Cry First, Halwa Later

I'm going to openly admit this now: I've been a cry baby all my life.

One good cry session later, I'm ready to take on the world again. It's also quite easy to piss me off. Comment on my clothes, how I look, what I did — finished. The waterworks begin, with full force and instantly. My tears could put Madras Corporation water-tanker lorries to shame.

In the past five years, it goes without saying, I've cried worse than a newborn baby. But there's no one around to pat me on the back and put me back to sleep, so I self-soothe. A cookie or two, maybe a 250-gram box of moong dal halwa or gajar halwa, and I'm absolutely healed from whatever trauma was playing in my head.

No tears mean a lot of suppressed rage, and I don't do rage well. So I'd rather bawl like a baby and then transform back into my super-chatty, all-is-well-with-the-world self.

There's so much pain and suffering in the world, and I think we humans are experts at clinging to every single misery we experience in our lives. Perhaps we even blow some of it out of proportion, making it much bigger and heavier than it actually is.

Crying gives me peace, and so I'll always choose the cry-baby path.

For everything else, there's sugar.

However, if weight loss is your goal, I highly recommend only crying and then eventually falling asleep.

The Great Blister Battle: Ekalavya Without Dronacharya

My right thumb has a big, ugly yellow blister today, and I've had to type, eat, feed a tiny human, pack the aforementioned human's tiffin box, and tackle a whole list of activities for the day.

I feel like a Dronacharya-less Ekalavya today. Apparently, every single finger on our hands is important — even typing this piece out is painful.

I either scraped it yesterday while picking up dumbbells from my dumbbell rack or while latching cupboard doors. The blister is ugly and yellow. On a scale of 10, I'd rate the pain a solid 7.5 (the remaining 2.5 is me pretending to be Xena the Warrior Princess for the day).

I've been told to apply Vicks or Tiger Balm by the mothership. I'm hoping that works. Otherwise, I'll continue to be a useless Ekalavya who didn't even master archery for the week.

Not being able to scoop up food while eating has been my greatest sorrow today. My bite sizes are so tiny, I could cry.

Go away, blister! Shoo! Scram!

Life Before Kids: Did That Life Even Exist?

As my oldest mom friend in the city, or better known as Agu's mom, and I discussed just yesterday morning — what exactly was our life before our kids came along? We don't even remember it anymore.

For me, it was a whirl of late-night/early-morning parties with my ex-colleagues, occasional getaways from the city with other married friends, and a whole lot of waiting around for my husband to return from whichever dreamy city he had travelled to for the week or month.

I was alone before my Riaan came along. And once he did, I forgot all about my travelling husband — the human who helped me create my most important human.

Suddenly, my days were filled with spilt coffee, baby vomit, zero sleep and weight gain — so much weight gain that I could put a baby walrus to shame. *Grunt grunt.*

Close to eight years later, I don't even remember a life without my son. My days are so jam-packed with school and office that I don't run on caffeine anymore. I survive by counting down the hours to 9 p.m., when I'll finally go to sleep and hopefully wake up only at 5 a.m.

A life before children feels like a distant honeymoon. Were we even alive? And I'm sure Agu's mom, and every other mom on the planet, will agree with me.

This is the life — a blur of activity upon activity until our brain feels like a blur itself.

I'm finally off to bed now. I've survived yet another day!

Onto the next one.

A Small Film With a Big Heart

A small film with a big heart. Sounds super clichéd even as I write that sentence down, but honestly, that's exactly what *Modha Rathri* is all about.

A groom from Dubai named Maruthu and a bride named Muthu from a small village are forced into an arranged marriage. Here's the plot twist, though: the groom doesn't want to get married because of the trauma of losing his late girlfriend, who died by suicide after her family opposed their relationship. The bride, on the other hand, is madly in love with her boyfriend of a few years and is constantly trying to flee from her own wedding.

On their first night, Maruthu catches Muthu red-handed inside their attached bathroom, trying to escape through a hole in the bathroom wall. What ensues is a madcap, subtle romantic comedy involving Muthu's current boyfriend dumping her, Maruthu's family getting hold of Muthu's farewell note to her family, and a priest who intervenes and tries to convince both families to simply accept the newlywed couple.

