Milk and suchlike

                                                                        Haldi Milk with Kesar

Reasons why drinking milk pre/during nursing session is traditionally recommended :

- it makes milk (Duh! Didn't you know all lactating animals chug a mugful
right before dangling milky teats to their young?)
- it distracts you from the potential biting and gnawing and nibbling
that's a given with nursing
- somewhere between nursing the second and feeding sometime healthy
meals to the first you've kinda forgotten to feed yourself
- dude, you're exhausting your supplies, must replenish as you go!
- it encourages let down of milk

I've had the argument of "why warm milk while/before feeding" a billion times.
With the first one and now number 2.
I'm gonna go with the let down(must be an associated stimulus response
thing) and perhaps the replenishing supplies bit. It IS a bit
exhausting after all. Chunky baby thighs don't happen with nothing.

BTW a little bit of breastmilk acts as great lubing up of them
sore nipples once your little ones done making "chingum" (am I the
only one that called chewing gum that while growing up?) outta them.

Medea Purelan

Also lanolin. I've had great success with Medela's Purelan. Also safe to nurse
with the goop on. Apparently doesn't harm the kids.
I'm hoping p1's junglee spells aren't a result of months of lanolin ingestion!
:)

Bhartiya Daak or Indian Post

The last time I visited the post office was to send off some sarkari  ho-hum document. Filled out and sent online, but signed and snail  mailed mandatory. I'm pretty sure I'd taken pillunumberone(henceforth p1) along for a  field trip.

Recently one of my favorite cousins (trying not to write my absolute  fav cousin lest some of the others chance upon this and send me e- rottentomatoes and e-glares not to mention e-sulks) turned 50. Now this bloke didn't want the whole song n dance and gala surprise  parties that accompany such milestone happybuddays. His wife and child  decided to get near and dear ones flood him with snailmail for all of  his birthday month since he is deeply in love with their mailbox and  checks it both the times mail is delivered during the day.
Not sure what exactly the dudes waiting for because most normal humans  now recieve only ads for cheesy stores and massage parlours and the  occasional pocket-denter bill.
Wittily titled, Project Mailstorm was meant to be a surprise and I had  pledged a bunch of things from our family of now four members since  the addition of p2. After much mulling and planning and plotting amidst entertaining  patidevs cousins family who were a-visiting, I finally dragged my lazy  procrastinating as well as rather ambitious optimistic ass to the PO  armed with two goodie-envelopes stuffed with cards, old pictures of  The Cuzz in his bachpan, a hand-scrawled note from moi and forced  artwork by p1 and p2.
Yes I made p2's fourandahalf month fingers grab  a pencil and write his name. He promptly tried to stuff the card in  his mouth. :) I'm sure his mama won't mind a slobbery kiss in the mail.
:)


So there I was inside what looked like a blast into the past.
PO, Branch Koramangala, Bangalore.
Bored dudes and a couple of bored  dudettes behind a high counter. Ancient files tied up with thick  rubber bands. Some with twine and even others with what looked like  fraying strips of cloth. Some bundles of mail wrapped in cheap white-ish cloth and sealed with  molten wax. I hadn't seen that in ages.
Anyhoo I enquired of one of the ancients behind the counter about  postage to the USof A. Rs.45 I was informed. Time it would take? 10 days to 2 weeks. I could  swear way back in 1994 when I was a stick in the US of A, mail showed  up in our hick town in IL from bambai in a week.
So snail mail just got snailier? 2 weeks I didnt have.
Speedpost which would take my offerings in a week was Rs.607( he said six  nought seven, teehee) I left.
Couriering I checked would dent my pockets by about 2000 rupees even  though it would deliver the goods in three days.  But then the cuzzs  wife would have to mail the stuff locally or stuff it in the box herself, since I wanted the mail to  reach the mailbox, which was the entire point of this  excercise. Sounded like un-fun.

SO I decided to take my chances and resort to the mercies of the Indian Post. I discovered and the younger counter dude mildly pimped a service  called WorldNet Express which was a tie up with DHL and would deliver in  three days. Guaranteed. Speedpost delivering in five days as promised  wasn't a pakka guarantee, he said.  This was also online trackable. For the  bargain price of Rs.800 plus tax.


I was asked to please wait madam in mumbles. After about five long minutes of looking at a pot of rather diluted looking  glue with broken pen for applicator I was summoned and presented with  a sticker that looked like this.

(Pardon bad photo. Time for a new phone praps? :) )

And my job was done.
Rs 899 lighter I left. And Thursday night I was informed by the cuzzs wife  that the packet had showed up at the doorstep. Brilliant I say. Sent it out Monday. And they got it Thursday midday. Super. Thanks, Indian Post.
And er the tiny private hand of DHL.
And also really is it that hard to get a real glue brush?

