Tulika, Author at Obsessivemom

21/07/201115/04/2017

Bright as day

This week’s Thursday Challenge : “YELLOW” (Flowers, Vegetables, Sun, Clothing, Vehicle, Toys, Blanket,…). The pics were all clicked by my sister during a trip to Amsterdam…

DAFFODILS: Daffodils always make me nostalgic.. not because I ever saw them in my childhood but because together with William Wordsworth they take me back to my school days.

‘.. and then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils’.. Lovely

GOLDEN ROSES: Aren’t they beautiful.

CLOGS, AMSTERDAM: Google tells me these shoes are made of Balsa white poplar wood. Apparently they are known to keep your feet warm and are supposed to be very comfortable. They’re also the most popular souvenirs from Amsterdam. Traditionally they had to be yellow with a red pattern. I love this one with the windmill.

14/07/201115/04/2017

Soul searching with Tom and Jerry

Never had I thought I’d be mentioning ‘Tom and Jerry’ and ‘soul seraching’ in the same post. But then there’s a first time for everything. Here’s how it happened…

The other day I was sipping my evening tea while the kids sat with their milk watching Tom and Jerry. That particular episode had Tom dying and going to heaven. At the gates he’s denied entry because he’d spent his life chasing a poor mouse. He’s given a glimpse of hell (the usual .. a monster boiling him in oil or whatever else they use). However, he’s told, if he could get a letter of forgiveness signed by Jerry he’d get a place in heaven. Off he goes to plead with Jerry. Finally he gets his letter signed after the usual chase and drama.

Hrit watched with rapt attention and then piled me with questions about the soul and heaven and hell. Can it walk, can it talk, how does it go to heaven, is there really a train (like there was in TnJ), what actually happens in hell, what does the soul do when it’s in heaven (Really, what does one do in heaven?). I rejoiced secretly… I had found the way to keep him off naughty things.. Little did I know his conscience was working over time.

He had a fitful sleep that night. Once he woke up saying “Mama I had a bad dream.. a monster hit me”. Since he’s almost always fighting monsters while awake I thought he’d simply carried them on to his dreams. Then at about 1 pm he sat up and said, “Mama who do we have to get the letter signed from?” That’s what the tossing and turning had been all about.

My dear son had been thinking of all the naughty things he’d done and wondering who all he would have to go to for his letter (s) of forgiveness. I could almost see his brain frantically going over the umpteen times he’d pulled Naisha’s hair, or fought with the neighbour’s daughter or filled water in the soap dispenser, or thrown things down from the balcony.

Had I been less sleepy or he less distressed I’d have laughed. But the poor boy was almost in tears and all I could do was console him and put him back to sleep.

The things that stick!
*********

Then today he apparently defeated another boy in a bout during his Taekwando class. That boy happens to be a year older and a green belt while Hrit is still a yellow belt. He also happens to be a friend of Hrit’s. I pretty much puffed up with pride. Here’s how our conversation went.
Hrit : I won only because I was concentrating and he wasn’t. Then everyone clapped for me and no one clapped for him.
Me (smiling): Wow Hrit that’s wonderful.
Hrit: No mama don’t smile, it’s not nice. He’s my friend you know and no one clapped for him.

Lesson learnt!

14/07/201115/04/2017

On the road

This week’s Thursday Challenge : “VEHICLES” (Trucks, Motorcycles, Cars, Buses, Bicycles,…)

UNICORN VEHICLE: Front of a bike and the back of a cart. We saw them in Gujarat where they’re called ‘Chhakdas’. Most are elaborately done up in the brightest of colours complete with blaring music for the entertainment of the commuters. Considering that they’re noisy as hell the music has to be loud with a capital ‘L’ to be heard.

WORK IN PROGRESS: These trucks on the roads of UP come with the tops missing. There’s just a small cabin for the driver and that’s it. I’ve no clue why they’re left like that.

That’s what they look like from the back

FAMILY VEHICLE: Some might worship motorcycles for style and speed but in UP it’s just that.. a family vehicle.

LONG DRIVE: Hrit gets to drive an auto from California to Mumbai 🙂

13/07/201115/04/2017

Zzzzzz….

ABC Wednesday: The Letter Z

Hrit naps during a recent road trip. The pic is clicked by my sister who tells me I had dozed off too

And while we’re at it here are some sleep facts…

Our sleep-wake cycle causes a drop in alertness between about 2 and 5 pm in the afternoon and more dramatically in the early morning between 2 and 5 am. This suggests we need two sleep periods a day, as in siesta cultures… which is why old time shops in Pune (and Calcutta) down shutters between 1 and 4 pm. During my summer training days at Indian Oil Corporation there was a special room for women where they could take a siesta each afternoon. What luxury! Wonder if it’s still there.

