A feature on me in The Hindu (Metroplus Weekend)

I'm in The Hindu! 

Here are the links to the entire feature:

One
Two

Also, because this feature gives an incorrect impression about me, please read My Disclaimer on this Feature.

Winter mornings

I love winter mornings in Bangalore!

They are so bright, so happy.   An unbelievable amount of sunshine pours  in through the windows, and yet there is a definite nip in the air.  Look outdoors and the world seems to be painted with such clear, firm strokes - no fuzzy outlines anywhere, like a photograph taken with absolutely clear focus.  Even my brain shifts into clear, sharp mode - and there is no place for lethargy.

I feel like running outdoors and feeling the sunshine in my fingers, and in my hair.  Every day is perfect for a picnic.

It's got to be one of the best things about Bangalore - these wonderful winter mornings.  

Puttachi rediscovers the moon

Puttachi goes to bed at 7 pm every day and sleeps until 7 am the next morning.  If we have plans for the evening, I make her take a nap, so that she'll be awake and fresh all evening.  But that doesn't happen too often.  So, for the past six months or so, she had seen the night sky very, very rarely.   She slept when it was light and got up when it was light.

So, now that it gets dark much before 7, she has rediscovered the moon.  Yesterday, she stood at the window just gazing at the full moon, and talking to it.  She refused to come to bed.  She told me that she never knew the moon was so beautiful, and that she'd made friends with it, and it had promised to talk to her everyday.

Today, I allowed her to stay up beyond her bedtime and gaze at the moon, since tomorrow is anyway a holiday.  She chatted to the moon for a while, and then came running to me and S.  "Let's all hug and cuddle and stand at the window and watch the moon together!"  She pulled us both to the window, S had to pick her up and we had to stand in a hug and watch the moon for some time.  She was so utterly delighted.

That emotion moved me so much.  I myself love looking at the moon, so I understand her being besotted with it.  But the desire to share that moment and joy with her loved ones - how wonderful is that!  And how wonderful is the moon that can evoke these kinds of emotions in little beings!

Watching my story come to life.

The award ceremony was great!  I received the certificate and cheque, but the highlight of the programme, for me at least, was the stunning show that the kids from the Parikrma foundation put up.

They started by announcing, "We are going to perform The Story Lady written by Shruthi Rao akka." :)

They were wonderful.  Such happy, bright, enthusiastic children!  It was a fun and imaginative take on my story.  They were true to the story, but adapted it beautifully for the stage.  The props, the costumes, the background music, the songs ... They had everything!  And such a spirited performance, really!

I stood there, immersed in the show, but at one point, I experienced this surreal moment, where I seemed to step back and look at the scene in front of me with a sense of wonder.

These 20-30 children, and their 6-7 teachers have probably spent weeks preparing for this.  They prepared the screenplay, wrote the script, composed songs, set it to tune.  They designed props and elaborate costumes, they cut and pasted and sketched and painted and got it all ready.  They rehearsed the play, they learned their lines, and then they travelled all the way from Hebbal in a big yellow bus to come here and perform.  And here was an illustrious audience, enjoying it, laughing and clapping.

And all this is happening because of a small story written by little ol' me!

It was truly awe-inspiring.  Overwhelming.  I became all emotional and teary-eyed at this point during the show.... The feeling that all this is so much bigger than I am.... not sure if I am making any sense,  but I can't name the feeling myself. I wonder how playwrights feel, and people who have their books turned into movies!  I wonder how J K Rowling feels!

Later, one of the kids came to me and said, "Shruthi Rao akka, your story, akka, very nice akka.  I liked it soooo much, akka!"

Thank you, little Chalapati.  You made my day :)

It was truly a wonderful day because of my family who was with me, S, Puttachi, my parents, aunts, uncles, cousins - so many of them had made it.  And my friends and blog friends who braved the rain to be there.... Thank you so much.

Another lovely thing is that my good friends had won the first and second prizes in the short story for aduts category,  so it was lovely to share the stage with them.  And another great thing was meeting Shashi Deshpande, who wasn't a judge for my category, but who enjoyed the show, and complimented me on the story idea.

