Forever Gundu Bedalam

They say that once you hit your late 20s to mid-30s, you only grow sideways. For me, however, this has held true for my entire life.

From being called "Gundu Bedalam", short for "G.B.", "chubby", "plump" and "soooo cuuutte", with both the rasgullas (otherwise known as cheeks) being pulled violently on my face, I absolutely hated these nicknames.

As a child, I loved swimming and eating with equal passion. I would swim for an hour and eat for an hour without a care in the world. The waiters at Madras Gymkhana Club knew my post-swim menu by heart: butter naan or bhature, chilli chicken and one Feast or Cornetto, with one glass of bright orange, overly sweet Cricket to wash it all down.

The swim was probably just an excuse to eat. I can't really confirm.

While the girls in school ran behind all the supposedly tall football players from the boys' school, I was running to the bakery and the hole-in-the-wall shop less than 500 metres away from school to eat cakes, Boomer bubble gums and an iced juice shaped like a long stick inside a flimsy plastic wrapping.

I watched all that puppy romance happening around me while stuffing my face with food and waiting for either the army school bus to leave or for the seniors in the higher classes to finish their respective romances, so that we could go home in Daddy's personal chauffeur-driven army car.

Summer vacations with my grandparents, gorgeous cousins and sibling also panned out something like this. I would eat endlessly at Ammumma's dining table along with my tall, lassy cousin, and my dad would walk into the room and say, "You stop eating and you continue eating."

No prizes for guessing who each piece of advice was thrown at.

As a young adult, my parents would look at little round girls and say, "Oh look, a sweet little girl who looks just like Gayatri did as a baby."

Sigh!

Perhaps my self-respect, my ego and my sense of self took a beating, because my adulthood has been dedicated to vigorous cardio, weight training and bouts of starvation whenever the weighing scale starts ringing alarm bells.

Now, fat is beautiful, apparently, and we mustn't body-shame anyone — least of all, ourselves.

So I've finally stopped, in the last maybe three or four years, and accepted myself — wobbly bits and all. The jiggles and the imperfections make us whole.

So, just like most things in my life that I can't control — people's opinions, the weather and my son — I've decided to make peace with my weight.

Here I am, a reformed fattie, who will always be "Gundu Bedalam" in my heart

Women, Leadership and Keeping Our Feet Firmly on the Ground

Most of my conversations with my newly made friend Preethi make it to my writing. This is yet another one of those pieces. We recently had a discussion about how women, especially women in leadership positions, must not brag about their roles and achievements across organisations. Let me explain.

For years, women have made a ruckus about the unfair practices of the patriarchy. Now let me ask you, how did the patriarchy come into place in the first place? Because of the existence of a patriarchal system, women, for centuries, were expected to stay at home and be nurturers and caregivers. This was accepted for God knows how many hundreds of years.

Now, perhaps one of these women decided to step out and become a breadwinner alongside her husband or partner one day. Thanks to that one woman, the rest of us women today have the opportunity to follow suit. Perhaps that one revolutionary woman faced a lot of backlash because she decided to step away from the mould.

Keeping this history in mind, and the years of struggle that she, along with dozens of women before and after her, endured, is all the more reason for us womenfolk to stay grounded the more we rise in our professions. To remain approachable and friendly, and to step in and lend a hand whenever asked, must remain our focus.

Anything else, which includes bragging about our achievements and, worst of all, male-bashing, is not something we must indulge in.

Perhaps I've been blessed to have married a wonderfum man, been raised by even more great men and, hopefully, am raising one too. Men are our allies, not the enemy.

As long as we're clear about all of these points, we're good to go. So, repeat after me now: no bragging about work, because no one will remember you for anything other than being an arrogant prick then (excuse my language), and definitely no male-bashing — not today or any other day, for that matter.

On that note, here's to achieving even more wonderful things, with our heads and feet firmly planted on planet Earth and not floating around in some other galaxy.

