Two finished projects

The past two weeks at Karthi have been busy with the kiddos returning to some semblance of schooling. The end of May and beginning of June saw us scrambling to get electronic devices suited for both to attend either live classes via Microsoft Teams (elder) or recorded classes via the school website (younger). Naturally, we have cut down TV time to after 7 pm and Prime only on the weekends, just like school time. What with the transition and new routines to plan and implement, my creative output suffered. But this week I got back in the groove.

Back in February, I had written about a tapestry crochet bag that I was making. The original design was for a tote that had handles that wouldn't take any weight. So I changed my project into a backpack, but found myself in uncharted waters. I had to create a flap, sturdy straps, affix these correctly to the body, attach a magnetic clasp, make a lining, and make pockets for the lining. I was in creative overwhelm. The new things needed a lot of fermentation time in my head, so I put the project aside and completed a crochet scarf and made a few masks. 

Proceeding in baby steps, I first found a very sturdy, double-layered crochet stitch for the straps. I made a smaller version for a loop that would serve to hang up the bag, then attached them to a crocheted rectangle and then sewed and crocheted the whole on to the back of the bag. 

Once that was done, I turned my attention to the flap, which I needed to taper to a point. Crocheted a few rows each day, gave it a contrasting border and and ta da!

Next, I hunted up a salvaged magnetic clasp from a dilapidated wallet and attached them with the help of some denim fabric because I didn't want to attach the prongs to the crocheted part.

The sewing of the denim patch on the flap wasn't as straight as I would have liked it to be as you can see from the picture below, but hey, I am a recovering perfectionist and the job was neat enough. The opening is of course the drawstring that I designed by myself. 

Finally, I found a length of cotton in my stash that had complementary colors and sewed the seams before hand-stitching it to the bag. For the pockets, I used the back pockets of a soft, stretchy jeans that I had massacred to make masks. 

And here is the bag with some books in it for ballast, on Ani's shoulder.

On the whole, not a bad job for a first-time bag-maker, hey? 

When I was finished with mask- and pocket-making from my old pair of jeans, the only part left was the waist band and the front pockets. So I made this...

My "house uniform" of salwar-kameez has a great drawback. It doesn't have pockets. At Karthi, you can often hear me requesting people to find my phone, because I leave it all over the house. This "belt", worn over my salwar, now keeps my phone near me all the time. The only problem is that my brain has not yet registered that this is my phone's new home. Yesterday, someone called as I was cooking and I searched the whole kitchen for my phone without realizing that it was safely ensconced in my pocket! 

As for our garden and yard, the monsoon rains have brought out the grass and weeds in full force. I have been subduing them with my weed-trimmer. I hated the thought of taking out my trimmer, because it has a bad habit of flooding very often. I always followed the correct procedure, using the choke sparingly. But after a couple of sessions, it would flood and respond to no amount of persuasion. Earlier, this meant a 30-km drive to the nearest Stihl service center to get it firing again. This month, determined to fix it myself, I searched and found a YouTube video and learned how to do it. If air was solid, it would have had several holes in it from all the punching I did the day I restarted the flooded engine by myself! So now the grass will not get a chance to grow higher than a couple of inches around our home. 

In pandemic-related news, each Saturday when we go out shopping, we find more and more people out on the streets, mostly wearing masks and giving wide berths to each other. But things are more lackadaisical closer to home, with neighborhood boys playing together outside and even elderly people wandering around without masks at our nearest junction. At Karthi, we are still in full vigilant mode. The kids have been so understanding of conditions and have adjusted much better to the lockdown than I had ever expected. That is something that I am very grateful for. DH did go to the office a couple of times to see what it was like. But he missed the hot tea and snacks that I provide at his table even if he is in conf calls. Both days he came back home hungry and crabby! So for now, he prefers working from home. 

That's all from Karthi for the time being. See y'all next week!

Happy New Year, dearies!!!

Yep, that's what it says, nine days after the fact! That is what happens when you go gallivanting off at the end of the year and return with a nasty two-week virus that cripples but doesn't incapacitate. This results in a sojourn in a germy twilight with umpteen symptoms and just a semblance of life. 

Not any more! Today I finally took down the Christmas lights, filed away the bills and papers of 2018 and dusted the cobwebs out of my flu-ridden brain. Cleared out my desk, copied what I needed for this year into my new BuJo and diary and put the old ones away in the archives. Now I am truly done and dusted with 2018. A tardy friend said in wishing me a week after the New Year, "I wasn't caught up in the wrong timeline. Just tardy as usual." I have the privilege of blaming the virus for my tardiness!

