Creatures of Habit

After a certain passage of time, we all become creatures of habit. Case in point: tonight, when my seven-year-old insisted that I spend the night at his grandparents’ house (aka my childhood home), everything about the house put me off. From the inhalation machine that bubbled a little too much against my face (I have a blocked head) to the choice of toothpaste to the size and shape of the pillow, nothing felt right.

I just wanted to go home — the one I’ve been living in for the past three years. “I’d be more comfortable at home” was something I kept mumbling under my breath as my not-so-tiny human clung to me from the waist down like an annoying appendage I wanted to escape from, at least for the day.

Yet, here I am, lying on my pre-teen bed, thanks to his fake tears and Oscar-worthy performance of rolling around in bed, looking utterly miserable, as though I were abandoning him.

This room has witnessed a lot of teenage angst, adulting problems and a whole lot of non-issues, now that I think about it.

Coming back to the topic at hand, we really are such creatures of habit. Our definition of comfort changes over time, and we become more set in our ways, whether we like it or not.

The Only Way Out of Pain Is Through It

“The only way out is through” or “The best way out is always through”, as Robert Frost is often quoted as saying. These have been my favourite beliefs when it comes to handling grief. I've modified the thought slightly in my head, and when I quote it to my child, it becomes, “The only way out of the pain is through it.”

So, when he cribs about school, a wound on his hands or legs, or a wobbly tooth, I throw this at him without batting an eyelid.

Pain. Real, heartbreaking, soul-crushing pain. I first experienced it in 2004, when the love of my life, otherwise known as my Appuppan, passed away. The grief was maddening. I didn't know how to process it as a 17-year-old schoolgirl.

I experienced him once in my childhood home in Trivandrum and have dreamt of him endlessly ever since.

Fast-forward to 2021, when I was thrown into that whirlpool of pain once again as my 35-year-old husband passed away. When I broke the news of his death to my college bestie, she kept repeating like a parrot, “But we just saw him for lunch two days ago!”

That's exactly how I still feel to this day. I had just seen him thulping down palak paneer with aloo paratha for lunch before going to sleep.

What is pain, really? If you analyse it critically, it's simply a consequence of situations you can't control, followed by a feeling of utter helplessness. You simply have to accept it. The process of moving on takes a lifetime; however, acceptance is something you have to embrace at some point.

That's life for you — a never-ending cycle of pain. But the good news is that happiness comes in equal measure, too. You can find it in food, people, places and memories. Treasure all of them because you never really know how much time you have on Earth.

Everything is fleeting.

So, simply accept, drop the ego and keep moving forward — every single day.

Tattoos? Bring Them On. Injections? Absolutely Not!

I've had three tattoos done in the last three years, which would roughly add up to maybe eight hours, give or take, under a needle. And even then, I'm petrified of injections and syringes in a hospital.

I just had my yearly scans done to keep a check on my PCOD and was given three injections in less than two hours. What a terrifying experience indeed!

The nurses keep saying, "Take a deep breath," "Just a small pinprick," "Finished! Finished! Finished!" and so on, which only adds to your anxiety levels.

The friendly nurse standing alongside me during my mammogram wanted to know everything about me, starting with whether I was in the middle of family planning. I sighed and replied, "Yes! Since I was 10. Unfortunately, I don't have a living husband anymore."

Hospitals are a maze, both physically and emotionally. The lifts take forever to transport you up and down the floors. Nurses and doctors bombard you with old and new information, along with a volley of questions, while the pharmacy attached to the facility resembles a fish market, with a never-ending queue of customers.

I'm ready to sleep for a solid three hours now to recover from the three injections I got today. Sigh!

Controversial Aunty Is Back: Bikes Are So 2009!

I'd like to rename myself "Controversial Aunty" now because I'm going to write another piece that won't sit well with people. But here goes nothing, as always.

My late husband absolutely hated it when I rode my Scooty Pep. The only time I ever heard him scream like a teenage girl was in 2009, when he sat behind me on my bike and we rode off to eat the juiciest burgers in Chennai at an open-air restaurant called Mash, facing Besant Nagar Beach.

A couple of months later, I broke my shoulder, underwent keyhole surgery and transformed into a very crabby, smelly Captain Haddock because I was forced into four months of bed rest, with a pin inside my right arm to fix my broken shoulder.

From that day until the day he died, he hated bikers and my love for bikes. He would call every biker on the road a "housefly" and keep saying, "See how safe our car is, Poopie? Thanks to this car, you can dress up in your Fernandes Aunty flowery dresses and keep touching up your lipstick. You're welcome!"

Now, fast-forward to sometime early this year, when I met someone for dinner. He then offered to drop me home on his bike. I was wearing a tight, flowy satin skirt, and it was just impossible to sit on that machine of his. Every time he went over a bump, I thought my child was definitely going to become an orphan that night. My hair was a mess, and my face looked like Ava Max's in "Sweet but Psycho".

Now, this chap had the audacity to tell me to wear pants the next time I met him. There was no next time because I don't wear pants, sir. Why? Because I'm a lady. I wear only tight skirts and flowy dresses of every variety.

Moving firmly on to a gigantic SUV now, to fulfil my responsibilities as a responsible parent and a midlife-crisis aunty. Bikes are so 2009.

Onto newer dreams now!

PCOD, Periods and Lava Cakes: A Love-Hate Relationship With My Body

I've had painful periods and PCOD for as long as I can remember. It was first discovered 12 years ago, when I developed acute back pain and had to be bedridden for a week. That was the first time I had an MRI scan, and cysts the size of footballs were found on both my ovaries.

The nurses at the scanning centre were horrified and enquired of my mother whether I was married and had children. That's how it all started. Needless to say, I had a very, very hard time conceiving, and by the sixth month of my pregnancy, I was bedridden because of a bleed.

I've had one surgery, produced one human being, and my PCOD is alive and kicking — quite literally! There are some months when the medication prescribed by my gynaecologist doesn't work. And once my cycle starts, it's an endless flow of the Ganges, with no sign of the cramping and sugar cravings coming to an end.

It's a disorienting recalibration and reboot of the system each time an unexpected period happens. And my gynaecologist is confused about whether to continue the medication or have me go under the knife.

The problems a woman's body puts her through are unending and relentless. We feel a complete lack of control over our minds and bodies. Top this with the usual drill of parenting and work!

After having lived with this condition for a solid 12 years and counting, my gynaecologist finally revealed that PCOD is an autoimmune disease in which the human body ceases to function the way it's supposed to.

There were moments when, as a newly married bride in my late twenties, I wondered whether I'd ever have a child. So, I count my wild, noisy blessings each day and am grateful to God for letting me have at least one mini.

For every woman who is trying to conceive and cannot, for whatever reason, it's a season of hell. I know this personally and first-hand because I experienced it for six dreadful years.

So, to all my PCOD girlies, we've got this! We can do all the clean eating and strength training in the world, but when our body wants to give up on us, it will. And in those moments, let's try not to be disheartened. Instead, let's eat kilograms of hot, gooey lava cakes with zero guilt!

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.