Baileys, Cocktails and My Complete Inability to Handle Alcohol

Drinking and I do not see eye to eye. I've always been a sloppy drunk. Similar to eating, I just gulp down my sweet liquors and cocktails and, before you know it, I'm fast asleep. I'd like to take you back down memory lane and narrate the time I discovered Baileys.

It coincided with my brother's wedding in 2008. I would drink about four or five shots in quick succession, go to the topmost floor of the house and just fall into a deep sleep, much like Kumbhakarna.

And hell hath no fury like a mommy scorned. I was subjected to a lot of scolding by the mothership back then.

"Shameless girl! It's your brother's wedding and you're fast asleep. Who is going to serve all the guests now?" And more along those lines.

I would shove two pillows — one over my head and one underneath it — to muffle her screechy voice and drift back into a gorgeous, whiskey-and-cream-induced Baileys sleep.

I drank so much Baileys in my 20s that I'm now sick of cream- and whiskey-based sweet liquors. Amarula, Sheridan's and anything else sweet with cream inside make me completely sick.

Cocktails are another ballgame altogether — which I discovered make me cry really hard. My head suddenly becomes as dark as the darkest piece of charcoal, and unless I'm stuffed with 10 slices of pizza and a gigantic, sinful dessert at the end of that pizza, I'm not happy again.

The next day is a nightmare. I feel like a stuffed python whose victim is still alive inside its entire body, and I'm walking around like a headless chicken.

Therefore, drinking in general makes me quite scared. I enjoy it only momentarily, while admiring the pretty cocktail glass and the colour of the mix inside. The hours that follow are a complete blur.

And that's my embarrassing, "unable to handle my alcohol" story for you.

My Very Low-Maintenance Formula for Happiness

I'm a very simple person when it comes to attaining happiness, de-stressing, unwinding, relaxing and cutting loose. All I have to do is drown my face in a bowl of ghee-induced or milk-induced sugar aka gajar halwa, moong dal halwa, rabdi or palada payasam.

The next option is throwing me into a deep pool, and I can swim for hours without a care in the world. Very low-maintenance happiness techniques, I'd like to call them.

Crappy day at home, at work, with the Mini or feeling suicidally depressed? I just have to pick from the very short, carefully curated list mentioned above.

Take me out on a Friday evening and I can eat an entire restaurant without blinking an eyelid. Now, that's de-stressing for me — a pile of food, deep-fried and sugary, carbs and non-carbs. I can have it all.

What's your quick mantra for happiness? I'm curious to know. Hit me with a comment below.

What Does a Child from a House of Death Look Like?

Let me tell you what a child from a house of death looks like.

He's confident, has extreme separation anxiety, is overgrown and can regress into a clingy toddler in seconds. He has a say in every adult decision and is empathetic beyond his years. He senses shifts in moods, is adjusting, accommodating and, overall, a champ in general.

Now, I may be biased because I'm talking about my own miniature. But from the moment his father died, he simply accepted it in his two-year-old brain and moved on without too much of a hue and cry.

The only time I've seen him make a fuss was when I had to drag him from the arms of a relative and make him see his father's body one last time before I took him to the crematorium. He screamed his head off and refused to look at his father in that moment.

Somehow, his baby brain erased the fact that his father was no more.

What followed were persistent questions about where his father had vanished to.

"If Baba has gone to God, why hasn't he taken his suitcase with him?"

"Can you tell me Baba die story?"

"Will you also vanish inside the office like Baba did?"

"Shall I go up to God and punch Baba on his stomach and make him come back down?"

I really had no answers in that moment as a heartbroken widow. I didn't bother answering them, and I didn't bother staying around to listen to my parents answer all his questions either.

Mad, mad months that dragged on for a substantial amount of time — that's how I remember the early days of grief for my toddler and me.

Five years later, when I ask him whether he misses his father, he says, "Not really. But I think I'd like to have a father."

Sigh.

The guilt of failing him as a mother hits me hard from time to time. I wonder why I had to marry a man who had to drop dead just as my child needed him the most.

So that's a child of grief for you — mature, sensible and wise beyond his years.

