet till we visited...

We met our neighbours at the temples . They are a couple with two teenage daughters. Seeing them I am scared of our future. I keep telling hubby all that we will have to deal with when our children grow up. Devika told them that she wants to live in a bunglow and showed them a picture of the Asian Paints exterior ad saying that was the house she wanted. One thing I have noticed that parents with only two daughters bond very well. I think these parents are genuinely understanding and calm. The roof of the Mahim church is flat and not sloping as churches usually have. Saw two men cleaning the terrace while I was waiting for the traffic lights to turn green. Green is my mother in law and my mother s favourite colour. A dash of mustard is always welcome. At the class I attended on saturday about how to teach your child at home . They said with children there is no quality time, there is only time. That is what you have to give them. We thought about the time when the baby was yet to be bor...

Started with Mom s call saying please give gur , ghee and atta to Brahmin as it is amavasya  new moon today. Shivaji park Kali mandir was so festive. More than hundred people attending the Arti. Our Panditji was on the stage in front of the Goddess with all forms of Arti- diya, kapur, dhoop, shankh, cloth, water and the fan. With the beat of the dhol, he performed the arti with all the various elements in his hand. For the Shanti Jol, the air was rendered with 'Aee Deekke'. PAnditji obliged all of us with holy water sprayed with a Gende ka phool. Devika and self had pushed our way to right near the puja. Subtle jostling with a few sorries did the trick. The younger Pandit was collecting all the coconuts in a big gunny bag. I must say that marriage has done wonders to him. He was glowing.Told me the new bride has gone to Gaon. The chairmans  aggression on the pujaris was visible. The crowd was part Bengali and part Maharashtrian. The Bengali ladies were actually in red and white...

In this most beautiful house resided my beautiful relatives with heart of gold.  The back of the house had a well and some place for tenants and a garage. Then there was a cow shed and rooms for cows and the Maali. Behind that was a huge kitchen garden. This had high boundary walls and a gate which was always locked. Once when the maali opened it to throw some garbage out I had seen a steam engine run train chugging along amidst wild flowers. Rest of the time I could hear the trains. On a couple of occassions my Gran had taken me by the local passenger train from Jharia to Dhanbad. The train was full of coal mine workers and vendors. It smelt of burnt coal.  I spent lots of my weekends and vacations in this house. There was only love, care , compassion and welcome on each and every one of my visits. I just loved the morning sun streaming into the house from all windows, porticos and aangan. I can still visualise Dad s Nana ji walking with Dhoop in his hands and chanting the Durga Chali...

The children have a busier schedule than the mommies.  A friend came over for dinner and she said something wonderful, "Remember, You chose it. " After that ,I could not complain about the children schools, the birthday parties, the food habits, my tiredneess, the money the schools charge,  the projects to be done for them, why mothers are not invited for a six year olds birthday parties, why children dont eat all that is cooked at home but choose what they fancy from the menu. I had an hour to kill before I could fetch Devika from her drama class and drop her to a birthday party . Pranaya and self were ambling in the bylanes of Khar. They are so beautiful and green. Saw a Jodha Akbar poster in a flat and figured it must be the director s office. Outside the gate , there were flowers on the pavement called Champa. The tree was inside the gate and the pavement was full of these white flowers. Nostalgia filled me up when I picked up one for Pranaya. My Dad s Nani ghar had the s...

How do writers write everyday? Can  Money make you  write everyday?  Valentine s day was a friends class at Shiamak. J and me danced together for one hour. That was a first in our lives.  I have been going for Shiamak Dawar dance classes since Pranaya turned three months. How after a child is born the parent starts relating all important dates with the child s age. It is one hour class twice a week. I opted for the weekend batch so J is with children when I go for the class. There has always been a fear to say I am learning to dance.When someone asks what dance am i learning, I always say that they make us excercise for half an hour and then teach a few steps. Actually we learn different styles Salsa, Rock n Roll, Hip Hop, Contemporary, Jazz, Afro Jazz, Bhangra and my ever favourite Bollywood. Par yeh bolne mein sharam aati hai. Like once J had visited a village in UP on work. When a friend asked about him I promptly said he has gone to Bulanshahar but will be staying at Delhi for the ...

I had been to the Kala Ghoda festival yesterday. Wahan ki deewaaron se kuch  chura ke laayee hum sab ke liye. Aayee chidiyan to maine yeh jaana ki mere kamre mein aasman bhi hai. Asif Shailah Oonchi imaraton se makaan mera ghir gaya, kuch log mere hisse ka suraj bhi kha gaye. Sach baat maan lijiye chehre pe dhool hai, Aaine pe ilzam lagana  fizool hai. Sochne se koi  raah milti nahi, chal diye hai toh raaste nikaalne lage.

