The UK Files: Henley-on-Thames

The first couple of weeks in the UK were cold. We didn't go out much, except for a few drives, and some trips to the town, and Sainsbury's.

It was on April 8th, that I had my first taste of the English sun. We - my aunt, cousin, Puttachi and I - planned a trip to Henley-on-Thames, of course, after a lot of consultation of weather forecasts. True to the prediction, it was a lovely day. The sun was out, the sky was blue and cloudless, with aeroplane contrails streaking it white.



The riverside was magnificent. Bare trees were fuzzy, with a suggestion of the lovely green that would become obvious in the coming weeks. Weeping willows drooped gracefully. The river was blue, and the grass was green and inviting.





We walked on one bank of the river, and on the other bank stood pretty little cottages, with boat garages. Big boats sailing down the river were moored on the side of the bank on which we walked, and I peered shamelessly through the little windows, into the dim interiors, trying to imagine what it would be like - a life in a houseboat, sailing the length of the river.



We played football on the greens, that are such a luxury for us, and we had some really lovely, sparkling moments. It was still much too cold, and we shivered when the wind blew, but smiled when the sun did.



On the way back, we visited The Maharajah's Well at Stoke Row, and got back home.


There's something about rivers and its banks that appeal to me, and walking is one of my passions - so the combination is, well, deadly.

We had many more lovely times in England and Scotland, but this day will stand out as one of the most beautiful, brilliant days I've experienced.

The UK Files: Walsall and Stratford-upon-Avon

My father's cousin N Kaka lives in Walsall with his family. He and his wife are a wonderful doctor couple, and they have three very nice, and I mean really very nice sons. The hospitality in their home is that excellent blend that makes you feel welcome and wanted, yet doesn't suffocate you with it. We visited them twice, once with my aunt and her family, and the second time, after S~ joined us, on our way to Scotland.

Music and conversation with a liberal dose of laughter and comfort - that is what I remember from both the visits, along with a hilarious encounter with the police. N Kaka shares both his name and some distinct personality traits with my father, and Puttachi, who dotes upon my father, took to N Kaka as if she'd known him all her life.

We visited Stratford-upon-Avon from there. It is a beautiful, but ordinary town, by English standards. The Avon river is lovely, and the town is all about Shakespeare. But of course.





My cousin V and I went into Shakespeare's house. It is like stepping into a book. The house has been furnished just like it was in Shakespeare's time, with some original furniture, and some replicas. A man dressed as Shakespeare's father talked to the visitors, giving us trivia and laughter. When we stood in the room in which Shakespeare was born, this man told us that people are very often overwhelmed there. Some weep, some hug, and many of them drop down on their knees and kiss the floor. Wow.

Another interesting thing in the house is a glass window where distinguished visitors have signed their names. There is a guide next to it, pointing to the interesting ones.

Excavations are happening at New Place, where Shakespeare lived later. They hope to find something nice - a lock of his hair or a handwritten manuscript.

A walk through the town, a small picnic on the banks of Avon, and we were ready to get back home.

Imagination

I've heard lots about a child's power of imagination, but it is wonderful to witness it first hand in Puttachi. It amuses me. It turns me momentarily into a child myself as I suspend all reality, and journey with her and her fancy. It stuns me with its potential. It worries me that adulthood will suck it out of her.

I've learned that a child's imagination has just one characteristic - it has no limits. And I'm talking about any child - its just that I get to observe it closely with my child.

Puttachi is deeply into drawing and colouring. It borders on an obsession. I bought her colouring books, but she doesn't like them. She wants me to draw what she sees is in her head, so that she can colour it. The latest was a Rakshasa with a skin-sleeve on his arm which held his horned baby's waterbottle.

When she colours, nothing holds her back. She colours the sky green, the river yellow, and the tree black. I don't try to correct her. Besides, she also explains her choices to me. "Amma," she says. "Apples are red, yes, but this apple is blue, because it is a magic apple. Amma, I know that rivers are blue, but this river is yellow because a big box of turmeric fell into it."

Whenever she eats something crunchy, she tells me that the treat is singing a song.. "Do you know, Amma, that these groundnuts are singing "Wheels on the bus?""
or
"Amma, I can make this puffed rice sing any song. I bite on it and think of a song, and the puffed rice sings it with me. Do you know how? It looks into my mind, and learns it immediately."

Today she listened to the strains of a Shehnai and said, "Amma, this song is crying." Where does she get such ideas?

We'd been to somebody's house to see the Dasara Dolls, and there was one baby doll with two big parent dolls. When the hostess insisted that Puttachi could take the baby doll home, she went up to the parent dolls and told them, "Don't worry, don't be sad, I'll bring your baby up very well."

Personification is a strong passion in her. She sees two cushions leaning against each other and decides that they are friends and are hugging, or telling each other a secret. She sees me cutting a vegetable and sometimes nearly tears up, asking me if the carrot is getting hurt.

She never tires of stories and makes me narrate some all day long. Sometimes, she takes over the storyteller mantle, and if I take the trouble to concentrate, I encounter fanciful, highly imaginative stories that have no beginning, no end, but are connected with a fine thread that somehow makes sense. If I react suitably with a "a tailed ant who is a firefighter? well, I never!" she promptly says, "Oh it's just a story Amma, listen further."