A wonderful experience for me.  I'm grateful to Annie Chandy of Unisun, and to Reliance TimeOut.

Happy Birthday, Peevee!

My little sister turns... cough, cough... turns a year older today. This is a card that Puttachi made for S and me two months in advance, and I'm borrowing it to wish Peevee.

No, I don't know what all this is supposed to represent.

And no, don't even dare ask me what is written. Hapee Bart-A of course.

Happy Birthday, Peevee!  :)

Invitation

This is the invitation to the programme where I'll receive my award for the competition I told you about.

I am doubly excited because the kids from Parikrma Foundation are going to perform my prize-winning story. :)

The Analyst

Puttachi is a great one for finding loopholes in mythological stories and fairy tales.  Much of our storytelling session involves my trying to explain some things that cannot be explained. 

Yesterday, I was telling her the story of Rapunzel.

Me: ... So the witch took the baby away, put her in a room on a tall tower that had no steps or ladder.  Rapunzel's hair grew very long, And whenever the witch wanted to get into the tower, she called out "Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your hair."  And she climbed up the hair like it were a rope.

Puttachi:  Amma, how did the witch go in and out when Rapunzel was a baby?  Did Rapunzel have long hair even then?  And how did she understand what the witch wanted?  And how did such a small baby crawl up to the window and let down her hair?  How, Amma?

Me:  Well, until Rapunzel's hair grew long enough, perhaps the witch flew in and out on her broom.

She: Then why did she stop using the broom later?  Wouldn't it have been easier that way?

Me:  You're right.  Why do you think she stopped using the broom?

She: (thinks) perhaps it broke, or she lost it, or it stopped working.

Me: Yeah, perhaps.

And I continue with the story, and finish it.  But unknown to me, all this is still running in her head.  Hours later, I put her to bed, and come away, and all is silent, and I think she has fallen asleep.  Just then I hear a frantic call.

She: Amma, Amma, AMMMMAAAA!!

Me:  What?  What???

She:  I thought of another reason the witch might have stopped using her broom.....

***

Speaking about analytical minds, here's another funny thing that happened a couple of weeks ago.  I still have many tapes, as in cassettes, you know, from the last century?  And I even have a player to play them.

I am trying to play a cassette, it is not running.

Me:  (Fiddling with it and mumbling to myself)

Puttachi:  (who wants to be in on every aspect of my life, whether or not it concerns her) What, what, what, what?

Me:  (still trying to make it work) Can't play this cassette... I wonder.... what is happening... is the cassette not okay?  Or is it the audio system... I wonder....

She:  Amma, I have an idea.  Try and play another cassette.  If that cassette also doesn't work, it will mean that the audio system is not okay.  If that cassette works, it will mean that this cassette is not okay.

I find it very interesting that much of her waking time is spent in outrageously imaginative fantasies and play-acting, but when presented with some facts, she wants them all to make complete sense, all the ends tied up. I would've thought these two characteristics were far removed from one another, and wouldn't really go together.

Two roads ....

I read a couple of discussions in the past one or two months about whether a woman is happier being a mother. 

I think this is quite like Frost's two roads diverging in the wood.  You choose one and that makes all the difference. 

Five years ago, if someone had announced that Shruthi is going to be this patient, dedicated mother, who would find tremendous happiness in her child, and would be more than content to chuck a well-paying job to stay at home to nurture her child, and explore other avenues, I would have been the first one to laugh, and I'm sure  95% of the people who knew me would have laughed with me.

But nobody is laughing any more.  And this I got to know only after I had my child.  

What if I had chosen not to have a child?
- Perhaps I would have continued in that same dull job and gotten my brains fried.
- Perhaps I would have discovered that I liked the job after all.
- Perhaps I would have progressed to a people-management role and discovered that it was my forte, and perhaps I would be this top-notch executive by now.
- Perhaps I would have realized that that field is not for me and chucked it anyway to do something else.
- Perhaps I would have found my (once-upon-a-time) dream job that involved travelling all around the world.
- Perhaps I would have been very very sad.
- Perhaps I would have been happier than I am now.