Daytime naps improve memory, help you remember important facts and cut risk of heart disease.

On an average we spend 1/3 of our life sleeping… Wow!

A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year. (No wonder….)

Kids who regularly sleep more than 8 to 9 hours tend to have stronger immune systems and get fewer colds… which is why I pack off the kids by 9pm.

Some studies suggest women need up to an hour’s extra sleep a night compared to men… I knew it!

Whales don’t sleep. Dolphins don’t either. They turn off half their brain, resting it, while the other half is awake. If they fell asleep, they’d not come up to breathe and so drown. .. This last one comes from Hrit himself.. from his ‘I-love-Sharks phase.

12/07/201115/04/2017

Vacation within a vacation

Okay I dug this one out from the drafts. It should have been posted right after we got back from the vacation but got lost. Last week’s Thursday Challenge reminded me of it.. and so here goes….

It was last year that we kicked off this trend of a vacation within a vacation. We went off to Mukteshwar for a quiet off-the-beaten-track kind of holiday. This year it had to be Nainital, every North Indian tourists haunt.

Nainital holds a special place in our hearts. When we were kids and vacations were few and far between, we’d holidayed there with the cousins. Now 30 years later.. the memories are still fresh in our minds. The hot tehri (what Punekars call masala rice with vegetables) mummy made, the chilled rain that gave her a horrible allergy at Tiffin Top, the flimsy shelter under which we took refuge from that rain, the picture we clicked of my sister, a cousin and I posing as Gandhi ji’s three monkeys, the walk over dried leaves down China Peak (now Naina Peak) singing Suhana Safar. Interesting, how I have little memory of the climb… it’s just the walk down that has stayed. Guess good memories last longer than bad ones :-). The trip was unforgettable.

And so it was with a host of memories that we made our way to Nainital. While Mukteshwar has a special charm with it’s long winding quiet roads and lush greenery Nainital is .. well to put it mildly… different. It’s choc-a-bloc with tourists and then quite obviously offers every touristy thing one might want to do. There’s boating and ropeway, the zoo, caves and of course the Mall road with shops jostling for space. It’s a 12 hour journey from Lucknow and we decided to go by road since train reservations would have needed too much planning and our helicopter had gone for servicing.. heh..heh.. okay you didn’t believe that.

First the statistics..

14 adults, 6 kids, 4 cars, 5 hotel rooms

… Nanus, nani mas, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, man fridays, drivers… chaos.

THE JING BANG: Here’s most of the party

I was meeting up with some of my cousins after nearly a decade and even though we’ve keep in touch there’s nothing like getting together. The long summers we spent together as kids before varied school curricula ended that tradition, have left us with plenty of memories and bonds that haven’t frayed. The years melted away. It was wonderful to discover that nothing changes… that childhood bonds remain.. the comfort level .. the shared memories, the laughter… it all came back. There we were having bun maska for breakfast, dashing off to the close by Pappu da dhaba for tea, stepping out for a boat ride or a walk down mall road yet always converging in a room for long chatathons.

The Pappu da dhaba needs more than a mention. Many of us in the family are teaholics. One glance at the resort menu and we pretty much cringed at the tea prices. Then we found Pappu… the perfect solution to our troubles. We started off tentatively wondering how the hotel staff would react to this preference for Pappu’s tea over their’s. However, soon we were going there in hordes, calling out to each other as we went.. ‘Let’s go to Pappu’s’. Then we moved on to getting tea in flasks for the tired members of the clan. And finally.. we were asking the hotel staff to loan us their flasks to carry the tea back.

THE PAPPU DA DHABA

TEAHOLICS INC

The kids were in their own world. They put the rooms to good use playing hide and seek and chor police. The three older ones looked out wonderfully for the younger bachcha brigade. I am glad They got to meet each other and make their own memories. I could see at least one of my New Year Resolutions being fulfilled.

MEN AND WOMEN: While the boys can’t look beyond their bags of wafers Naisha won’t stop posing

IT’S FAKE: Naisha picked up this cap with hair attachemnets and was just too thrilled

I’M SO BRAVE: But that’s just a front. When we asked Hrit if he wanted to have a go he held the gun in one hand and shut his ear with the other. Only after many tries could he get the hang of it.

The weather was great.. cool and cloudy. The last night of our visit we had a hailstorm for a super finale to the complete happiness of the kids.

That’s it till next year.. can’t wait for May.