He knows what mood I'm in simply by looking at my face. He kisses me on my cheeks and pats my head as I drown myself in work and tells all his teachers at school, "My mumma is very, very busy, all the time."

Cue the infinite sighs now.

It is what it is.

The wheels of our life will keep turning only as long as I stay busy, and it's a reality my child and I accepted a long time ago.

My 40th Birthday Wish: An Item Girl Moment, Please

My wish for my 40th birthday is to perform a fully choreographed song, shuffling between “Sweet but Psycho” by Ava Max and “Tu Cheez Badi Hai Mast Mast”, complete with multiple costume changes.

Basically, I want to live out my item girl dreams in reality because I’m just not finding the time to actually go down and audition or meet casting agents during the week, thanks to mum and work duties.

Okay, that’s a lie.

Here’s the truth: I’m already cutting myself up into different parts — there’s the mum bit, the corporate slave bit, the 10,000-things-that-catch-my-fancy bit…

That being said, seeing myself on the big screen (my living room television will also do; I’ll be equally elated) has always been an unfulfilled dream. There’s a handful of people who don’t look at me like I’m completely delusional when I say this out loud.

So, that’s my birthday wish.

I want to break a leg and create a high-energy, high-octane, full-of-beans, high-on-sugar dance video that I can watch on repeat until the day I die — and be ridiculously proud of myself.

There is, however, one rather important point to note here.

I have two left feet.

And on the rare, once-in-a-blue-moon occasion that I go dancing at a club, I can barely get out of bed the next day because my knees hurt, along with my back.

On one such occasion, I got stepped on pretty hard on the dance floor. I turned around, ready to scream at the chap who had inflicted this grievous injury upon me, only to realise he was absolutely pissed drunk and had no idea what was happening around him.

So I hobbled back to the humble couch of that well-lit, spacious restobar — Macaw in Sholinganallur — lifted my broken foot onto the couch, admired my Tinker Bell tattoo for a good two minutes and proceeded to stuff my face with some lovely deep-fried chicken starters.

And yet, here I am.

While my item girl dreams may have long sailed out the window, how feasible is this choreographed dance video for my 40th?

Please drop words of encouragement only in the comments section below.

The Monday After a Long Weekend

The Monday that follows immediately after a long weekend really is a drag. It’s equivalent to eating a sizzling brownie without ice cream, gajar halwa minus a generous dousing of ghee, or idli without chutney — you get the drift. It truly sucks all our souls dry — this particular Monday has us scratching our heads mournfully, wondering what the meaning of life is.

Mini and I shuffled our feet back into a whole week of work and school — me pretending to be happy and him being grouchy (but nothing new there when it comes to his emotions regarding school and working days, with or without a lovely long weekend).

I’ve decided to dive deep into it and count the hours down to 6 pm, because the only way through pain is the pain itself. Let’s survive this Monday and stare at our holiday calendars with hope and desire for the next bunch of long weekends and holidays that are fast approaching us over the coming weeks.

We’ve got this, ladies and gents — with and without sugar. I’m still off sugar, by the way, only on the weekdays. Weekend sugars don’t count.

Apparently, We Need Another Baby

I've perhaps reached yet another parenting milestone, similar to the path my mother took over 48 years ago, when her firstborn kept insisting that he wanted another sibling.

My child has been having his second-sibling talk for over a year now, and the questions and requests are quite persistent, ranging from, "Can you grow another baby in your tummy for me?" to, "So what if we don't have a father? Can't you make a little baby brother for me?"

And let me tell you, most of these very intimate questions are asked in the middle of very public spaces — at a play zone, inside a cab, in a restaurant. I'm pretty sure we're scandalising other children, parents, cab drivers, waiters and entire families.

"What will happen if the father dies one day after the baby comes out of the Mumma's tummy?"

"I think I want a father too."

When the questions and requests get more and more complex, I offer to take him to my gynaecologist, who can explain our situation to him in much more graphic detail.

