Tulika, Author at Obsessivemom

28/03/201615/04/2017

A gratitude post

About two weeks back I landed myself a sore throat. Nothing that couldn’t be cured by warm water gargles and mugs of ginger tea, I thought. However within a day my throat turned to sandpaper making swallowing difficult and I felt The Wheeze come on.

If you’ve ever had it you’ll understand the capitals. Within the space of a day breathing becomes a chore, lying down impossible and sleep a mere dream.

This hadn’t happened to me in the last ten years. The twins seemed to have scared it away! However this time it was back.

I gave up oral medications and took on inhalers. Soon enough the breathing eased. Within a week I was feeling human again.

I remembered my childhood – those long painful nights with my mum sitting beside me rubbing warm mustard oil and garlic on my chest while I struggled for each breath and prayed for the night to be over. The days weren’t ever so bad for there were distractions. Nights, on the other hand, were dreaded monsters. Propped up by pillows I would struggle to pull out each breath from my clogged lungs.

Those nights were truly dreadful.

It was this dread that made me reach out for shawls and sweaters at parties. This dread made sure I was always unfashionably bundled up at weddings and get-togethers when everyone else was flaunting their silks and georgettes. And it was this dread that made me completely immune to friendly jibes from friends and family.

It would take sometimes, a month for the congestion to go.

This gratitude post today goes out to scientists, researchers and doctors who have made our lives so much easier that a mere ten days later I was back at my Zumba class with just a memory of the wheeze.

Thank you with all my heart. Oh and from my lungs too :-).

Linking up to Vidya’s Gratitude Circle Blog Hop. Do click on the link and head on over.

22/03/201609/10/2019

The problem with Kajol’s sari

I finally watched Dilwale. Yes that Rohit Shetty film with SRK and Kajol and the two new bachchas. It’s old news, I know. The whole world has watched it and not quite liked it too, which I might not agree with, but then that’s my own thing. I didn’t mind it except for this one issue – the issue of Kajol’s sari. But first, if you haven’t watched the film you need to know a little bit about it. I promise to keep it to five lines – brace yourself.

So Kajol and SRK belong to two warring mafia families. Point to be noted here is that Kajol is as kickass and as worthy a scion as SRK. The two fall in love. A misunderstanding crops up, Kajol shoots SRK and they go their own ways till their siblings find each other and fall in love too. After some ‘Dobara aaye to jaan le loongi‘ bit’s and a few sadish songs, the misunderstanding is sorted and voila! All is well (Writing this down I can get a vague idea why some people wouldn’t quite have taken to the film).

Whew! That’s exactly five lines. *Pats self on the back*.

Anyway the point I’m trying to make is this – towards the end of the film SRK’s brother is shot at by a don (yet another one) and Kajol sits there all abla nari cradling his head and yells for SRK, “Kaliiiiii……,” she screams and SRK comes flying out brave and macho and well obviously, he saves the day.

Why, tell me, doesn’t she reach for her own gun? She’s as worthy a ‘donness’ or whatever she-dons are called, as he is, right? She steals the sona from him at the beginning of the film, she runs a restaurant and has some mean shots to throw when faced with a kidnapper. She’s brave and smart and wily and strong so why oh why would she scream for SRK instead of going behind the bad guys herself? Wouldn’t instinct drive
her to go for it herself?

And so I thought maybe it was the sari. Maybe it was the sari killed her killer instinct. Or maybe she didn’t want to spoil her look by hiding a gun in that sari. I mean a bump at her hip would
have looked odd, no? Yet, one would have thought she’d have found a way given that she’d been outdone by it once earlier. Remember Kuchh Kuchh Hota Hai and that basketball match? She lost to SRK, despite being the better player all because of that five meters of gorgeous georgette. Over a decade later and things haven’t changed. This Senorita doesn’t learn from her
mistakes.

Or maybe… she yelled for SRK because she just liked having him around, in which case it is perfectly understandable. I’d call for him all the time if I had the faintest hope he’d come. The brown
eyes, the intense looks, the crooked smile that dimple to die for and the stubble … ooh the stubble.

Yeah if it’s not the sari it most definitely is SRK’s.

16/03/201615/04/2017

You know your kids have hit the tweens when..

1. You whip out phone to click a picture and you see your own eager-beaver face because it’s always turned onto selfie mode.

2. Music suddenly becomes a big deal – a very loud deal. Everything from tukur tukur to What makes you beautiful is sung all the while.