So what has 2018 done for me? In the second half of the year, it threw me back into work and that too, teaching!!! So now I am no longer the woman of leisure (which a homemaker never is) I used to be. Getting back into work mode after a fifteen-year gap has thrown a spanner in my works in a major fashion. Besides, my work place is a new institution which is in a state of flux, with barely enough staff and therefore requires a lot of adjustment and commitment more than a part-time job requires. In addition to teaching, the lecturers have to share clerical work. This has disrupted all my routines and now I am still struggling a bit to get my life back into a semblance of normalcy. 

I have had to suspend a lot of activities that I love doing. There are days when I dread getting out of bed because it is a working day (a common malady among the working people I believe), but on the whole it has been an enriching experience so far (in all matters except financial - still to receive salary!) in that it has brought more people into my life, new colleagues, students and a motivation to put back some care into my appearance now that I have to meet people on a daily basis! 

The greatest thing that going to work has done is that it has forced me to take a good look at all my activities and pushed me to cull out all the inessential things that I kept doing on a daily basis. For instance, I have stopped wanting to try new craft techniques and buying supplies for them. Instead I am concentrating on a couple of projects at a time and planning to finish the supplies that I already have. I have become more jealous of protecting my craft time too. Now I schedule time each day so that I can work on my projects on a daily basis.

The thing that is still disturbing me the most is the Sabarimala issue and all the hoopla and violence surrounding it. This year, I am taking a break from it and going to concentrate on domestic life so that our home will be a peaceful haven from all the madness going on outside. My cousin who was literally at death's door has survived and made an almost full recovery. That is one big thing that I am grateful for this year.

Our year-end journey to Chennai fulfilled a wish that I have been nurturing in the past year. On our trip to Hampi,  I had learned that the Balagopal icon in the Krishna temple on Matanga hill now resides in the Chennai Government Museum. So off I went pulling my family to the museum on our first day in Chennai. But the Chennail Museum is a vast network of treasure caves with no maps. Docents I spoke to had no idea where the icon could be. I decided to try the bronze section. We saw a lot of Shaivite bronzes that were absolutely breathtaking. But the Vaishnaivite bronze display was closed for maintenance. That was where the idol was likely to be. Choking down the disappointment, I went to see the displays in the main building.

In the first hall, I looked at examples of stone idols dating back to the Pallava era and going forward. I had completed four such alcoves when the next one took my breath away - it was the alcove for idols from the Vijayanagara period and there was the Balagopala I had been searching for!!!! He was mutilated, with parts of his arms having been chopped off in the attack, but the sweet expression of the baby Krishna is intact. The description says that King Krishna Deva Raya had carried off the icon from a temple in Udayagiri fort in Andhra. I don't blame him in the least, because that sweet expression could have beguiled any one.

That was the highlight of the Chennai trip for me. Well, there was a little interval at a silk sari shop in Kanchipuram...ahem! As well as another at the biggest Higginbothams store... well. 😊

For those who asked, Akrami is alive and well. He has made a full recovery and there are no lesions to be seen. We suspect he has got a new girlfriend since he makes only sporadic appearances clamoring for food. We are looking forward to having him curled up on our front mat in the mornings.

That's all from Karthi this new year! Hope you all had a wonderful beginning to 2019!

2017 is over, so soon?

I love being a homemaker. One of the reasons is that it offers a wide variety of activities that appeal to me. No two days are alike on this job. One day I might be a cleaning diva, the next day I could be a nurse, on the third day I can wow my family with baked goodies... the list is endless. 

The only problem with this is, unlike a day job where the milestones are marked with pay raises, promotions, certificates and congratulatory parties, homemaking is a mostly thankless and featureless career. When I look back, it all seems like an endless corridor of cooking, cleaning and other mundane tasks that I have traversed with my apron firmly tied on.

So this year I've decided to sit down and list the things that I have learned and accomplished in the past 12 months. I don't want to remember years just for the memorable trips we took or tragedies in the family and friends circles.

Here is my list:

Gardening: Grew my first ivy gourds or kovakkai in pots and devised a pandal using plastic netting between our well and shed. The yield wasn't spectacular, but the vine is still alive and that is a huge accomplishment for me! 