I mentioned this conversation to my good friend of over a decade, and she said, "Yes, Gayatri, we've had this conversation before, remember? We both wanted baby #2."

The yearning for baby #2 started about a year and a half after I had my first. My late husband looked petrified at the mere mention of it, and before I could blink an eyelid, he was gone. So perhaps that yearning will only remain a yearning — in this lifetime, at least.

My urge to be a mother was always greater than my urge to be a wife or a corporate slave. I'm happy to give it all up and stay at home like a golden goose, hatching one little baby after another and cooking elaborate meals for them.

Here's the catch, though: I still haven't mastered the art of cooking for the existing fruit of my loins. He calls my cooking "a piece of poop", "garbage" and "rotten".

So while the mother in me probably cries herself to sleep a little every night, somewhere between the yearning and the guilt of not being able to produce baby #2, I'm grateful for baby #1, at least, who is quite a handful.

As always, I choose the path of counting all my existing blessings and keep moving forward — for that's the only logical course of action: to always keep moving forward.

In the meantime, if anyone wants babysitting duties, I'm always around, along with my mini-me, who is obsessed with all babies and little children.

A Saturday of Puppets, Butter Chicken, Lego and Tesla Dreams

Riaan and I have had one of those crazy-busy yet extremely fun days with our favourite girls, Shina and Samara.

We started off with a children's show called "The Room of Memories", a sweet, magical theatre production put together by Andrea Fedi, also known as Katastrofa Clown. We spent a little over an hour watching puppetry, huge dancing soap bubbles, magic and a spectacular dancing balloon, all brought together with an incredible amount of energy by the artist.

Next, we headed to Punjab Grill and stuffed our faces silly with some authentic Punjabi food, starting with creamy butter chicken, melt-in-your-mouth paneer tikka cubes and flavourful garlic naans. We washed it all down with a refreshing fresh lime soda called Shikanji, mixed with some delectable street-style spices that cleansed our palates just in time for some sinful Anjeer Rabdi, which transported us straight to seventh heaven.

Next, we got completely lost trying to find the Tesla Experience Centre, because apparently there is a future Elon Musk in our little circle. My son. Yes, there is a very overly ambitious middle-class Indian mother in the house. He asked me if I would get him a Tesla by the end of the day, to which Shina promptly informed him that he must buy one Tesla each for all of us as well.

Once the Tesla purchasing debate was over, we continued being hopelessly lost inside the mall and decided to head to the Lego Store, as Samara desired. The kids loitered around, and so did we. After a selfie or two and a few unnecessary purchases later, we finally discovered where the Tesla Experience Centre was.

My son shot towards the store like his bum had caught fire. He immediately began explaining all about the different car models and their mechanics, much to the amusement of the receptionist at the store. We finally managed to squeeze inside one of the cars and click another picture or two.

Shina and I warned both our tiny humans to touch absolutely nothing, because we are both at that stage of our lives where we can probably only afford to fill the tyres of a Tesla with air. So any damage to the car would have dire consequences for our already burdened wallets.

And alas, all good things must come to an end.

After more than half a day of eating, wandering, shopping, getting lost, talking and laughing together, we finally decided to part ways and catch up again soon.

That was my Saturday morning, afternoon and almost evening for you.

How did you spend your weekend? Let me know in the comments section below.

Bethlehem Kudumba Unit: A Small Story with a Ginormous Heart

A tried-and-tested formula of an age-gap romance portrayed beautifully is how I can best describe "Bethlehem Kudumba Unit" in one sentence.

I turned it on at 7 a.m. this morning and couldn't stop watching until the very last scene — zero pee and water breaks. That's how sweet this movie was.

Nivin Pauly's role as Justin, the older, gruff brother who gets involved in everyone's life issues and somehow finds a way to solve them, has been performed with such ease by the veteran actor. Mamitha Baiju, as Ashley, Justin's smitten, much younger yet ballsy secret girlfriend, has enacted her role superbly.

What a beautiful start to my long weekend.