The movie ends with Muthu complaining about her entire life to an obviously mildly lovestruck Maruthu, while the cot meant for their first night is promptly carted in front of them by the carpenter.

As the movie ends, with the newly married couple laughing at each other, you, as the viewer of this harum-scarum movie, will also end up laughing.

Like I mentioned already, a sweet little small movie with a big heart is what you'll find upon watching *Modha Rathri*.

Image sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modha_Rathri 

How to Avoid Becoming Cranky Sebastian

Slow weekends are extremely important for a “brain reset”, “energy recharge”, “shake it all off and look forward to a brand-new week” vibe.

I don’t know about you, but if my weekends are jam-packed with activities and I don’t catch blissful 40-minute-long siestas on both days, I stroll into the new week like a crabby crab.

Picture a very cranky Sebastian snapping at Ariel everywhere, instead of having perky conversations with her. I would be cranky Sebastian.

Why not Ariel, you ask? Well, I love my sugars far too much to ever look like Ariel — in this lifetime or the next. I wonder what she eats all day long for that banging figure. Seaweed?

I digress, as always.

Coming back to the topic at hand — slow weekends, with or without sugar, but definitely with two solid afternoon siestas — are very important for me. They ensure I can fart out jasmine-scented farts and poop rainbows for the rest of the week. You get the picture.

I did a beachy breakfast this weekend with a dear old friend on Sunday and went crazy inside a playzone on Saturday. All in all, a slow weekend indeed.

What do you do to reset your mind and body after a strenuous work week? Drop a comment below and let me know.

The Polar Bear Life Is Looking Increasingly Attractive

As I walked to my parents' house this morning, I walked past a group of very fit middle-aged uncles (cough, cough — sudden realisation that I'm middle-aged too as I write this sentence) and immediately felt a sense of guilt for piling on a solid 4 kilos this week at work.

The food consumed — infinite cups of sugary filter coffee, tea, and tea-time snacks ranging from sundal, bread and chilli pakoda to cookies of every variety, along with one healthy bowl thrown somewhere in the middle of all that — it's quite natural that the weighing scale would slap me nicely across the face.

My once tucked-away double chin is now prominently hanging down, and I look pregnant with food babies — two months minimum.

It's not a good look on me overall. This whole going-to-office-and-working vibe, along with the eating-out-of-boredom vibe, doesn't suit me at all.

I couldn't weight train today, and even 3-kilo dumbbells felt like agony. The insides of my mouth feel so parched, I could put the Sahara Desert to shame.

Post 11 a.m., the office air conditioning gets so hideously freezing cold that even polar bears from Antarctica would run away from sitting at that desk and working.

On that note, I'd choose the polar bear life over the 9-to-6 in-office grind. I definitely resemble one now.

I wonder how expensive it is to build igloos.

The Bad-Boy Biker I Was Searching For Was Me All Along

Losing my husband five years ago was equivalent to losing parts of myself. Thirteen years with one human being is short when compared to marriages that last for fifty years and beyond. Our bittersweet love story hit an abrupt halt with his passing, and I have felt a vacuum ever since.

The past five years have been deeply lonely yet liberating, chaotically busy yet empowering. All this alone time with a chattering little baby has given me a brand-new perspective on life.

I realised the bad-boy, tattooed guitarist and biker I was searching for in a partner was actually me all along. I am that bad boy (in a woman's body)—free of spirit and mind, always ready to explore the unknown, and forever twenty-one in my head.

As a good friend mentioned to me a mere month after my husband's passing, "You are Poopie now, Gayatri. He will remain inside you forever." ("Poopie" was the pet name my late husband and I called each other.)

Five years later, I couldn't agree more. Here I am, getting one tattoo after another, chugging espresso, and chomping down Portuguese custard tarts—my late husband would have cried laughing. I realise my taste in food was always his, in fact. Except for my love for butter chicken, of course—no one can take that away from me, not even him!