Perhaps.

But who can say? The fact is that I chose this road, for reasons I don't remember quite clearly.  And the fact is that I have found happiness and contentment here.

Same with any decision in your life.  This field of education, that field.  This job, that job.  Marrying, not marrying.  Having one child, having multiple children.  I mean, what do you know?  How can you say ahead of time, that Option 1 will be better than Option 2?  Even after you've married Guy X, how can you be sure that you would've been happier with Guy Y?

Perhaps it is all about standing up for yourself, making yourself comfortable, and finding happiness in whatever you are doing, wherever you are. 

So no, I don't think there are no answers to the question - What are the right choices that lead to a person's happiness.

What do you think?

Thank you, Steve

I'm not sure if there's a term for people like me - not a technophobe, not a technophile, but more of a techno-okwhatever. Gadgets got smarter, but with every new advancement, my ability to get jaw-droppingly amazed only got dulled.

Until the iPad happened to me.

A more elegant, breathtaking device I've never seen. And very late, but very enthusiastically, I joined the legion of Steve Jobs fans.

Thank you, Steve Jobs.

Yay!!

September has really been a good month for my writing.  My children's story "The Story Lady" won the First Prize in the Unisun - Reliance TimeOut Competition.  The prize money is twenty five thousand rupees.  I know, my head is whirling!  The story will be included in an anthology, to be published in the next few months.  More details and links later. 

I've so many drafts in my head - so much to say - but thanks to a very busy schedule, plus lots of power cuts,  they will all have to wait. 

Two pieces published

I am back after a lovely, "different" vacation, and before I write about my trip, and reply to comments on my last post, I want to share two writing successes with you.

My story "All that glitters" which I had entered for the Sunday Herald short story competition, won a special mention, and has been published here in today's Sunday Herald.

An article about the reasons behind rhymes was published in Friday's Open Sesame.

Hope you like them.

A mother's nightmare

Puttachi:  Amma, won't it be nice to be able to see in all directions at once?  Not only in front?
Me:  Mmm, yeah.... like eyes in the back of your head?
She: No, if we have only eyes in the back of our head, it will get covered by hair.  So we should have three more heads.  One at the back, one each at the sides.
Me: Hmm, but I can think of one problem with that - you will have to get four heads washed (she hates hairwashes) every time your hair gets dirty!
She: (ignores me) But you can see everywhere!  We can walk backwards without turning our necks!
Me: (intent on being a partypooper)  When you have a cold, you will have to clean four noses.  Every morning and evening, you will have to brush four sets of teeth because you will have four mouths!
She: (eyes lighting up)  Four mouths!  Amma, that will be so much fun!  One mouth can keep talking, and then when it gets tired, the second mouth can start talking, and so on, and by the time the fourth mouth gets tired, the first mouth will not be tired any more and then it can start talking again!  I can talk all the time!
Me: (faints)

Copycat

I realized I should do this more often - but today, I just entered my blogname into http://copyscape.com, and found that this website  has copied this post of mine  word to word, with no credit, of course.  I've written to them to ask them to remove it from the site. Waiting to hear from them.

Suggestions on what else I could do?

Update on 20th.: thank you all for your support! Citrus Heights got back to me and told me they have removed the post, and also notified the blogger who posted it on their site. But that blogger still has that post on her blog
There is no contact info on her blog, and only members are allowed to comment on her blog. What should I do next? Report to google?

Update on 25th:  Since I had no way to contact the plagiarist blogger and resolve this privately, I had to approach Google.  They were very quick, within a few hours, they got the content removed from the page and reported it to me.

The blogger now has a note at the end of that page, in which she calls me a cyber stalker and a bully and accuses me of stealing her content, and plays the martyr, saying she cannot help it if people choose to steal from her!  And this from a person who had copied my content so directly, that she had retained words like "menthya" and "methi" that were in my post, the meanings of which there is not the remotest chance of her knowing!  :) And the only way I could copy her was for me to travel forward in time to  May 4th, read her post, come back to  May 1st and write it all down.  Phew, some people, I tell you!