I also improvised a trellis for purple long beans and had a bountiful crop. We planted more fruit trees this year. So in addition to the jackfruit, tamarind and coconut trees we had when we bought the plot, we now have cashew, sapodilla, guava, papaya, bell fruit, passion fruit and mulberry. My plan for the next year is to nourish these properly. The pineapple that I had got to grow from the top of a store-brought fruit has finally decided to put forth a fruit after two years of merely taking up space in our backyard. Talk about bonuses!

I also managed a couple of elephant yams and finally succeeded in getting a kanthari (bird's eye chilli) to grow from seed. DH and I planted around 26 banana and plantain rhizomes in May and got help in maintaining them. They are flourishing. And here I was thinking that I barely did anything in the garden due to health issues in the latter part of the year!

This year is notable for my discovery of a miraculous addition to my gardening - cocopeat! We have clayey soil that becomes quite hard in summer months. I was looking for a way to loosen it up and happened on this product at an agro store. I've used it for all the new plantings this year and it has worked wonders. Later, my hunch was confirmed by an agricultural expert's YouTube video recommendation for loosening and aerating clayey soil!

Craft: Learned and made three crochet amigurumi. Made my first macrame pieces.

I am also learning polymer claying. My first pieces are very rudimentary and I am still learning the various techniques.

And of course there was that needlework project that is now framed and hanging right at our entrance so that the maker can boast to her heart's content...

I managed to BuJo through the year and have decided that I don't need any other planner ever again. But the recommended BuJo journals are very prohibitively pricey (Leuchtturm 1917 - Rs.3000 for a notebook!!!) and the dotted notebook I got from Amazon shed pages so badly that I was left pasting back the pages more than I was writing in it. Other replacements had pages that ghosted and even bled.

So I bought a package of cream-colored A4 premium bond paper from my favorite stationery shop and learned kettle-stitch binding from YouTube. My first attempt at trimming the pages after binding turned out like a rat chewed up its edges. Ani now uses that as a sketch book. I bound two more and got them trimmed and covered by a professional binder. Then I added elastic closures and colorful endpapers on my own... 

Here they are: my new BuJo and Craft BuJo for 2018. Hope to learn how to do the covers by myself next year. The paper quality is the best! I can even paint in them if I want to. I thumb my nose at you, expensive stationery manufacturers!!!

Cooking and baking: Baked Tres leches, Red velvet, Devil's food and Caramel cakes. Learned how to make Swiss meringue buttercream icing - think I will never go back to plain ol' buttercream unless I need an eggless cake and icing. I tried my hand at icing flowers too! Here was my best effort of the year made for the "baby" in our family who complains if I don't write his name in icing on the top of the cake! (Yep, that's my DH)

In addition to baking I tried my hand at Unniyappam (turned out soft and yummy in spite of my skipping the step of letting the batter rest awhile after mixing), Kumbilappam during the jackfruit season and a savory, tangy Bhakarwadi that was a huge hit. I tried pickling tender mangoes, but got the proportions of masala all wrong so that instead of being soft and mushy, they turned out hard as bullets and too salty after the requisite 6 months in a closed jar. Ah, some you lose!

Home: Painted a whole room and learned quite a few valuable lessons in the process. Then I read this (highly recommended) book...

... learned to repair a leaky toilet by myself (cost 20 rupees) and emboldened by the feat, went on to replace the lights on the gate post by myself (no manual required). This is in addition to the valve-changing, picture-hanging etc that I usually do. 

I also managed to give our living room a makeover this month, but more on that in another post!

Books: I managed to stick to my resolution of listing all the books I read this year and writing a short precis of each. So far, the number is 131 - therefore I have managed to bring down the average number of books that I read from 15 to around 10 a month. Definite improvement, I would say! I will share my favorites of the year in another post.

Please don't think I am boasting about the number of books that I manage to read because anyone who knows me can tell you that reading is almost as essential to me as breathing. And please don't imagine that all my reading is either high literature or philosophical reading - those are certainly there, but I love reading potboilers, well-researched romances, memoirs, travelogs, good whodunits, thrillers and humor. I am looking forward to reducing this number even more because this year the power of the left lens of my specs went from -10.00 to -10.25 dioptre, not a good thing at my age!

Writing has not been very good this year: I managed a measly 12 blog posts not including this one. Didn't do any creative writing this year. And I didn't miss it much either...hmm, that is food for thought...