There is always a silver lining to human misery, and mine was finding myself. My inner voice tells me to survive, to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and to take it one day at a time.

I don't overthink things deeply anymore. I simply flow with life and trust my gut feeling about people and situations.

Let a Woman Go Wild for Lunch

Let a woman go wild for lunch and she will. I purposely didn't pack lunch from home today and rediscovered my two long-lost best friends — carbs and sugar.

Started off very healthy, of course, with a dish called a "breakfast bowl". True to its name, it had just the right amount of protein, perfect to kickstart the day, which I decided to eat for lunch today.

Then I moved on to a bakery right next door and popped in a butter chicken croissant, chilli chicken quiche, a dark chocolate cookie and a hazelnut cappuccino.

Ah, the beauty of slow lunches bang in the middle of a typical working day — what a pleasure! This world is brand new to me, thanks to my remote-working setup for the past two years, which has abruptly come to an end.

To take myself out like this on solo dates, people-watch and eat like a little piggy. Sigh and sigh! This is the life.

For the next 30-odd minutes, I'm not going to think about the pile of documents waiting for me on multiple trackers to sort out and complete.

For now, I'm a free bird, flying wild, wilder than the great blue skies can envelop me in. On that note, no wonder my personal trainer wants to quit on me.

Her question of, "Why don't you ever lose weight?" has finally been answered in one gluttonous working afternoon.

When the World Assumes Every Child Has Two Parents

My 7-year-old had to write an essay on his parents for his English test earlier this month, and he wrote about his father in the present tense.

“My father’s name is Raj and he is a musician,” he wrote.

Perhaps it was easier for him not to bother explaining to all and sundry that his father has been long gone now. When I asked him why he had written about his late father in the present tense and not in the past, he replied very logically, “But that would not have answered the question, Mumma.”

And the rest of the essay spoke about his activities with me. Mumma took precedence after that one sentence about his late father.

The world simply does not accept or include families like mine, where there is just one parent and that is the reality. I have lost track of the number of times I have walked into a Passport Seva office or an Aadhaar office trying to explain that I am the only surviving parent today and that there is no point having his father’s childhood home address on those documents.

I have to take his death certificate, our marriage certificate and my child’s birth certificate to explain our current family dynamics, and even then, his late father’s address and mobile number are firmly plastered across those documents.

For the longest time, his school ID card had “Deceased” listed under the parent’s name. After I raised the issue with his very supportive teachers at school, his current ID has no mention of a parent and simply has my mobile number on it.

I stumbled upon an Instagram post about the importance of fathers and how important it is to celebrate them while they are alive. All valid points.

But what about a very young mother with an even younger child who had to double up and be both parents? Where are the celebratory posts for a single mother? Or a single father, for that matter?

It is time the world accepted all sorts of families — families like mine. It is time to stop simply assuming that a family has both parents and asking a 7-year-old to write an essay on the topic of “Parents”.

Thank God my child is more logical than me. The very question stung me, but my little grandfather-child handled it in Rajinikanth style, as always. I’m assuming my child’s mind-voice when he read that question was, “En vazhi, thani vazhi.”

What a champ this mini-man of mine is. All heart when heart is needed and all logic when logic is needed.

I couldn’t be more proud.

The Tale of Two Offices

The tale of two offices — one of many work anecdotes from the city I have called home for most of my life.

My current office, coincidentally, happens to be on the exact same road as my very first PR office in 2012 — the erstwhile Hanmer MSL, now rebranded as MSLGROUP.

The point is, this afternoon, post-lunch, I sat inside one of the cafes on this burgeoning, bustling road to have a cup of coffee and kill my lunch break.

As I sat there staring into space and wondering why I was wasting so much money on bad-tasting filter coffee, a familiar voice and a hand slapped me from behind. I turned around and bumped into an old colleague from 14 years ago, whom I ended up chatting with for a solid 10 minutes, much to the annoyance of the friend she had come to lunch with.