Anyway, I hope that's the end of that.

Another children's story....

....published in today's Open Sesame.   It is based on real-life experiences. :)

Join your child in Fantasy-Land

When you have to deal with an imaginative child, a child who is forever living in a world of fantasy - there is room for a lot of fun and frustration.

When a child is steeped in play, and is seriously telling her teddy bear that she (the bear) is not doing a good job of looking after her bear cub, how can she possibly hear a mother yelling at her to wash her hands, brush her teeth, eat her food, put on her socks, drink water, and other such non-important tasks? 

When two counters reach "Home" in a game of Ludo, how can a child possibly continue the game without plunging into a world where the red counter invites the blue counter, who is his neighbour now, to his "home" for tea and biscuits?  How can they not chat about the neighbourhood and about the other empty houses around them that are waiting to be filled with green and yellow counters?  The mother is all the while twiddling her thumbs itching to finish the game so that she can go and start preparing dinner - but how can she stop the child, when the mother actually understands the world the child is in?  But stop the child she must, else the red and blue counters will get married and give birth to little counters, and the child will have to go without dinner that day!

When it is late for school and the mother expects the child to put on her shoes herself while she (the mother) gets herself ready, how can the child not stop to make the school shoes say goodbye and see you later to all the other shoes in the shoe stand?  And then the school shoes have to comfort the park shoes who are going to miss the school shoes.  This takes time, you know - who cares that the school bell will ring when such important matters have to be dealt with?  The mother cares, and the mother hurries, but the mother feels so sorry for the child who doesn't even realize that the mother is hurried and harried, so much at peace is she in her own sweet world.

I've learned that the best way to get things done is to get into the game yourself and then speak in words that the child will understand.  I can only give you the example of a father I saw in the park the other day.  His son was on a play instrument, with a "steering wheel."  He was deep into his game, and his concentration was obvious from his furiously furrowed eyebrows - he was honking, and driving to "Mysore".  The father tried once, twice, to tell his son, "Come on, it is 6, let's go home."  But the child could not even hear his father.  Then the father said, "Oh wonderful, we've reached Mysore!  Now, come on, let's look for a parking space - ah look, there between two cars, under the tree.  Can you park there?  You can?  Wonderful.  Come on, now, let's go."

The child "parked" his vehicle immediately, jumped off the platform into his father's waiting arms, and went off happily.  I was really pleased that day.  It is so rare to see someone handling such things without raging against the child.

It works for me too - I usually sit and watch Puttachi's play take its own course - but when it is dinnertime or bedtime or schooltime and things just have to be done before such and such a time, I join in her play and gently nudge it in the direction that I want it to - it works ninety percent of the time.  And I have a happy kid cooperating with me after that.

A Year of Independence

It's been a year since I started driving solo.  I keep wondering why I took so long to do start driving (Actually I know why - there are many valid reasons, but I wonder "why" nevertheless.)

My life has changed in many ways - most expected, some unexpected.  It is so liberating to be free of rude, cheating auto-drivers, and so good to not depend on S to drive me around.   Good for S too, I suppose!

I have inspired at least two others to plunge into driving, and two more are waiting in the wings.  One of my friends who has started driving called last month to thank me, and told me that the word I had used - "liberation" had never been so literally true for her until then.  If there's anybody else out there who's dilly-dallying and getting scared of Bangalore traffic - I suggest (at the risk of adding to the congestion) - go for it!

The first few weeks of driving was physically painful - I had headaches everyday.  Just as I was despairing of it, things got better magically - my hands didn't clutch the steering wheel any more, my breath became more even, my shoulders relaxed, and the headaches vanished.

Initially I went from apprehensive mode to confident mode to over-confident mode - and during this last stage, I had a couple of minor scrapes within a span of a week - and that pushed me right into cautiously confident stage, where I've been ever since.