There was an acute water shortage in Jharia during summers. Tankers of water were not available. All of us had municipal water connections but hardly any water. So we opened the connection where the municipal pipe joined urs home ones. This thing is called a chamber. We filled water from the chamber on the ground floor on the road and carried it up to our house on the first floor. Didn t have any plastic buckets only iron ones and for water  and to be used for drinking and cooking we had an aluminium bucket. Carrying water up a circular narrow staircase with no railing was quite a task. It was a red cemented staircase with white walls and latticed windows.  For a while we had employed a man called "Guttra" for this job. He used to bunk if he drank a lot of alcohol the previous night. It was a get together of the whole Fatehpur gully. My Gran used to sit down in a chair manning the pipe and the buckets. We all children, mother and Aunt used to fill water. The men of the househ...

Remember the Gujarati library we had near gujarati school in Jharia. Mom used to borrow books from there some times and I was allowed to accompany her to the library.There was a doctor s clinic on the ground floor. Patients filling up the portico of the old building.The library was on the first floor in one small room> I saw sunlight streaming in through cobwebbed windows and a man reading the Awaaz, our local Hindi daily newspaper. It has shut down since then and now i dont even know the names of the newspapers which are locally published in Dhanbad. There was hardly any order to the books or may be I didn t even know that books had to be kept in a particular way in the library. All cupboards were overflowing with books. There was a Hindi section too. School we had Hindi and sanskrit as second and third languages. I learnt to read gujarati when we travelled to Gujarat, Rajasthan, UP, MP by car for a tirth yatra. We used to sing bhajans in the car and Gran had carried a lot of  reli...

One day we friends in fifth standard decided we wanted to do our own Garba dance which was not taught by Tara masi and family.Our mothers were enrolled and then dance practises started in a lot of secrecy. Costumes were hired. It was a big thing because usually we all wore our Mom s sarees with one maroon blouse. My Mom always said Maroon color matches with everything. So we never put coloured bindis other than maroon. Tara masi had aggressive grand daughters who used to now teach us Garba. On the day we were to perform, some children backed out as they did not want to spoil relations with the grand old lady.Our enthusiasm took a dip. Some moms said if we have practised , we must perform. By this time the venue had shifted to their aangan which was called 'Tara Masi no fariyo.' Lot of strangers had started coming to watch the garba so we were no more dancing in the Fatehpur Galli. The grand daughters four of them were very angry. I still remember the anger in the second one ...

Maku Bhai s mom was Tara masi. She was in charge of having Garba in the gulli during navratri. The galli we lived in was called Fatehpur gulli. It started with an optician who sold the most expensive glasses in our town. i think the name was Time Vision. There were houses or makaans with in our lane which were atleast fifty sixty years old. Each house was joint to the next or seperated by a patli gully where people had their sewage and water pipe lines and threw their garbage down. All makaans had a shops on the ground floor and houses on the first and  second.  The lane had a Punjab hotel. A shop called Chudiyaan which sold all Shringar items like bindi, chudis clips sindoor etc. We were allowed to shop there only during Navratri and Diwali. It was one happenning shop of my childhood.  There was a Baniya called Virji Bhai and his son Natu bhai. They were my friend s Nana ji. Everyone had a khata running there. You paid only at end of the month.  Then a tailor Jagdish Bhai and a Gathiy...

Sense of achievement... wow! I was very excited last night about writing. I didn t sleep a wink for the  first half an hour because i wanted to write more. What will I write about and who will I offend if I write.  Dinner table conversation was all about blog. It was the latest 'it' word in my life. The husband was happy  that wife had a new creative outlet. So there were only two people in the world who had read it. The other was ofcourse me. "Good no spelling mistakes and grammatical errors," was his comment. I said" that too with the baby sleeping on my lap." I make a big issue of doing things well with my children around. Thank you Mrs Samuel from Mt Carmel, Dighwadih and Nirmala miss and Kuldeep miss. I remembered three of them and my Mom ofcourse. Thank you speeches mein yeh bolna jaroori hota hai and I really mean it. With Mom , thanks are never enough. Mom had to stand against the world to put me in a convent schoool which was around ten kilometres a...

I am really lucky. I cant believe it was going to be so easy. Main sochti thi bahut mushkil kaam hai sirf net savvy tech savvy log hi kar sakenge. I still have to figure out a few things here and there. We shall do that on our way. Actually a friend told me I should write all I do with my life and more so at home with  my children. They are angels no doubt about that. Par saare bacche angels hi to hote hai. Badon ka kuch nahi kaha jaa sakta hai.  Now there are two fears. First let me tell you i am maha excited about starting my writing not from Brooklyn par hamara bambai. No one calls it by that name any more. Alas!! I am also excited about the world{?? }reading it. But how will I tell people please mera blog padho.... little sidey naa. Also if they dont like will they still say bhhery gooood. I was reading an old Outlook and all writers had talked about their native place and where  they belong and how it influenced their lives. Nativity theory thi kya??? Relativity ke baare mein toh ...