Anyway, half the stories I tell her are products of my imagination, but they are all rooted in logic and sense. This weekend, I decided to try and tell her a story in her style. I freed my mind, abandoned all logic, and started. It was alright in the beginning, but soon, logic crept in. I desperately tried to drive it away, but it settled down and made itself nice and comfortable. I finished the story, neatly, all tied-up. Boring.

If I could store all her imagination in a pot and give it back to her if adulthood drains it out......

Dinosaur FAQ

Last evening, Puttachi and I made a model of a Dinosaur skeleton, using a kit with little wooden pieces shaped like a dinosaur's bones.

After we were done admiring it, Puttachi's questions began.

Amma, are dinosaurs still there?
No, they all died a long time ago.

But there was a dinosaur in London.
In the (Natural History) museum? That was a big toy. Batteries inside it made it roar and move and made it look like a real T-rex.

Did they make that toy to look like a real dinosaur?
Yes.

Why did dinosaurs die?
A huge rock came from the sky and fell on the earth, killing all of them.

Why was there a huge rock in the sky?
There are many rocks in the sky, they are called asteroids, they move around. Sometimes, one comes in the way of a planet and hits it.

What happened to all the people?
There were no people then. It was very long ago. People weren't even born then.

Then how do they know that a big stone hit the earth?
They do not know for sure. People who have studied about the earth and who know about dinosaurs, have thought about it, and they've said that we don't know what killed the dinosaurs, but it looks like it was a big rock from the sky.

Did you also think about it?
No Puttachi, I did not. I am just telling you what I have heard and read.

Are there dinosaurs in India?
They've found dinosaur bones or fossils in India, but there are no living dinosaurs even in India.

Why, did a big stone hit India also?
No, no, there was just one rock that hit the earth. But it was very huge. It raised so much cloud and dust and disturbed the waters of the ocean, that the dust and water spread all over the earth and killed all the dinosaurs everywhere.

Where did the rock fall?
I don't know, Puttachi. I'll find out and let you know - if the experts know.

Will dinosaurs be born again?
No, it's unlikely. But then you never know. Oh there was even a movie about it - that dinosaurs were brought back to life.

Did these dinosaurs come near people in the movie?
Yes they did.

Did they eat the people?
Umm yes, I think they did, some of them. But then that's just a story - a movie.

Amma, will you show me the movie?
Sure, in a few years from now. I don't think it is meant for children your age.

Why?
It is scary at times. Even I got scared when I watched the movie.

But you are a big girl.
Even big girls can get scared.

The Lion King is not a scary movie.
That's right.

It is for kids. Even kids can watch it.
Correct.

I like The Lion King.
I know.

Amma, do you remember what Simba said when.....

... and she moves on to more mundane matters!

The UK Files - The Elderly

Everywhere we went in the UK, I saw old and elderly people. Many of them. Lots more than I've seen walking on the roads in India.

They were invariably elegant in dress and manner, most of them had smiles and a kind word for Puttachi, and they carried themselves with grace and dignity.

Some of them were so old that they were stooped, wrinkled, barely able to walk, and yet they came shopping alone. One old lady took one minute to walk one metre, holding on to a walker. No exaggeration. Yet, she came shopping alone. Another lady, with crutches - so old, so old that I've never seen anybody older, got off a bus and on to the footpath, and went about her shopping. Alone.

Yes, it is because they live alone. Yes, it is because they want to do their own work themselves. But there is a far bigger reason why I saw so many old people out walking on the streets in the UK, and why none here in India.

Because the cities are friendly to them. In every way. The footpaths are even, with little ramps from every footpath down to every road. Cars STOP at pedestrian crossings when someone is waiting to cross. Even if there is no signal. They stop not only for the old and infirm, not only for young mothers with prams. They stop for everybody.

Buses are convenient. Easy to get in and out. And the drivers wait until people finish getting in and out. They help.

Here, pedestrians are at the bottom of the pyramid. Even an alert, energetic youngster finds it difficult to cross some roads nowadays. People tell me that I'm very fortunate to live a stone's throw away from an excellent shopping area. But there is one huge obstacle. I've to cross a road to get to that area. And that one road is enough to put you off crossing roads for ever.

How can anybody except the elderly to cross such roads? To walk on footpaths with crooked stone slabs? Travel on buses? No chance. No wonder we don't see old people up and about here.

Of course, they do have other advantages there. Little buses go around, pick up the old who live alone, take them to shopping centres and then drop them back to their homes. It arises out of necessity, of course, with so many people living alone.

It made me sad. Outdoor life after one point, perhaps eighty, is totally out of bounds to us here in India. Is there no alternative?

Trick or Treatment?

With the Flipkart voucher I won here, I bought "Trick or Treatment?: Alternative medicine on Trial" by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst.

It is a must-read for everybody interested in health - and especially for those who rely on alternative forms of medicine. It is interesting, impartial, well-researched, and full of information.