ps Methinks she had to put it in the mailbox for the snail mail effect. Oh well. :)

random conversations in cyberspeace - muse missing in action

a: heyyy
b: hi
b: do i know you?
a: idiot!
b: a?
a: :) howdy?
b: hey babe...looooooong time .. niiice to see you ..
a: ya how are you?
b: life goes on ... with friends reminding you of it
a: huh?
b: its over now
a: life is alive and kicking in your writing
b: it feels like life is over marriage has ended everything
a: why did you get married?kisne bola tha shaadi karne ko?
b: what writing? i haven't written in four years
a: how come?
b: No inspiration no topic interests me enuff to write bout it its all boring marriage as you may or may not know
a: hmm .. i feel like that sometimes - like ive lost my mojo or something. thankfully i've a few grounded friends who yank me off the pity-pot! :-p
b: i'm not blaming anyone for my life.. a guy has the "write" to crib no? :)
a: of course!
b: i thought your mojo was a year old! :)
a: i learnt a long time ago that an external locus of control was er.. umm not a great idea ...
a: he is not my mojo, just my latest love
a: and i thank hormones oxytocin, a few hard-working guardian angels for that
b: maybe you can suggest something - do me a favor suggest a topic every week for me to write about on my blog
a: the love, not him
a: i am a dukhi aatma - can only think of dukhiyaari things
a: dangerous
b: perfect thats exactly what i want
a: dangerous
a : write about the 40 billion spent on the olympics
a: or about mz clintons speech at the democratic convention
b: oh man full serious topics... ok i guess i asked for it..:p
a: you don't have to write something serious .. take it someplace else ... at least you'll have a lead, a start, no ?
b: hmm
a: better still copy-paste this convo and put it up on your blog
b: and get a divorce? :)
a: from what you just said it doesn't seem like you'd be too unhappy about the prospect
b: you do it and i'll write you a counter
b: it was soooooooooooo nice talking to you after sooo long
b: back to @#$% all work
b: keep pleasantly surprising me like this

Words

Words. Like sand in a sandbox.
Playing. Tossing them, tasting them, feeling sensing them.
Like soft hair on my face.
Building castles and moulding shapes, drawing lines and then washing it all away
Dreams and fantasies and stories and life.
Captured in your words.

Some thing old ... something new ...

This blog is definitely something old.... and I have been terrible about not posting often enough! And now i'm adding to it by creating a new blog for my now seven-month old doll of a baby!
Do visit, comment, suggest!
http://eshanspace.blogspot.com/

games n things

so im awake again ... overslept again ... after once again beating my own super high score on a mutlicoloured 2 inch by 3 inch screen which i know one of these days is going to annouce the end of my myopic eyes. the game is ka-glom and only for use by the crackberry users or addicts. similar to tetris with things falling and the aim beign to connect them, avoid a pile up and subsequent death. the falling htings are coloured( blue, green, red, beige, black) balls and cubes - join four balls( not cubes) and detonate them and wait for some more.... i think carpel tunnel syndrome is on its way here...
of course i am so sleepy there are probably several grammatical and spelling errors in this post... maafi
oh and by the way not only am i going insane with these silly computer games .. i am also far away from real games that require more than just an efficient thumb and the flick of the wrist.
lying in front of me is a gallant effort at fitness - i actually printed out a fifteen minutes do-it-at-home excercise regime( i know im too lazy and not motivated enuff to go to gym for anything longer than fifteen minutes) i think i did it once for five minutes only because the tv was in front of me and i wanted to see the end of friends.
so that didnt do too well ... and of course the cheese intake continues so yeah i'm doing good on the health scale

Music

and life is full of music
hooked onto two songs from Guru - tere bina and aye hairathe ...
tere bina - love the melody, very folksy, yet sufi-qawaali-ish, giving me a headache now ive listened it to it so many times! gaayaki too .. d-lish! chinmayi and rahman have done it sooo effortlessly - its true music IS food for the soul - so powerful no? how a song all of 4-5 minutes can do sooo much, mental emotional , physical spiritual to a person? very powerful music is.
anyways getting back to good music
aye hairathe - hariharans voice is what one would describe as "makhmali" in hindi -smooth, soft, like the finest cotton or the warmest of satin or silk - yumm.... i look forward to seeing the picturisation of the song - the 1 min trailer on youtube is hardly an indicator!
:)
its funny though that while my "loyalties" should lie with mayya, the song i actually did help with as dialect coach for maryem, i'm not as addicted to it, as these others.. despite it being soooo catchy and the blend of middle eastern and gujarati is very interesting and attractive... i guess i've waited so long to hear the final product its no longer as addictive as it was when i heard it over and over in the studio in Toronto trying to guide Maryem with the intonations, and pronunciation and watching ar rahman become so animated and alive as his composition came to life with tollers voice
life is full of music and i only want more....

Monsoons and more...

Its was raining here in the big TO and warm and cozy in my office I thought of the Bombay monsoons.

I used to travel by bus train rickshaw and battle the sometimes heavy raindrops in order to get to my destination. The days spent huddling under an umbrella, or in a cab, or rickshaw, without any heating in any of these vehicles, just body heat and the spirit of youth keeping us warm!

The sometimes warm sometimes nippy sea sprays, the jumping in puddles to splash water at a friend, even the twigs we used as "boats" when I was even younger; boat races in the gutters close to home, with my mother despairing that I would get wet and get sick!

Reaching work soaked to the skin and in a filmi style squeezing my kurta to get as much water out as possible! The rain dance my neighbours and I did, sort of a strange ritual to welcome the first downpour in the afternoon, with overcast skies and suspicious neighbours in the apartment building next door wondering what this spoilt brat form the bungalow was doing on her terrace in the rain!

The bhuttas (corn on the cob) with salt, chilli powder and tangy lemon juice, it made one’s body alive. Maybe that’s what I am missing here. I have a life but am I alive?

Not sure whether this is my memory alone or my imagination or a combo of both that makes me so nostalgic - I fear that upon reaching Bombay, whenever that is, I might go "Jesus is THIS what I was missing!" and my sundar bambaiyya sapna might tooto!!! :-)