Towards the end of the year, I managed to help out a friend by copy-editing his wife's doctoral thesis. It led to my now getting two paying clients for my copy-editing and rewriting services!

All in all, it has been a good year for domestic activities at Karthi! I am so grateful for the new things I've learned this year. But my greatest thanks goes to DH who works hard and manages our finances so well that I have the leisure to be a homemaker. I cannot thank him enough for that.   

Do you look back at each year? Do the years appear distinct or do they telescope into each other and become a jumbled mess?  How do you chronicle the year's events? Do comment in the form below...

Wish you all a very merry Xmas and a Happy New Year! Signing off for 2017!

In Memoriam...

My mother lost her battle with cancer barely 8 days into the new year. We are still struggling to come to terms with the aftermath. My writer mind has been struggling to find the perfect words to remember my mother... but I have finally given up. I don't think any child can write a befitting memoir of a parent, especially a mother who performs an extremely complex role in a daughter's life. I would have to write a book to encompass it all...

So here are a few vignettes of my mother, gleaned from an old album and a few of her last pictures. She held my hand as she brought me into this life. I was privileged to hold her hand as she went out of hers. For this and all the myriad blessings that was embodied in my mother, I bow in profound gratitude to the Almighty. 

Ma on her wedding day.

A demure newlywed...

With her younger sister, my beloved aunt. The bond between the sisters was one of the strongest in her life...

With her firstborn...yes, me.

On my wedding day...

With all her children and grandchildren...

On the occasion of her surprise 40th wedding anniversary party, with her sister and sister-in-law... three bosom companions... My aunts who are also my surrogate mothers are the sole reason that I don't feel completely bereft of a mother now...

The last family celebration she attended... Vishu with us in 2015. 

One of her last pictures. Her smile still in place...

A horde of memories come stampeding in and no words can do them full justice. So let me stop here for the time being. 

It's that time of the year!!!

As 2014 is fast running out of days and 2015 is inevitably drawing near, it's been chaos at Karthi. Lots of year-end activities to be accomplished before we can usher in the New Year. New folders opened, old folders put away... Cupboards purged... Trash burned... Exams dealt with... The inevitable colds and fevers tided over...

And here we are on Xmas eve. This is where we take a few days off the internet and social media. It's a time for regrouping, time to spend with the family, time to spend some time in solitude with our own souls. A time for celebration and at the same time, a time to fall back a little in order to spring forth with more energy.

This has been a wonderful year at Karthi - a year of discovery of purpose, creative fun, some good stress - yes,  a little stress is beneficial - you might have heard the story of the tiny shark left in containers of fish to keep them alive till the deep-water fishermen reach the shore? 

So au revoir, my dear readers, till we meet again in the New Year. There will be times in the coming year too when it seems all life is a long hustle...

When it will seem that everyone is out to get you...

Or you feel completely out of your element...

Some days will bring utter chaos...

And you may feel that life is running away from you...

There might be days when you decide discretion is the better part of valor...

And days in which you have no energy left to take it any more...

But hey, that's when the fun begins! After that good rest, you get up and wade in again...

ride the waves any way you can...

and be the lord of your domain once again...

So for the coming new year, I wish all of you plenty of joy and enough good stress and challenges to make you feel alive. Have fun and adventure in 2015! And even in the midst of all the chaos surrounding you, may you have the ability to touch the immutable core of peace that is always inside you...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

(All in the course of a quiet morning at Varkala beach.)

Post Anniversary Thoughts...

In celebration of our twelfth wedding anniversary, let me share this excerpt from Eric Maisel's The Creativity Book

"What are the contours of a good intimate relationship? Every successful intimate relationship rests on the following twenty building blocks. Both partners commit to:

1. The care of each other's solitude
2. The maintenance of emotional security
3. The maintenance  of meaning
4. The maintenance of passion
5. The creation of at least occasional happiness
6. A gentle demanding of discipline from oneself and one's partner
7. A gentle exchanging of truths
8. An acceptance of the limits of the human
9. A minimizing of one's own unwanted qualities
10. The support of each other's career and creative life
11. The maintenance of friendship
12. A monitoring of moods in oneself and one's partner
13. An acceptance of difficulties
14. A commitment to one's role as ethical witness
15. The management of one's own self, life, and journey
16. Careful communicating
17. A bringing of one's creativity to the partnership
18. The maintenance of a present and a future orientation
19. Fair treatment of oneself and one's partner
20. The creation of a safe environment"

I understand most of the concepts, except for "one's role as ethical witness", but I certainly get the gist. And I would like to add a rule no. 21. Here it is:

 21. The maintenance of an incorruptible, unbreakable sense of humor

As for us, we are getting there, getting there... Though I think that even when we are in our dotage I might still occasionally adopt my screechy fishwife tones and DH will still go ballistic to the point of bulgy-eyeness. So much for gentleness! But there is no one else I would rather do this whole thing with and I think THAT is what really matters!!!