Chapter 1 - Speaks about why such an impartial study is important - millions of people around the world spend billions of money on alternative therapies - are they effective, and safe? This chapter also examines the kind of clinical trials that are necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of any remedy. It speaks about how clinical trials evolved, why blind and double-blind studies are important, and examines the placebo effect and its importance. A very interesting and informative chapter.

Chapter 2 - Deals with acupuncture. Acupuncture is based on an ancient Chinese belief that Ch'i energy flows through a body, and ailments occur when some important nodes are blocked. Sticking needles into the body at such points releases the blockages and sets the energy flow right again. Acupuncture claims to treat all kinds of remedies. The presence of Ch'i itself hasn't been proven over all these centuries, and so the basic presumption of this therapy might itself be wrong. But anyway, many studies have been conducted, including some very clever techniques to test the placebo effects of acupressure. The overall conclusion is that there are indications for its efficacy for some types of pain and nausea, but the evidence of relief for any other ailment is not enough. It is a relatively safe kind of treatment if you are so inclined to take it, but there have been cases of death due to negligent needling.

Chapter 3 - Homeopathy. Now this has been causing me trouble for a long time now. On one hand, there is this remedy that offers patients medicines that are so dilute that there is not even ONE SINGLE molecule of the original substance in the resulting medicine. It defies logic. On the other hand, there are millions of people who swear by it, some of them very smart and informed people. So there are only two alternatives - either the basic principles of science as we know it are utterly meaningless, or those millions of people are wasting time, energy and money on a placebo.

I did a lot of research prior to reading this book, and none of the homeopathy jargon made any sense to me. On the contrary, all the critics of homeopathy had me nodding with them in agreement.

This book is unique in that it approaches homeopathy in a very impartial way. It is not important that we understand it in the beginning, they say. Thousands of remedies weren't understood in the beginning, but were applied nevertheless. Only later did researchers understand the science behind it. The same approach has been taken throughout the book.

First the chapter talks about the origin of Homeopathy (based on hunches, assumptions), its rise in popularity (conventional medicine at that time actually killed people - using techniques such as bloodletting. So people who took homeopathy were better off. So it was assumed that homeopathy was effective), and its spread across the world (different reasons for their spread - mostly politics - nothing to do with efficacy).

To cut a very long chapter short, 200 years and 200 clinical trials later (which has taken into account all the basic tenets of homeopathy - including individualized treatment, etc), it has been proven beyond doubt that homeopathic treatment is no better than a placebo.

One of the authors, Edzard Ernst, is a trained homeopath, who has even practiced for sometime, before stepping back and opening his eyes. He says that nobody would have been happier than him if it had been proven that homeopathy is effective, as it would have opened up an entirely new world of research.

But why does homeopathy "seem to work"? All is explained in the book - and I guide you there for any more questions you might have.

Chapter 4 - Chiropractic therapy - Chiropractors claim that the spine is the key to the body's health, and adjustments to the spine can cure all diseases. Often it involves very rough manipulation of the spine and neck, and there are severe side effects, and several cases of death. Over the centuries, one section of chiropractors have broken away from the traditional beliefs and follow a more moderate form of this therapy, claiming to treat mostly back pain. But studies have shown that spinal manipulation might help, but it is in no way better than regular physiotherapy, which is safer and cost-effective.
If you remember, Simon Singh was unsuccessfully sued for libel by the British Chiropractic association for an article in The Guardian, criticizing Chiropractic therapy.

Chapter 5 - Herbal Remedies - Now this chapter was something of a shock to me. I was one among those who tended to believe that herbal remedies can't go wrong. After all, mainstream medicine also sources much of its remedies from plants. But what I found was that, yes, drugs are certainly made from plants, but the particular effective substance is isolated, and then synthesized or extracted to make medicines.
Very often, eating the whole leaf or nut or bark as the case may be, results in unwanted side effects. There have been many cases of people taking a herbal remedy along with mainstream treatment, and some substance in the plant has reacted adversely with the mainstream medicine and caused severe ill-effects. Even some commonly used herbal products that we use as home remedies might cause undesired side-effects when taken in excess. A mix of herbs, especially, that is common in herbal medicine can be particularly dangerous. This book suggests that before going in for herbal remedies, do your research well. Besides, many regular drugs go through years of testing to certify that it is safe and effective, whereas herbal remedies appear on shelves overnight. And it is not fair to the consumer.
An eye-opener of a chapter.

Chapter 5 - Asks "Does the truth matter?" and explores the reasons why it does. It is, once again, a beautifully enlightening chapter.

After this, there is a section where most of the other alternative therapies are discussed, each in one page. These include magnetic therapy, reiki, feng shui, meditation, massage therapies, totally thirty such alternative therapies. In case you are wondering what is the verdict on Indian systems of healing... Yoga, they conclude is an excellent way of life to maintain good health, and meditation and relaxation is also proven to be beneficial, unless you have a mental illness. Ayurveda - the verdict is mixed. Some remedies are proven to be effective and safe, but others are not. Many ayurvedic medicines have very high levels of metal, as it is believed to be beneficial (I'd heard about this disturbing fact before). But no metal in high amounts is good for the body. Ayurveda is a very complex system, and needs much more study to test its effects. In the meantime, keep your eyes open.