My mood is light, my mind is inspired to write simple yet wholesome scripts like this, with just the right dash of family, drama and comedy thrown in together. Something like a comforting bowl of poha that you know can't hurt you on a weekend morning — or any morning, for that matter.

I could understand Justin's yearning as a grieving boyfriend who lost his fiancée many years ago. Like many people dealing with grief, he buried himself in work and built his local catering business quite successfully.

When the family opposes their relationship, he holds Ashley's hands and bids her farewell as she leaves for Ireland to pursue her higher studies.

Their reunion two years later, at Justin's younger brother's wedding, is shown so naturally that your heart can't help but experience a warm little tingle.

Yet another small story with a ginormous heart — that's another way to describe "Bethlehem Kudumba Unit".

I also couldn't help noticing how the men in the film pursue the women they love. In its own subtle way, the movie seems to say something rather lovely to women: you don't always have to chase. Leave some of that chasing to the man who truly loves you and wants to build a life with you. The right person will move heaven and earth to be with you, while also being secure enough to step aside and let you flourish.

Now that's true love. Not the other nonsensical song-and-dance involving a transparent saree under the rain. 

I highly recommend watching "Bethlehem Kudumba Unit" for an instant mood lift.

It was as sweet as the moong dal halwa I eat once a week without a shred of guilt.

(Image sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlehem_Kudumba_Unit)

Happiness Is a Choice

From waking up screaming over lucid dreams about my late husband five years ago, to waking up disoriented and wondering what the dream was all about in the first place, I've come a long way. There's a calm in my dreams now when he's around. Two days ago, I dreamt of him laughing, smiling and mingling with people at a social gathering.

The thrower of house parties — he simply loved them. Friends would come and stay all night, and sometimes even the morning after. Legendary house parties is how I can best describe them now. Do I have the bandwidth, energy or interest to throw any of those now? Absolutely not, because I'm not in my late 20s anymore.

The point is, his dimples are still there and he's happy, which means I'm probably as happy as I can be as well, at this particular stage of my life — with and without dramatic conversations with my 7-year-old.

Talking about that 7-year-old, he told me very plainly two nights ago, "Most of my body has been given to me by my father — my blood group, my face, my ears — but from the inside, Maamaa, my insides are all you."

So, for the sake of my child, whose insides I've apparently created, I choose calm and collected over the grief-ridden, disoriented, heartbroken widow I once was. Phone calls with me five years ago would break people's hearts because I would talk utter rubbish. There was no method to my madness; it was just madness.

Spirit communication and wondering why I was left to live while my heart was ripped away from my soul were the only two things that occupied my mind. And then work happened, and my grief took a more focused direction. I was crying only over weekends now and occasionally felt heavy boulders in my chest, each time I saw a management consultant in the office.

As I was saying, happiness — it truly is a choice. It's all about how you set the tone for your mood and your day at 5 AM.

For example, today I've woken up feeling like I could have slept some more, and I'm still vaguely recalling that all-night dream I had about my late husband sometime over the course of this week. But I choose happiness today, and for this entire weekend.

Rasa Gulla: The Song I Can't Decide Whether to Love or Hate

This annoyingly catchy song has been stuck in my head ever since I heard it last weekend — "Rasgulla" from the movie "Hi". Pronounced as “Rasa” “Gulla”.

Honestly, one half of me wants to catch hold of whoever wrote this song and say, “How dare you compare a woman to a rasgulla, you buffoon?” The other half wishes, “Why can’t someone write a song like this for me?”

I’m so confused about whether I love or hate this song, but the fact of the matter is, I cannot stop listening to it for the life of me.

The song glorifies the boy’s unrequited love for the girl. He considers her to be a gift sent straight from heaven, and he sings, “Nandri Arogaraa, for my Nayantharaa!”

At this point, I’m not sure whether to tear out my exactly two strands of hair or rewind the song and listen to it again — audio and video intact, mind you.

So, listen to "Rasa Gulla" today and let me know whether you’re equally annoyed and amused by it, or whether you simply love it and want to sing it for your crush.