Dressing up

A cousin of mine, K has come to Chennai to join a biggie among the corporates. She started missing home and food and what-not within days of arriving. Having to do cross country in an unknown city and having to share roomspace with people not in her wavelength only worsened her home-sickness. Since Gin and me are playing unofficial local guardians to her, we told her to get home for the weekend to put some good food into her system - notice: the term ''good food'' is relative here considering that i am cooking. Also Christmas was on that weekend and imagine being away from home on that day . Appam and stew and biriyani are among the most missed on that day, for sure. Since i know the pinch of being in a hostel for Christmas i was most considerate and sympathetic to her. I was in a much more hostile situation and the terror of impending tests and quizzes where weighing heavily on me on that day 4 years back and eating the driest biriyani EVER only worsened my ache.

So to cut a long story short, K was promptly asked to land here on the day before christmas partially in love for her and partially because the lady who looks after Dan had gone home and i needed a helping hand around *you can see my halo thinning,isnt it??*

I was supposed to pick her up at the local railway station and just few minutes before her train s supposed to arrive, i realised that i had to dress Dan up and get REAL quick. So i put on him anything i could found in my way, and managed to get out after locking the house balancing him on one hand :) on the way to the station, i looked at Dan and cringed at what i had put on him..

A green tee with a checkered napkin,blue socks and a yellow skull cap.. Whew. Guess my dress sense has gone to the dogs.. Thankfully nobody notices this in our small town and i couldn't remove it without clicking a picture. Now when he is 7 and makes a big scene to wear a pink shorts *shudders* with a green tee, i will know whom to blame..... Hmmmmmmmm

My solace being.. Babies are perfect, just the way they are...

A Letter

To whom-so-ever it may concern,

Sir,the next time you decide to purchase some of those heavy duty machines, for your state-of-the-art, modern, newly built factory, please keep in mind the following matters.

1.Buy machines that will run smoothly atleast for the first few years from the date of purchase.
2.If that is highly impossible then make sure that they will run without a problem for a few days after they are painstakingly repaired.
3.If all these doesnt work, the next time you construct a factory, make sure it is at a place where there is recent reception for mobile network providers.

All these would make my husbands and my life much simpler. My husband tends to hide in the factory of yours for hours together in the name of a breakdown and since the signal is soo poor, i hardly get any information too.He completely forgets about the wife because if the production runs lower than the required standard; yours and subsequently our income will be in jeopardy,he gets phone calls at Godforsaken hours of the night and wee hours of the morning about the breakdown and runs off to the factory as if his life is dependent on it... And on the nights he gets back home after getting the machine repaired he will be on the phone for hours together following up. Thank God for books, or else i would have died of boredom and ignorance ;-)
And for statictics, there has been a breakdown E.V.E.R.Y single day of this week. That is on,Sunday,Monday,Tuesday and Wednesday-for clarification.....

So for our marital harmony and for my peace of my mind, please please please do make sure you buy sturdy, reliable machines the next time you shell out your money... The current set you have is no good at all...

Yours faithfully,

The wife of one of your sincere employee

On Home-front

Come to think about it, i havent stayed in one house for more than a year since 2007,March. Every 6 or so months i used to be uprooted to another place- some wantedly and the others totally against my will.

I have stayed in 3 different houses at Mangalore in my 2 year stint there,and none could be exactly called a home. Though the first and the last ones were a close call. And when i moved to Durban with Gin, it was to be my first home. Which Gin and me would set up to our hearts content, decide where the sofa should go and which color curtain should match for our bedroom. Though Gin had done all the baisc purchases i still had room for a lot of changes. I enjoyed moving the sofa to this angle and the other, stocking the fridge and making lists for stuffs to buy when we go out.

I was totally cut for this new role- though it lasted only for a short while in Durban. We had to move back to Chennai on a short notice. Though the time we spend there after the news, were nerve-wrecking, tension filled days we managed to find fun in that too. I mean, today we laugh at all that we did then due to sheer desperation!!!!!!! But isnt there something special about that first house. You tend to remember the look and the feel of every room, the smell that assosiated with it. How you beamed like a proud parent when someone complemeted on some aspect of the house. And how you and your spouse broke your head over buying a particular merchendise and the satisfation you got when you reached at a common decision..Since then we have stayed in 2 other houses,still I miss 1602, Kensignton Heights very much, because it was cut just for a couple. Sweet and small and comfy and that was to be the first home i set up with Gin.

And back we came to Chennai after 3 months of Durban stint, to start house hunting ,because that was where the husband was posted. It was me who zeroed in on the house that we finally decided on,still i never got attatched to that house. Now thinking back, i am glad that we got off from there. The house was too big for the 2 of us and it didnt have a homely feeling. It still felt like we lived out of suitcases. It must have been pure hormones too... I found fault with everything. The road, the dogs, the stray cows and even the frogs that used to crock non-stop in the nights. I hated the smell of the house and every thing associated.... After 2 months of staying there i left for Mangalore to join back at work and to get a transfer to CHennai... Though i missed Gin by the gallon, it was good riddance to the house. I came back for a week in between for a bewak and then after a month or so i got transfered to Chennai from Mangalore.

Finally for the sake of my travel to office we shifted house in mere 4 months. And well, all the packing, shifting, unpacking and cleaning was done by Gin alone. He really needs to get all the credit. And a wonderful job he did.

The new house we are in now is one i can call home after 1602. The place is small. The little stuffs we have perfectly fit into every nook and corner of it- but the husband has cramped 80% of the furniture into the bed room in the name of summer. We no more live out of suitcase, there is place for everything-the keys, the socks , the footwear :) And yes, we have started to frame photos too!!!!!!

In March i was scared that we lost all the Durban photos which was on my phone- some smart-dude decided to run away with my bag from the train and hence lost the phone too:(, but it was not to be. Thanks to my compulsive backing up of the phone. So here i leave with snaps, of the view from our home there... 1602 - you are thorougly missed