Disclaimer: I'm not a promoter of regular medicine, I don't pop pills left right and centre. I am well aware of underhand activities by greedy pharma companies, pushing untested drugs into the market, etc. I am a believer in the natural healing ability of our body, and I let the body do its job. Only when I see it might get out of hand do I resort to mainstream medicine. After all, its the best we have.

I've just tried to condense the material in the book in a few paragraphs. But I highly recommend that you read the book.

The UK Files - Lambing

My aunt lives in what is called a village, and the surrounding areas are full of farms and open areas. One such neighbouring farm organized a Lambing weekend, where the farm was thrown open to the public for a fee. It was no less than a fair. There were stalls and organized parking, and volunteers took batches of visitors around the farm. We saw geese, ducks, horses, a Shetland pony and goats in enclosures just outside.

Inside, we were first taken to the hen enclosure. Six thousand hens live here, and in a good week, the yield of the farm is thirty-two thousand eggs. Now that is astonishing. They are free-range hens, and at night, they are housed in a huge hen building. We were shown how tonnes of feed are pumped into the enclosures. Whew, did that building stink!

The hens are brought in when they are a few weeks old - all of them the same age. They lay eggs until they are about 72 weeks old, after which, their egg-laying ability decreases, and they are sent away to enter the meat chain. The whole area is then cleaned and sanitized, and the next batch of hens are brought in.

"How do you know which eggs are chick-eggs?" asked a little girl.
"There are no chick-eggs here," said the volunteer. "We don't have any roosters - this is a ladies-only section - and you know that you need both a male and a female to make babies, don't you? You don't? Ask your mother after you get home!" And she winked at the rest of us and escaped quickly!

We saw pens of little pink pigs with curly tails - they were so cute. One had got some straw stuck to its snout - and it was doing a little dance to free itself - that was great fun. There were tiny little enclosures each containing one ewe and her lambs that had been born within that week. If ewe1 has given birth to three lambs and ewe2 to one, then the farmers cheat by putting one of ewe1's lambs with ewe2 - so that they all have a better chance of survival. These lambs were adorable, and some were available to hold and pet. Puttachi held a three-day-old lamb in her arms, and it was the sweetest sight. Soap and hand-sanitizers were installed everywhere, and we were told to use them liberally.


I don't know about you - but I felt it then and I feel it now - an intense urge to just run and jump into this pile of hay.

The high-point of our visit was watching a live birth. There was a huge enclosure in which all the sheep in labour were housed. These had tiny oval openings, through which we peeping-toms could crouch and look. I actually saw a lamb being born. The poor mother was baa-ing away pathetically, turning round and round in the straw. Just as she started straining, two (human) helpers came to assist her. Even as we looked, a baby lamb popped out of the mother, along with the messy afterbirth. The next moment, the helpers left, and the mother started licking the lamb for all she worth. In a little while, she started baa-ing again - it looked like there was another on its way. But we had to leave.





The just-born (Photo taken through a two-inch long oval opening)


We finished with a tractor-trailer ride around the farm, followed by two adorable lambs - white amidst green grass.

It was a fabulous experience.

Old dog, new tricks

I got my driver's license when I was 21. I drove very little, with my father sitting next to me. Since he took the car to work, and I wasn't really the jet-setting type, I didn't find any need for the car, and managed with autos and buses.

Then I went to study at Trichy, and then to work in Mumbai, where I didn't need to drive. After I got back to Bangalore, I was out of touch with driving, and anyway I took the office cab to work.

Even after I got married, I didn't ever feel the need to know driving. It is only now, when I have had to drop and pick up Puttachi from school, did I desperately feel the urge to drive, especially after dealing with faulty meters and rude drivers of autorickshaws. So I took a few driving lessons, and then drove around with S sitting next to me. After that, my father-in-law instructed me in the finer points of driving, and taught me driving in reverse and parking with great patience - and my confidence soared.

So today, I flew solo for the first time - I dropped and picked-up Puttachi from school myself - and I feel terrific.

Hand me a pair of ear-plugs.

One of the most difficult things that I have faced in bringing up Puttachi is that I've had to change a little of my basic personality to suit hers.

I am a relatively silent person, prefering to listen than to speak. But there is a limit even to how much I can listen to without going mad.

But Puttachi is the opposite of me. She loves to talk and she does talk all the time. When she is not talking, she expects me to talk. She hounds me to tell her story after story, and bugs me with continuous questions. So at any given time, there is always someone speaking in the house. And that is VERY tiring. I need silence and solitude, and sometimes, at the end of a tiring day, my ears feel like they'll develop holes, and my head feels like it'll burst. I have to literally beg Puttachi to stop talking and not ask me any questions. But of course, this request is followed by a "Why why why why why?"

Besides, Puttachi is always in high spirits and full of excitement. It is quite lovely to watch her, and my spirits are never too low for a long time because of this. But hey, sometimes I need to be normal. I need to not smile or laugh. I need to mope, sulk and frown to even out my facial muscles.