3. Your house smells gorgeous because the kids have just had a deo war – the ‘if you spray mine I’ll spray yours’ kind of war. (Aunts please to take note: This is what happens when you gift things despite me expressly forbidding it).

4. Your daughter walks out wearing a most winsome smile till you see she’s also wearing your favourite stole. Apparently ‘Jo tera hai woh mera hai‘.

5. The demands for studs and stilettos begins to raise their ugly head.

6. Your son roams around with wet hair all day as he tries to style them into spikes and you have the unenviable task of telling him they will flop down back once they dry up and No he isn’t allowed gel for many many years yet.

7. On a similar note you also add – no makeup kits, no heels, no phones and no pocket money just yet either.

8. You resign yourself to the dangers of walking out in mismatching earrings or wearing a shrug inside out rather than wade through two kids to get to the mirror for a peek at yourself.

9. The ‘dude’ and the OMGs in the conversation go up exponentially.

10. The conversation sounds more and more like some kind of indecipherable code from a James Bond movie. ‘Meet me at the SS’, she says to her friend (That’s ‘Skating Spot’ in case you wondered).

09/03/201615/04/2017

Somedays I am a 9-year-old

I was out shopping for a birthday gift for N’s friend and I spotted an Elsa bag. What? You don’t know Elsa? Elsa from Frozen ? Don’t let N hear you say that, she wouldn’t think much of you.

N has been in love with Elsa for some time now. She sings Let it Go till the rest of us beg her to stop, sleeps with her Elsa quilt and an Elsa cushion and has made an Elsa collage that she’s stuck onto her cupboard. I have nothing against the Frozen girl. I loved the film as much as N. More importantly I shall be forever grateful to her for ridding (well almost) N of her Pink obsession.

Blue-Green is the new pink, ever since Elsa came along.

Anyway so when I saw this slingbag I thought I just had to pick it up for N. But then something made me stop. I mean, why was I getting all excited? Why on earth was I behaving like a nine-year-old? Wasn’t it my place to think whether N really needed the bag at all? Which of course, she didn’t.

If you’re a parent and have been in my place you know why we do it – why we go to Mc Donald’s and eat happy meal after happy meal and demolish our diets, why we buy Spideman bags and Chhota Bheem bed spreads, even when our kids aren’t begging for them – all for that smile on their faces.

And then there are days when we complain about the obsession and the cost and about how marketing companies make children a target of their strategies. They are simply doing their jobs, though some amount of social responsibility wouldn’t hurt.

The kids are of course just being kids.

So then it has to be us who has to put on the brakes, even at the cost of that dear smile from our little one, for it is but transitory. I know I’m stating the obvious but I’m doing it because I need to hear me say it.

We have it tougher than our parents who had fewer choices and didn’t have to struggle with these dilemmas. I wish I could summon my mom’s classic don’t-be-silly look, the one she would have given me, had I asked for something like this – the best ever antidote to smart marketing strategies.

01/03/201615/04/2017

Sports day and a regret

Last week the twins’ had
their Sports Day and H won a bronze in the class race. Instead of celebrating, my first reaction was to look out for N and her reaction. The thing is, N is the sporty one.
She’s the one who comes home with a medal and is heartbroken if she
doesn’t get her moment on the victory stand.

H makes things worse by not being sensitive at all. I could almost
see him revelling in his medal and how that would make
matters worse for N. So when I went to pick them up I hugged them both, underplaying H’s
victory.

As it turned out, to his complete credit and my amazement, H was pretty nonchalant
about the whole thing and didn’t blow his trumpet one bit. Very surprising indeed!

What surprised me even more
was N’s reaction. She was a little upset I could tell, but she kept a smile
firmly on her face and was over it soon enough. It might have to do with
the fact that she was part of the
gymnastic display and so didn’t mind not winning. It might have to do with her recent
dance performance where she’d taken centre-stage already.

It brought home the importance of helping kids find their niche – something they’re good at – academics or a sport, a dance
form or a musical instrument. It does wonders for their self-esteem and allows them to
handle failure better. That’s what seemed to have worked for N.

Maybe I’m over analyzing this and the
kids are just growing up.

Whatever it is, I was a
relieved mum that day. I do have a regret though – I wish I’d had that one moment of unadulterated happiness
and of praise for H – it was the first time he had won at sports
since when he was a toddler.

That’ll remain with me a long time.

It’s good for the kids though: to learn to look beyond themselves – to be empathetic as also to be happy for a sibling or a friend.

If you have more than one child tell me how you handle it when one child does really well and the other doesn’t? How do you praise one child while comforting the other?