What do you think? And if anyone can make out what building block no. 14 means, please let me know! ;)

Happy 8th Day of the New Year to you all!!!

What a perfect day to start blogging in the new year! All day it has been cloudy and overcast with little intermittent showers to keep things fresh and sparkly. Yep, down here it is a GOOD thing! The kind of weather in which you want to wrap up in a cozy blanket and snuggle down with a hot cuppa tea and an old-fashioned detective novel. Well, that's exactly what I did after the tasks for the day. Lord Wimsey kept me company with his irreverent and highly intellectual badinage in a venerable library edition that seems to be older than me!

First, here is a bit of color from me to you in this new year!

Looking back at the last year is somewhat inevitable for this first post. What peaks and vales I see! I think the theme of the garden fits my 2013 very well. As most of you know by now, the soil at Karthi is my special despair. I had fancied myself as a fine gardener when I was growing up because I could stick anything in the soil and make it grow, I begged and borrowed plant cuttings and seeds wherever I went and gave them all a good life in my garden. My topiary bushes and 12 varieties of hibiscus bushes were my special pride.

I thought I could bring it all back once I settled in Karthi. Nope! It's made me plumb the depths of my fitness to be called a gardener by insisting on letting only the weeds grow aplenty while the plants I cherish have a gargantuan struggle just to exist. And this summer, there was scarcely enough water for the humans that I couldn't water my plants as well as I would've wanted to. Several plants died off. But the ones that remain are strong and can survive anything. One of my good neighbors generously gave me several cuttings when the monsoons finally came and I am glad to say that they have ALL thrived although they are slow to grow. I got help twice this year to hold back the weeds, and now am managing a little each day on my own. 

And then come these little miracles, you know....

like this self-seeded wilderness...

this plant that grew up EXACTLY where a variegated plant had breathed its last in the summer heat (oh yeah, I am a little out of practice with my topiary skills and the bushes take a loooong time to grow)...

And this little bit of lusciously bright color growing all on its own in my back yard when I had tried and failed to make some grow in the past three years!!!

As many of you know, 2013 came with very bad news about my Ma's health. She was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer with metastases even in the lungs. In her already frail state with diabetes and its accompanying nerve debility, we wondered if it was even advisable to let her go on a regimen of chemos. One of her much younger and healthier cousins had just undergone a course of chemo for the same problem and had had severe reactions which we didn't want Ma to be subjected to. But she chose to go ahead and see what lay in front of her. I cannot but bow before her courage. 

Ma went through a course of 6 chemos and then underwent surgery and coped with all of them much better than we expected her to. She has always been good about medications and although the vagaries of blood sugar levels have sometime caught her unawares, she absolutely strictly followed doctors' instructions for caring for herself through the ordeal. She also took aloe vera juice and various herbal decoctions to control her diabetes. Yes, she lost her hair and asked me to make bandanas for her which I made from my cotton duppattas. 

Last month, Dad and Ma had their 40th wedding anniversary. My sis and I planned a surprise party for her with a few of our relatives from Kottayam coming over to join us. On the 22nd of December, we invited them to lunch at our home ostensibly to celebrate my niece's birthday in advance. And then we had the joy of surprising them with a whole crowd who went "Happy Anniversary!!!"

That's my Ma on the right, her hair grown back into a pretty bob and not wearing her pink bandana for once. 

It was not only Ma's courage and good medical treatment that held us up in this ordeal. At first Ma wanted no one but immediate family know about her condition. But I went out on a limb and contacted her old colleagues from school who also happen to be my teachers. They responded with lots of love and care. They dropped in as if on a casual visit and Ma shared her diagnosis with them. They joined her in prayer and reassurances. I am absolutely positive that helped a lot in her recuperation as did the support of other relatives. We all owe them a huge debt for their support.