But I just do not have that chance. The poor thing comes to me with so much excitement and happiness that I cannot bear to pour cold water over that, so I end up joining in her excitement, and tiring myself out. And if I do give in to my primary instinct and sulk a little, she comes to me, full of concern, and asks, "Amma, are you angry, are you sick, are you tired, are you feeling bad, what happened Amma?" and she won't let go until she is convinced that I am not upset with her. And that involves smiling and assuring her that everything is fine.

I know that as she grows, the challenges will be greater. For instance, I might have to forgo my urge to loll around at home in my pyjamas on a lazy weekend, to cater to Puttachi's desire to go out and party (figuratively). There might be bigger clashes between our personalities, things I cannot even imagine - and I might have to change further in order not to limit Puttachi's growth.

I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing, exerting myself, extending myself - I am not sure if this will hurt me in the long run, but I see Puttachi happy and blossoming into a sweeter and more enthusiastic person each day, and it feels like it is worth it.

Hard to tell. Someday, I guess I'll know the answer. Meanwhile, if you have any words of wisdom, I'm all ears.

New Tricks up her sleeve

(not sure of the date of this one)

I go into the room to find that her brown dog has turned powdery and light brown. As I frown and ponder over it, she announces, "Dog asked me, "Puttachi, puttachi, please sprinkle some powder on me", and so I sprinkled powder on it."

When she knows something is going to get her in trouble, she employs this tactic. I have told her to eat her vegetables sitting in one place, but I come back to find it strewn all over the floor. "Oh, amma, the peas said to me, "Puttachi, please throw me on the ground", so I threw them on the ground.

New kind of questions I cannot answer.

She: Amma, say "plate".
Me: Plate.
She: Why did you say "plate"?
ME: Because you asked me to say "plate"
She: Why did I ask you to say "plate"?
Me: #$%$@

But I have found a way around it. I say, "tell me yourself", and I receive a very simple yourself. In the above case, she said, "because I like it." So simple, no?

Laughing at herself:

We see a picture of a snowman.

Me: Oh, Puttachi, do you know what you said for "snowman" when you were a kid? (she loves "when you were little" stories).
She: what?
Me: You used to say "Tone-man".
She: *Laughs her guts out - holds her stomach and rolls on the floor* Toneman! Toneman!
Me: *with a sudden doubt* Puttachi, say "Snowman" now?
She: Sone-man. *stops suddenly with shock. Then rolls on the floor again* I still can't say it!!


She: *waking up from a nap, still half-asleep* Brinjal... brinjal... where have you kept the brinjal?
Me: *Humouring her* Right, here, dear, you go back to sleep now.
She: *Sitting up, waking up* Ayyo, I said brinjal!!

Though S~ and I speak to each other a lot in her baby-language, we speak normally when she is around, one, to ensure that she knows the right way to say things, and two, to not make her conscious that for all her language abilities, her speech is not very clear yet. But once, I made a slip - I said a word like she would have said it. (I said, todine instead of kogile)
She immediately laughed and said, you said it like I do!

She sees a tube of ointment. She has forgotten the word "ointment"

She: Amma, what is that for?
ME: What, dear?
She: That oh-fen....oh-them....on-tem.... om-tem....
I listen patiently. Then she laughs loudly. I am not getting the word at all, amma! what is it called?
Me: Ointment
She: Ayyooooo ointment annakke yeneno andbitte! (I said all sorts of things instead of ointment!)

The UK Files - The Garden Centre

Since my aunt is so into gardening, it was inevitable that one of the first places she took us to was the neighbourhood Garden Centre. I'd never seen anything even remotely like this, and so my mouth fell open and my jaw hung down all through my first visit.

A garden centre differs from a nursery in that a nursery actually grows the plants and nurses them until they are fit to be sold, but a garden centre usually just sources the plants from such nurseries. A garden centre is much, much more than a nursery. It has everything you can imagine that has to do with a garden. And as many things that I couldn't even imagine.

It has plants, of course, and saplings, and trees, and seeds, and compost, and soil and pots and watering cans, fertilizers and pesticides and everything to do with plants. It then has gardening tools, rakes, and gardening gloves and lawnmowers and knee-pads and hats to keep away the sun (heh). Well, alright.

But then, it has garden furniture. And barbecue grills, and chairs and picnic mats and picnic baskets and picnic cutlery and stuff. And it has tea things, tea leaves, tea cups, doilies, tea-cosies, and varieties of biscuits to go with it.

It has landscaping instruments and garden ornaments and door-stops and stuffed toys and marble busts and things. And it has sheds and greenhouses and conservatories and frost-protection devices. It even has a whole section for wild bird feed. And it even has a pet shop and an aquarium in the same campus.

And they have very helpful people who give you valuable advice as well. And I'm just getting warmed up.

I think that if you want to study a people, you should visit their Garden Centre. That should give you, to use an English understatement, a fair idea of the people.

While my head was whirling with all this, Puttachi's jaw was dropping at something totally different. They have a few trolleys with toy cars attached to them. (Something like this) So the adult pushes the trolley, and the child sits in the car pretending to drive it.