In the beginning, I just drove in the familiar comfort zone, like a horse with blinds - not looking here and there - concentrating totally on the clutch and the gears and the traffic.  But as time went by, all this became second nature, and I gained enough confidence to look around, look for directions while driving, and found my way back with ease if I got lost.  Except for parking troubles, things are pretty cool around here.

Driving has got me wondering - is the way a person drives indicative of his personality?  Does an aggressive person drive more rashly?  Is a driver with a blemish-free record a careful, planning person in real life?  It does sound like it must be true - but I am not too sure.  What do you all think?

But driving in a place like Bangalore must surely change personalities at some level or the other.  I am a mostly a non-aggressive, non-argumentative, non-confrontational person.  But being such a driver in Bangalore won't get you around much - so have I changed at least a fraction after I started driving?

I do remember something that rattled me once.  I was trying to turn right into a main road from a narrow side road.  As some cars were parked atrociously on the left side of the road, I was trying to make the turn from the right side of the narrow road (the wrong side.)  A car came in from the main road wanting to turn into the road I was in, and found me blocking its way.  A moment of thought would've told him why I was on the right side (the wrong side) of the road, but instead of waiting, the driver blocked my path, switched off his engine and glared belligerently at me.  I was tremendously angry, but with an effort, maintained my cool, avoided eye contact with him, maneuvered the car out of the muddle and went my way.   The annoyance stayed for a couple of minutes but then I forgot about it.

But that night, I dreamt that I was back in that situation, and was repeatedly crashing into that man's car in anger - much like a jealous Herbie crashes into the new car in The Love Bug.  I awoke quite shaken.  If this is what driving is doing to me, I won't drive, I thought, in a moment of righteous indignation.  But thankfully, that feeling passed, and I haven't had such violent urges since.

Makes me wonder, though.  What do you think?

Post Office

The picture I have in my head of a post office is due to that specimen that I frequented for the entire part of my life before email came into the picture.

This post office was tiny, dark and dingy. A creaking brown fan rotated half-heartedly over the head of the postal clerk, who sat behind a counter with an old peeling sign that said "ST MPS.". His eyes looked frighteningly large behind inch thick glasses as he paused from his painstaking stamping to look up and ask you what you wanted. He then weighed your letter on an ancient balance and tore off stamps with grubby, shaking fingers.

You paid him, took the stamps and turned around, only to bump into a shaky wooden plank that clung loosely to a wall. About half a dozen people usually jostled each other around this one square metre of sticky wood, trying to paste their stamps on their envelopes using the glue placed on that table. This glue, contained in a blue plastic bowl, now black because of dirt congealed on old glue, looked exactly like snot. Somebody would have invariably appropriated the single brush in the bowl, so you had to bite back your nausea, stick your finger into the "glue" and try to paste your stamps onto your envelope. The stamp liked your finger more and preferred to stick to it, though. Finally, after achieving your purpose, you had to step out of the post office door (two paces from the ST MPS counter,) and drop your letter into the rattling red post box outside the door and go your way.

This was, like I said, about fifteen years ago, before the advent of email. I cannot believe it myself, but I don't remember having stepped into any post office in all those years (other than to accompany my grandfather once) and so I was in for a shock when I had to avail the services of a post office today (not the one of my childhood, though.)

I stepped in, and then stepped back out because I thought I had entered a check in area of the airport. Then, ascertaining that it was indeed the neighbourhood post office, I stepped back in, and went to the stamps counter, where a smiling man weighed my letter on a digital scale, took the requisite number of stamps from his desk, produced a Fevi Stik, pasted the stamps neatly and handed it to me. Dazed, I gave the letter to Puttachi who wanted to drop it in the box. We went out of the post office, and there was only one box there which looked nothing at all like the red cylindrical post box I had in my head. The steel cube sitting smartly there was much too swanky to be an ordinary post box, or so I thought. I hung around for a while until some one else dropped their letter into it, after which I gave Puttachi, who had been insisting all along that it was indeed a post box, permission to follow suit.

I am yet to get over the shock.