I too found help in a lot of friends - friends in the midst of their busy lives took time out to listen to my fearful rantings and outpourings and doubts and helped me in coming to terms with my pain. CANCER is a word that strikes fear into the bravest and I am but a poltroon. I am so grateful to all my friends for reaching out and being there for me. You know who you are!!!! Every little bit helped. Thank you all so much!!! 

So it is with a full heart that I turn back to look at 2013. The searing summer took a lot out of us, but we have survived just like my garden, stronger for all of it and with lots of good surprises and a lot of support from our dear ones.

As for my gardening this year: Do you know that 2014 has been designated the Year of the Kitchen Garden? The State Horiticultural Mission has just delivered 25 grow-bags and seedlings and seeds for rooftop cultivation, along with a very helpful booklet on organic gardening. Stay tuned for serious vegetable gardening attempts at Karthi!!!

Anything to tilt the balance?

My day started off with gratitude meditation (on day 247 currently), a cold bath and some confusion regarding there being classes or not for the kids due to the statewide protest against fuel-price hikes. Having fed everyone and sent off DH to work, I sat down to breakfast and the newspaper. Nowadays, I usually skip the disaster news to avoid useless worrying. But I couldn't help noticing two items of news almost side by side in the inner pages: 

The one on the right side is about a murder. A visiting aunt strangled her  10-year-old nephew who had been asleep with his grandmother. She says it was so that her brother could finally divorce his estranged wife and start a new life since he was averse to losing his son through divorce. The murderer is said to be on some medication according to her family and is suspected of being unbalanced to have committed such a crime.

Please wait before feeling horrible and start cursing the whole of  the human race for depravity and self-seeking. Take a look at the news item on the left. The girl Anjali, who is being lifted was a brilliant student, dancer and singer who fell prey to muscular dystrophy while in the sixth grade. With advancing years, her dancing feet were stilled, but she still sang and earned good marks. Her father who should have been her mainstay was struck down by paralysis. Although Anjali got admission for a BBA course, she couldn't attend for one whole year because there was no one to take her to college.

Here is where her friend Linimol comes in. She had gained admission for a fashion designing course which would have secured her future careerwise. But when she saw her brilliant friend sitting at home helplessly, she quit her course, joined Anjali's college for BA and is now transporting her to college and back. Since Lini's parents are working in the Gulf, she will be staying with Anjali too. 

This is why I still have faith in humanity. This is why no one's predictions of  mankind going astray do not touch me. This is why I remain buoyantly optimistic - to some it may seem that I am excessively so. It is also because I know that while Lini's sacrifice has made the news because of its unique nature, there are millions more like her whose good acts do not make the news.

So, make no mistake, mankind IS moving forward to being better. There are still some souls who are in not-so-evolved states, but even they are moving forward. Swami Vivekananda said this ages ago, it didn't make much sense to me when I read him at the age of 17, but now I understand.

Isn't it good to know and believe this?

Crazy happy!

One of the greatest perks of being a SAHM is the leisure to think, analyze and do some things that one would never get a chance to do otherwise. For example, one of my morning activities is (as you may all know by now) is waiting near our gate with our younger kiddo till his school bus arrives. We spend at least 10 minutes a day doing just that. Sometimes I take my phone with me and catch up with my blog reading on Feedly. But mostly I leave my phone behind and sit chatting to my newly five-year-old.

Today as we sat there, after a bit of tickling and poking of my cheek with a prickly globe amaranth (vadamulla) bloom, Ani was sitting in my lap when a mynah flew down a few yards from us. They are common here along with some more pretty and cute fauna. We watched the little bird hop along and I tried to imitate its call. This led me to listen for more sounds of the denizens of the air around us and I could make out at least 6 different sounds. 

Last month I had shown Ani the Greater Coucal/ the Crow Pheasant strutting across our yard and told him its name and asked him to listen to its distinctive call. Today as the bird started asking for salt ("Uppu, uppu"), Ani immediately said, "That's the Uppan!" and we both sat in a sort of rapture just listening to it. Then a koel started its song and I just had to whistle back (yep, that's one of my greatest accomplishments. I can whistle and pretty loudly!)

So the school bus came and Ani said good bye. But the koel and I were at it in full swing. We would have a bout, then the koel would sulk awhile. Then it would start going again and I reciprocated. Each time he gave up and sulked, I laughed. I pulled some weeds in the meanwhile and kept up the competition till my tummy rumbled to remind me it was time for breakfast. As I went in (of course after having had the last whistle!) I was crazy happy and what else did I sing but this...