For every visit after that, my job at the garden centre was to push around an empty trolley with Puttachi turning the steering wheel for all she was worth and honking away at passerbys. Old people stopped and smiled and said to me, "I hope your daughter has a license, dear," and all the while, Puttachi was deep in ecstasy.

We spent money taking her to what we thought were interesting places, the zoo, lambing at a farm, the merry-go-round at the town centre, but her favourite part of UK was the free car-trolley at the garden centre. Every morning, she would get up and say, "Shall we go to the garden centre today?"

Even yesterday, she asked me when we could go to England again, as she wanted to ride in the car trolley.

It breaks my heart that I couldn't take a picture of her in it.

Speaking of gardens, there is a very interesting concept known as NGS - Gardens Open for Charity. Every year, fair-sized private gardens open their gates to the public for a fee, the proceeds of which goes to charity. My aunt, Puttachi and I visited one such open garden. It was beautiful, attached to an imposing old house, with "grounds" all around, and fabulous views of the countryside. This one house brought to my mind all the settings of Jane Austen and such English novels. The batteries of my camera died here, and I didn't have spare ones on me, so no snaps :(

The plants were labelled well, and the landscaping was excellently done. The brochure had also promised us a walk in the woods next to the house - a Bluebell walk amid birch and ash trees, but though it wasn't exactly overflowing with bluebells, we could see some pretty ones here and there. The woods were lovely, dark and deep (Thank you, Frost), and it was fun walking in them. I almost expected Little Red Riding Hood to emerge from behind the nearest tree, because it was exactly as I had imagined Red Riding Hood's woods. (Or perhaps seen it illustrated somewhere). I also saw holly for the first time. I've seen pictures and have even drawn those distinctive holly leaves dozens of times, and finally, I saw it for real.

As usual, Puttachi was very cooperative, and sustaining her on Peppa Pig and Jammy Dodgers, we finished the walk and got back.

A wonderful concept, and perfect for garden-lovers.

Next: Lambing

The UK files - Familiarity

For me, one of the special things about visiting the UK, as opposed to any other country, is the immense familiarity with the place-names. I've come across these places in ever so many books, and it feels fabulous to see it in person.

On the South-Western rail from Reading to London, I saw Ascot station. How many books, how many movies talk about the races in Ascot! In the Wimbledon and Greenwich stations, I actually stood a while looking at the "Welcome to Wimbledon" and "Welcome to Greenwich" boards with a thrill creeping down my spine, thinking, "I'm actually here."

The London tube map looks like a concise Sherlock Holmes. I knew the names of most of the station thanks to Holmes' habits. Charing cross, Kensington, Brompton, Tottenham Court Road, Clapham Junction - and from innumerable movies, Covent garden, Leicester Square, Piccadilly - all of them are as familiar to me as if they are neighbouring streets.

Driving across the country, I saw exits to places like Manchester and Liverpool, and arrows to lesser known, but yet familiar towns and shires that are sprinkled all over English literature.

Last month, I was reading a Wodehouse when one of the characters walked from Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner, and I could actually see him do that - I knew the route he took, the roads he crossed - it made the book even more interesting. More exciting was the mention of Twickenham, a station we passed on the way from Reading to London.

At every corner in London, there was something I recognized. "Scotland Yard", said a board in London, "Downing street", pointed another arrow - I know I'm rambling, but I don't know what that peculiar feeling is - that excitement when you see something that you've never seen before, but is so familiar to you! Has it happened to you?

It is priceless.

Next: Garden centre

The UK Files - Spring in England

My aunt saw my last post and complained about it - that she has such a lovely garden, and all I post are pictures of bare trees.

Anu Mausi, this one's for you!

The UK Files - The green and the weather

We landed in the UK just before spring was officially announced. It was still very green, but the trees were bare. Yet, it was a haunting kind of beauty, because I could see the shapes of the branches - some trees standing up reaching to the sky, some stretching their arms sideways, and many of them, the most beautiful ones, had branches drooping down, only to slightly perk up at the ends.

There wasn't much colour, except for daffodils - and these stood proud and yellow and beautiful. But they did indeed haste away very soon, and in fact, dry daffodils are a sore sight.

As our stay progressed, the chill decreased, and fuzz started appearing on the trees. This was a unique sight in my eyes, because the trees weren't really bare any longer - it was like you weren't wearing spectacles - the branches were hazy.

We didn't go out much for a week, thanks to the rain and cold and other activities at home, and on the next drive to Sainsbury's, everything was astonishingly different. Green of all shades had burst forth and the landscape was choking with green. I couldn't even recognize the roads as the same we'd driven through before. Farms that I could see through hedges were now hidden, the hedges having sprouted new leaves.

And in a few weeks, the colours came. Bold, exquisite Magnolias, the prettiest cherry blossoms of a thousand colours, and much later, the loveliest laburnum and the strangely beautiful wisteria.
Names I'd only read came alive before my eyes.

The beauty of that country is remarkable. I think it makes more of an effect because there is so much of it in such little space. And to someone who likes green, it is paradise.