A part of Pottermania

We caught the last Harry Potter movie last evening.

This was the first time ever that I watched a movie on the day it was released.
This was the first time I've been in a theatre which was completely full. All seats taken.
It was one of those old, large theaters, a non-multiplex one, with Balcony class and Rear class and all that. So you can imagine the number of Potter fans in there.
It was largely a young, energetic, highly-charged young adult crowd.
It was an electrifying, very well made movie, and dare i say more engrossing, terrifying and arresting than the book itself.

As a result, it was probably one of the best cinematic experiences I've had. The crowd screamed at the first appearance of every character, hooted with laughter at the humor, screamed with delight at every instance of daring, and brought the roof down with the destruction of every horcrux.

I came back with a great sense of satisfaction.

Not that the movie is perfect. But it certainly comes close to it.

I only wish it wasn't in 3D. The enhanced experience wasn't worth the heavy glasses.

So here's to:
S who surprised me with the tickets.
My parents with whom we left Puttachi.
The film makers.
JK Rowling and her stupendous imagination.

BIDWTF

BIDWTF - Because I don't want to forget.  I saw this on some blog/s - so the copyright isn't mine.  I think it's a great concept - when there's something that your child does or says - not really matter for an entire blog, but you'll definitely forget it if you don't write it down somewhere!

So here are two stories BIDWTF.

Puttachi was having dinner, and I was telling her a story.  She gets so engrossed in the story that she tends to overeat, so I remind her from time to time to "ask" her stomach whether it has had enough.  She actually pauses, and "asks" it, and gives me the stomach's answer, which, so far, seems to be fairly accurate.

This time, the story must have been truly interesting, so Puttachi ended up overeating, and she couldn't get down from the chair and even stand.

Me:  Puttachi, you really mustn't overeat - do pay attention to your stomach!

She:  Amma, I just couldn't make out - I ate too much...

Me: I told you to ask your stomach....?

She:  My stomach, poor thing, kept on telling me, "Puttachi, stop eating, stop eating," but you were speaking so loudly that I didn't hear what my stomach was telling me.

Does teenage come ten years earlier these days?  The kid holds me at fault for everything these days :D

_______________


She was playing with a foldable hand-fan, and she spent hours with it.  Inevitably, she personified it, and it became her friend.

All of a sudden, she came to me sobbing.  This was real sorrow - deep from her heart - sobbing, weeping, nose red, tears flowing down her cheeks....

Me: (hugging her) What happened, sweetheart?
She: (can hardly speak, her voice is shaking) Amma, the fan told me that it would go away and never come back.
Me: Why?
She: I don't know why.
Me: Did you ask it to stay?
She: Yes, but it is not staying. 
(continues weeping into my shoulder.)

I pause, because truth be told, I wanted to burst into laughter.  Anyway, stupidly, I tried to reason it out with her.

Me: Puttachi, it makes sense if you feel like crying at a story that is not yours.  Here, you are making up this story, aren't you?  you can change it to make the fan come back and stay with you forever.

Puttachi: But you don't understand, Amma.  The fan told me, it told me that it's never coming back.

Me: (cursing my foolishness)  Ok, come on, let's go to the fan.

We hug the fan, kiss it, and "show" the fan how sad Puttachi is because of what it said to her, and thankfully, the fan relents, and decides to stay with Puttachi.

The clouds part, and sunshine fills the room.  Puttachi smiles, and I heave a sigh of relief.

The most momentous developments ever?

I often marvel at the number of changes my grandparents, who were born in the twenties, have seen in their lifetimes.   I'm always keen to know what they feel about all these developments, and how it has affected them.

When I''d been to Mysore a while ago, I asked my grandmother what she felt was the most important, ground-breaking invention/discovery/development that has either affected her personally, or not..

Without batting an eyelid, she said, "The mixer-grinder."

I put the question to my grandfather, and after a moment's thought, he said, "Geo-stationary satellites."

I think this is a very interesting exercise - I urge you to ask this of the elders around you, and beseech you to share the answers with me!