ഒരു വട്ടം കൂടിയാ കുയിലിന്റെ പാട്ടു കെട്ടെതിർപാട്ടു  പാടുവാൻ മോഹം 

ഒടുവിൽ പിണങ്ങി പറന്നുപോം പക്ഷിയോടരുതെയെന്നോതുവാൻ മോഹം 

(Once again would I love to sing in competition with the koel

Then say "Don't leave" when he flies off, miffed )

Thankfully, unlike the poet, I don't have to just wish, I can do it! So the next time you are feeling down in the dumps, just find a koel to compete with. I guarantee it will make you chuckle and giggle like a giddy school kid! As for the koel, I am sure he'll come again. After all, this was not our first jugalbandi! :)

Live each day, fully, one at a time!

Some days things crowd up so much that it becomes difficult to breathe - literally. One has to sit still then and take time to savor each minute that goes by. And such moments are when I turn to the easiest stress-busters of all that are right here on my computer: old pictures.

Take this one, for instance:

This was taken on a serene evening in Coorg back in 2003. DH and I were on our first trip together after our wedding. I remember sitting in the city park. We had taken loads of pictures of every beautiful vista on terra firma when we discovered that we could just sit on a bench, point our camera upwards and capture several masterpieces from the show above us. Somehow, I like this series much better than any picture we took on that trip!

Now this one was taken in Detroit, in fall 2005:

We were billeted at an extended stay hotel for 2 months and were desperate for a library membership. In front of the library was this gorgeous maple in the full yellow and red glory of fall. It had also carpeted most of the lawn in front of the library with its largess. We plonked Kunjunni right in the middle and started snapping like crazy. It's one of our favorite pics of our first-born.

Now this picture - although it looks like any touristy snap in front of the Niagara waterfall...

...reminds me of how thankful we should be for having arrived safe and sound in Niagara on that Thanksgiving Day.

We started from Detroit early in the morning when snow was being removed and soon drove into a bitter snow storm even before we reached the Canadian border. We had no snow chains and saw quite a few vehicles that had turned all the way around and were stranded in our lane and on the other side of the divider.

Halfway along, DH felt a craving for some chewing gum which, unfortunately was stowed in the boot. We were driving very slowly and DH eased the car on to the shoulder of the highway - or at least that was his intention. We ended up yards away from where we had intended to stop and were poised precariously on a downward slope in a heavy snow drift!

Panic set in and we thought of calling emergency services when I suggested that we should try reversing the car. To our relief, the came back up, I retrieved the gum from the boot and our trip was henceforth uneventful. While we unwound at our hotel, I turned on the TV to find out that there had been scores of accidents on that stretch of highway that morning and we were part of the luckier ones who came out unscathed.

This picture was taken in 2006, in Duluth MN. It's one of the most beautiful places I have visited on this big, blue marble. It literally took our breath away when we found that even at the end of May, the wind that blew off Lake Superior was very chilly. We hadn't packed any warm clothes, so had to buy some! It was one of our best road trips to date. I can't imagine how cold it would be in mid-winter in Duluth. But in summer, she was magnificent!

There, I feel better already. Thanks for coming with me on this trip down memory lane!

An organizing tip for digital pictures: The path to one of my typical picture folders looks like this: Photos -- 2012 -- 0329MeenaBharani.  From this I can easily find out the pictures we took during the Meena Bharani festival of 2012 in this folder and can make out that it was on the 29th of March that year. Naming this way also means that the folders are arranged in chronological order too. All I have to do to maintain this is to spend an extra minute to think of the date and an appropriate name for the folder when I download pics. On my comp you can find years from 2002 to 2013 in the same folder format. It makes finding pics super-duper easy! Hope this tip helps!

Happy New 2013!!!

Yup, yup, yup, I've been having perfection issues again at notsoperfectkarthi as in, "What would be the perfect xmas/year-end/new year post???"  Result? A no-show at Xmas, year-end and New Year. I know so many of you might have been looking forward to those ever so humorous and witty posts from moi, sorry I couldn't oblige! :-) (A little confidence goes quite a loooonggg way, huh?)

But first of all, let me wish you all,  my dearest wonderful readers, a very happy new year! May all your days hide twinkling gems of immense value that will reveal themselves to you through the course of the day, making you gasp with wonder and prompt you to send up prayers of thankfulness. I wish that for one and all of you and for the whole world! So go find that particular gem/s for the day and make a note of them each day so that when 2014 comes by, you will have a bowlful of those lovelies to marvel at.