Representative photos of a tree in my aunt's backyard:

End of March


Mid April


End of May

But the associated problems with cold and wetness - I cannot get over how long it takes to get ready to step outside. And I'd thought that one coat would be enough - I realize now that you need coats of different textures and thicknesses for every consecutive day! And layering - such a pain, but the most sensible thing to do.

Sometimes it looks sunny, and out you go, and the moment the sun pops behind a cloud, you're all a-shiver, sure you'll freeze. The sun comes out in a minute, and you're fine again. Really, what does that country expect one to do?

I realized I was prone to chilblains. Waking up at midnight with my toes itching so much that I felt like biting them out.

And how many plans have been ruined by the weather? In India, we say, okay let's go to say, Nandi Hills this Saturday. And we go. In England, you think about having a picnic in either Reading or Maidenhead. open the weather website, check the weather. Saturday looks wet in Reading, wetter in Maidenhead. How about Sunday? Oh no it is very wet in Maidenhead but Reading looks fine. But very very cold. And windy. Hmmm. Let's postpone to next weekend.
I found it very funny initially how every plan first started with a visit to the weather website. At the end of my visit, I was at it too.

Nothing like travel to put things in perspective. The day I got back to Bangalore, I felt a warm breeze on my face and felt so wonderful. I went out, taking care to wear the lightest clothes, and felt the sun on my skin and the lightness of being that comes from wearing no extra layers of clothes! But I went out and got depressed about the smoke and the dust and the lack of greenery, things I'd not thought about at all before.

Next: Familiarity

Three good books

I've read more than a dozen books these two months. They've all been great, but there are three I just had to mention.

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh. One of the most engrossing books I've read. The characters just grab you by the collar and don't let go of you. Excellent writing, fabulous details - enough of them without it getting boring, and none of that flowery writing that gets in the way of a story. It transported me back two centuries to the time of the opium trade, and I was there, right there, with the characters.

I've spoken before of not liking it when I get to the midpoint of a good book, because it means it's getting over. This book was such that I actually put it down at midpoint, and picked up another book (the next on this list). But that book was so good that I finished it in no time, and I came back to Sea of Poppies. Sometime around now, I'd realized that this was the first part of a trilogy, with the other two yet to be published. So when I drew towards the end of the book, I decided to stop reading, and continue after the second part came out. But before I knew it, the pages turned on their own, and I flew to what I thought was the last chapter, only to read the title - "Acknowledgements". The book was over. I could have screamed. I could have torn my hair out. I could have rent the book into a thousand pieces. I was that mad. But all I did was put it away sorrowfully and look up Amitav Ghosh's email id to mail him and tell him, "Get on with the next book!"

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I picked up this book thinking that it will be slow reading, so that I could make Sea of Poppies last longer. But it was better than any thriller! I literally read it open-mouthed. The ideas and the writing are so clear, consice, incisive and they make so much sense, that I'm floored. Now I can't wait to get at his other books.

Three Men in a Boat (To Say nothing of the dog) by Jerome K Jerome - Now, this is one funny book. Barring one racist remark, and a few sentences that treat women with mild condescension, this book could have been written now. The humour is so relevant even 120 years after the book was published. That's probably because the author laughs mostly at human nature, and that, perhaps will never change! The events are most commonplace, but the way he writes about it is very good. This is one of the very few books I've read where I've actually caught myself laughing out loud, and in one case clutching my stomach while I laughed. Just this morning I was walking on the road when I remembered something from the book and grinned all by myself.

What made it nicer was that I now knew most of the places he talks about in the book, as he and his friends boat up to Oxford from London - all those places I've seen, including Reading, which he unkindly calls, among a multitude of other things, a dismal, dirty place. (It is not ;))

The UK files

Ok, I've put it off for too long, but finally I've got the urge to write all about our UK visit. It was a wonderful visit, something I'd been looking forward to for a long, long time. Of course, writing about it is going to be a long-drawn affair, interspersed with regular topics.

Puttachi and I landed on March 25th, and S~ joined us on April 30th. All of us returned to Bangalore on May 20th.

We stayed with my aunt near Reading. She is great company, and very inspiring. We had hours and hours of lovely long chats, she treated us to the most lipsmacking dishes (the visit was a foodlover's dream), and we watched hours of murder mysteries on television, and the entire series of Fawlty Towers. My cousin V and Puttachi had some good times together, though he is a very busy guy! My uncle and Puttachi got on famously, she telling him stories all the time. Many times, when we were watching/doing something particularly engrossing, and Puttachi was disturbing us, my uncle would slowly lure her away and listen to her non-stop-nonsense until she didn't care if we existed or not.

Their house has a beautiful garden, and we spent hours in it. Mostly watching my aunt garden, but helping out a bit too. There is something to be said for walking barefoot on grass. It is so rare for us to have that pleasure. Lawns in India have "Keep off the grass" boards - but naturally. How difficult it is to maintain a lawn here! But in England, lawns maintain themselves - and so we had some beautiful moments sitting on the grass (me) and rolling about (Puttachi).

My aunt took us to a number of places - very untouristy things, and made it a point to show me interesting things and explain them to me - things which gave me an idea of life in the UK.