I spoke endlessly, as though I had met my long-lost sister, because that's honestly who she is — home, from another time and place. She chuckled throughout our conversation and ended with, “I love how unhinged you are, Gayatri.”

I replied even faster: “Since 1987, Saloni. Since 1987.”

Home away from home — that's what all my colleagues have been, both past and present. Especially the ones from the past, when my unfiltered mouth was truly appreciated.

Aaah! To be a trainee again — what joy!

Now I'm just lucky to still be employed with the mouth on me.

Here's to many more hot coffee afternoons and unexpectedly bumping into dear old colleagues from the past.

The Artists Who Make Us Feel Like Divas

A moment of appreciation for these artists called hairstylists. I've written about this talented breed plenty of times, and today, I'd like to mention my latest one, whom I've been going to religiously ever since they first opened their salon in Adyar.

I'm talking about Bon Bomb Hair and the enterprising husband-and-wife duo who own and run it — Lucy and Siam.

Like all my hairstylists over the years, these two have also put up with all my eccentric requests — make my short hair even shorter, give me bounce with the two little twigs I have on my crown, colour it purple, colour it another shade of purple... My requests have gotten crazier and crazier with time, and Lucy has been nothing but patient with me.

During my last visit, about two or three weeks ago, I cribbed about how much I was catching a cold and cough, thanks to the length of my hair. She chuckled, obliged and then quite rightly pointed out, "Look at everyone in this salon right now and look at you. You have the shortest hair."

She took less than ten minutes, as usual, because she's an absolute pro who has been in the industry for well over a decade. By the time she was done, she looked at me and agreed, "Yes, your face is seen more clearly with this length of hair. You will feel lighter and bouncier with this as opposed to trying to grow it."

Here's to many more years of my crazy requests, with the lovely folks at Bon Bomb obliging! Here's to looking like a diva — in my head, at least — for the foreseeable future, all thanks to Lucy.

The Little Man Who Never Let Me Down

To say I haven't had a man in my house or in my life in the past five years would be grossly incorrect, because my seven-year-old mini-man has shown me some solid spine well beyond his years. So far, he's not flaky, not inconsistent, not unreliable, and he's a little man of his word.

There's not a single teacher or parent who has met him who has told me a single bad thing about his nature. His preschool teachers told me that he could sense those who were slightly differently abled around him, and he would go out of his way to help them.

I remember watching this four-year-old take the stage as the narrator for his very first play. Instead of delivering his lines first, he dragged the little boy who wore the same costume as him up beside him, made sure he was standing alongside him, and then delivered his lines.

I probably dropped a single tear in that moment.

We've seen a world of pain and happiness together over the last five years, and I couldn't be more proud of the little boy he's growing up to be.

He senses sadness in me simply by watching my face. Of course, he's a tornado as well — jumping up and down door frames all day long, squishing and wasting bars of soap inside buckets of water, and getting up to a laundry list of similar monkey behaviour.

Even then, my boy is more of a man than a slew of inconsistent, flaky, unreliable "gems" I've met over the past three years.

Cheers to being Riaan's proud mumma, every single day for the rest of my life.

Still Waiting for My Angel

How relevant is *Iris* by the Goo Goo Dolls even today? I think we’re all waiting for an immortal angel who chooses to give up his or her magical life to experience the vulnerable, painful and beautiful rawness of human love.

That’s all we really want — an angelic partner who gives us undying love.

I’ve experienced that loss in love twice, in different intensities, over the years — first when my grandfather passed away, and then when I lost my husband.

There’s a deep void that I feel in all the moments I don’t fill with work and mommy duties. Perhaps I work just so I don’t have to feel their absence — because it is deafeningly loud over the weekends.

It’s a basic human need to have a loving partner by your side, and I feel only half-complete in the middle of all the chaotic noise of work that I somehow create for myself even beyond office hours.

To love and be loved — it’s such a simple and beautiful feeling.

I wonder why people don’t want to open up anymore. What are they really scared of?

I’m still waiting and still hoping for my angel to heal the wreckage that is my heart.

Until then, there’s hot chocolate.