In case you are wondering whether I have gone bonkers, I have been looking back at 2012 with my treasure-seeker's eyes and have come up with quite a lot to feel thankful for. I did this because the month of December and even New Year's day have brought us some not-so-good news. I have been thinking of how to react as positively as I can to each.

To the Nirbhaya case: probably suggest legalizing prostitution (not my idea, Swami Vivekananda's actually) or to suggest importing women from other countries to improve the sex-ratio (why should innocent girls be penalized for rampant female foeticides?). To my Mom's cancer diagnosis: forgive her for  having known about a lump and not paid much attention to it for six years and get her as much help as early as possible. To the death of a neighboring young man in a bike accident right after the birth of the new year: send up prayers for the safe return to home of each  youngster who speeds by me.

One of the first things I did on New Year's day was to take down all our Xmas decorations and stow them away safely. I did it although I will miss the riot of twinkling lights that greeted me each December morning as I came into my dark living room. It made me smile each time I looked at them. Bye bye Xmas tree, see you in 11 months!

Could there BE any more tinsel up there? :-)

I also put away my old diary after a cursory look-through. There are several blank pages as usual, the sick days, the so-so days, but not a red-letter day was missed even if I had to sit down and write it several days later!

Which brings us to my new diary and day book:

Isn't it so appropriate that the diary I chose back in November (looking as usual for just the features like month-at-a-glance and full page for Sunday) should say Think Positive and Be Positive on the cover - the universe has sign-posts everywhere!!! As I had told you, last year's theme was gratitude! And each page of that new diary will be divvied up like this:

As you can guess, it's my next step in increasing my productivity and not forgetting anything essential each day. I started the habit in November when I saw the idea for some day planner pages with similar categories in a website. I thought, "Why print out those pages when I don't even fill up half my diary pages each day?" So I started writing out a simplified version in my diary. It's been very effective! All my planning and day's summing up in one place as well as my expenses!

The best sight I had on New Year's Day was this:

- all three guys in my life snuggling happily two hours after I was up and pottering about. This is another sight that is guaranteed to turn my heart to mush each time I see it. And how blessed am I to be able to see it almost every day!!

Happy New Year once again!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Somehow, 2012 has been the year of thanksgiving and remembering things with gratitude. The first inkling of what would be came when I got a diary for this year totally based on the looks (how shallow of me) and my favorite format inside (have to have month-at-a-glance). When I brought it home, I saw this:

 

and sure enough, each month had gratitude messages and exercises on the facing pages.  And then near the half-way mark of the year, this came into my life:

The month I spent doing the exercises in this book has had lasting effects. Now each day begins and ends with gratitude meditations - and as someone who has tried several meditation techniques in the past and left them along the wayside I can definitely say - this one is easy, extremely doable and very uplifting. 

So following the US tradition of remembering and sharing the blessings in our lives on this day, let me enumerate some things I am grateful for just off the top of my head...

 I am thankful for:

... just being here, now, in this wonderful age of computers, internet and a level of interconnection with peers that defies the imagination.

... having been young when A.R. Rahman burst upon the scene and having heard the best and freshest of his melodies. Can't think of college days without ARR's Kaathal Rojave, Netriyillatha Maatram, En Veettu Thottathil etc. as a running soundtrack.

... hearing "Ek Ladki Ko Dekha" from 1942: A Love Story last night on the radio while doing the dishes and still remembering all the lyrics.

... being able to sing along aloud with those lyrics without being strangled forthwith!

... having lots of FM channels to entertain me while doing the dishes or cooking!

... having a little kiddo sneakily undo my apron strings so that I will chase him all around the house and tickle him till he begs for mercy.

... having discovered a great artist and human being called Susan Branch and having access to her site for daily inspiration. 

... having found an easy way to access Susan's blog archives and being able to read all her old posts  - 4 or 5 a day - to my heart's content.

... being able to go up to DH who is frantically getting ready for office and inquiring very concernedly whether he has lost something. And when he asks, showing him a screw and escaping braying and honking alternately without any bodily harm befalling me.

... sharing watercolor beginner lessons with our elder son and crowing "my painting looks better" at each other.

I could go on ad nauseam, but will confine myself to ten for the time being. I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving with or without roast turkey. Have oodles of fun and good times!