Next: The green and the weather.

School update (after 2 months)

Nearly two months after Puttachi started school, she is well-settled. Apparently, she cried from time to time during the first month, but not any more. She likes going to school, fussing only on rainy mornings when even I feel like chucking everything and curling up to go back to sleep.

When she gets back, she is bursting to tell me what she did, what they learnt, what so-and-so said, and what X did to Y, and of course, what snacks they were given, and how many helpings she took. (Yes, she takes multiple helpings!)

She is full of news about her classmates, telling me in detail who sits where, and who wears her hair in ponytails and who doesn't. I had no idea kids chat - after all, what can a bunch of three-year-olds talk about? But apparently, they do, because she tells me what each of her friends said to her.

Since I speak to her only in Kannada at home, there was a time when I worried slightly that she would have a problem at school. I feel so silly now. Not even two months have passed and she has picked up so much English that I would've found it impossible to believe it had I not seen it myself.

Thanks to school, she is obsessed with colouring. She doesn't want to eat, sleep, or go to the toilet or do anything else, but colour. A friendly autorickshaw guy said to her yesterday, "Child, study well, okay?" She got down and told me, "Amma, I will study well, but I will also draw and colour, okay?"

Looks like she's having a wonderful time at school, and I only hope this lasts for the entire duration of her education!

Sins against Gender stereotypes

I know that everybody has done this tag and passed on to other things, but since RajK and Dhanya tagged me, here goes:

My sins against Gender stereotypes.:

Disclaimer: I think the lines have been blurred now, and many things that were considered masculine when I was a child aren't so any longer, and vice versa. Of course, there are thousands of other things that weren't considered feminine even about 50 years ago, which we don't think twice about doing now. So I'm going to let all that go, and make my list - of what I remember. (I'm suffering from severe memory loss these days)

1) I hate shopping. Enough said.
2) I dislike going to the parlour. But I go anyway.
3) I don't like jewellery on myself, or dressing up or making myself up. I feel like I've entered someone else's body.
4) I studied MTech in Energy Engg, which was apparently such a male field that Energy companies that came on campus for recruitment wouldn't even consider female applicants.
5) That didn't stop me from travelling alone with my male classmates to industries in different, isolated towns.
6)... and wear helmets and climb ladders to take energy efficiency measurements from burning boilers.
7) I don't set great store on celebrating my birthdays and anniversaries. S~ and I completed 5 years of marriage this week, and I didn't even remember that it was our anniversary. Ordinarily, once you reach the month of the anniversary, you are aware that a special day is coming up, even if you forget it on that very day. I didn't even remember that.
8) I once shocked my Township by insisting on shaking hands with the chief guest who was distributing prizes. He was shaking hands with all the men, but not with the women. Some silly Victorian rule, I tell you. I was a teenager, who liked handshakes, and so I shook his hand. Tongues wagged.
9) I prefer to listen in and participate in the conversations of men in a mixed gathering. I gravitate towards the men sometimes, but unfortunately, there are higher instances of when I stay with the women out of a sense of propriety. Indeed, there was a time when I preferred the company of men to women.
10) I've never shirked from physical labour, often being the one to move benches and lift heavy things while organizing things in school/college.
11) I don't like speaking on the phone for longer than 5 min. That is my limit.

One point five months of school

After one and a half months of school:

1) Puttachi goes willingly, and happily to school. She goes on about her friends in class and tells me nearly every detail about what they did in school. Many times I have to dig it out of her with questions, but usually, she offers all the information herself.

2) I can't believe I worried for a while about her not knowing English, since I speak to her entirely in Kannada. 1.5 months and she has picked up quite a bit of English, and tries very hard to carry on a conversation in English, consisting mainly of nouns, "ing" verbs and lots of actions.

Me: Puttachi, how did you hurt your knee?
She: School... running (runs around to show me how).... fall down (makes a shocked face and demonstrates)..... hurt (makes a sad face)... crying (demonstrates graphically, with sound effects).
Me: Aww, then?
She: Aunty.... not teacher, aunty (mimics the ayah (my guess)) come, don't cry, medicine.... then, abbu(hurt) go away!

This from someone who spoke next to no English on May 31st.

3) Went for the first parent-teacher meeting, where her teacher told me that she's settled in very well, except that in the beginning, she tended to cry for half a minute before every new activity! The teacher also said that she relishes her food (the school provides snacks - yummy, filling stuff), and always asks for second, and sometimes third helpings.

4) They've taught the kids to draw standing lines and sleeping lines. Armed with that, and also with previous knowledge of the English alphabet, Puttachi came to me demanding to be taught to write her own name. I indulged her, assuming that she couldn't possibly do it, but to my shock, she actually wrote down all the five letters of her (real) name! One of the letters bothered her, but with an easy trick I taught her, she wrote down that too. My daughter is literate ;)

Another little ray of sunshine

One of my stories is in the longlist of the Unisun short story competition.

I don't have too high expectations of it getting to the next level, considering the competition out there, but I'm pleased nevertheless.

To add to it, I got a mail from them offering me the chance to get the story published in their anthology. Now, that's interesting.