Kitty Saga - 3

New readers of notsoperfectkarthi, please read Kitty Saga - 1 and Kitty Saga - 2 (at the very end of that post) to bring yourselves up to speed.

It had been more than a month since Chakki had taken her kids off in huff after we had offered her "substandard" acco in our garage while she had gunned for the five-star lifestyle in our kitchen. The kids and I went about the general merrymaking of summer vacation always keeping an eye open for the return of the prodigals.

Then in May, after we returned from a hurried trip to Chennai and Ooty, I opened the front door one afternoon and was scared out of my wits by a black and white furry ball that shot across my way on our porch. Who did I see?

The black n white kitten hiding behind the toy car! They took up temporary residence in our garage. Chakki had brought them back! Here they are hiding behind my scooter:

The kitties were completely wild and would never allow us anywhere near them. I cornered the B&W one once and only got clawed for my pains. I decided to let them alone until they grew accustomed to us if they could. And yes, service at Karthi Cat Spa continued...

They switched acco between our garage and our next-door neighbor's open terrace. Some time in May, the tan and white kitten went missing. But the B&W one made up for it. We named her "Aakrantha Kumari" (the greedy girl kitten) in honor of her insatiable appetite for milk. 

One day we offered Chakki a piece of fried fish. Aakrantha Kumari was on the neighbor's roof. Chakki started to eat the fish, then reconsidered it, picked up the piece of fish and carefully made her way into the neighboring yard while mewing softly with the fish in her mouth. We heard her daughter's frantic replies from our neighbor's roof as she waited to share the delicacy. Such motherly care!

Then two weeks ago, when we came back in the evening after a long day of weekend errands, we found Aakrantha Kumari on our porch. By that time, she had taken to coming in to Karthi from time to time under the strict supervision of her Mom, still not allowing us to touch her, but not running away from us so much either. She shared another bowl of milk with her Mom. Then she played under our car that had been parked in front. Ani came in from time to time to give us blow-by-blow reports of her antics under the car. 

Then as dusk was falling, I went out into our front yard and heard our neighbor call. I walked up to our boundary wall  and he said, "You know that lovely black and white kitten that plays with the kids? It was killed by a stray dog in our yard. The momma cat was so distraught and was crying over the body. I am just back from burying it." DH had come out to hear the last part and I had to tell him the whole thing, by which time the kids came to know about it too. And worse, Chakki herself came to us over the wall.

It was heart-breaking. Because she didn't seem to know what to do. She called for her kitten roaming all over our house. She followed DH distractedly when he went from room to room as though she was sure he was going to the kitten's hiding place. She had never taken her kittens to our second storey, but she went up the stairs anyway and wandered calling in the empty rooms up there. When we opened the front door, she went out. But then came back again through the bedroom window and searched under the window seat where she had given birth to her adorable twins. When we closed the windows, she sat on the sill outside and called.

We all grieved for that bundle of fun. We tried to be philosophical about it, but not very successfully. Two little kittens - alive for barely two or three months? The only consolation was that at least we knew what had happened to the second one, that we had fed her just an hour before she went away and that we had seen her minutes before when she was alive and well but had been spared the horrible end. 

Now all that is left of those kittens' lives are a few photos, a video of both of them playing under our coconut tree and our memories. I will post the video if I can, I downloaded it today to my computer and laughed and cried while watching it. And I had to write about them so that they will be safe somewhere in this cyber-world at least - always playing, tumbling over each other, pretending to be tigers!

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! ;)

Movie Review: Bangalore Days

Wow, ever since a bad incident six years ago when I had to manhandle a guy who took advantage of releasing-weekend crowds, I had given up going to any movie's first few days' shows. Result: I missed some good movies like Anjali Menon's Manchadikkuru, Madhupal's Ozhimuri etc. and had to wait a long time to get the DVDs.

Bangalore Days, anyway, will not suffer the ignominious fate of being thrown out of movie theaters before a week is up. As we were all looking forward to Anjali Menon's latest, I decided to make an exception for my own rule. We caught the late show of the movie at the nearest theater on the day of its release! The crowd was huge for the late-night show, the theater was housefull.

The nothing-given-away plot summary: Kuttan (Nivin), Divya (Nazriya) and Arjun (Dulquer) are cousins who have been playmates since childhood. Arjun and Kuttan have made their way to Bangalore and when Divya is married to Das (Fahadh), all three cousins achieve their childhood ambition of settling in Bangalore, their dream city. But the cousins soon find that things are not as smooth in their dream city as they believed it would be...

It's difficult to give Bangalore Days a single adjective that will encompass the whole movie. We all laughed till our eyes were wet. Then we all cried till our smiles dawned once again. The movie has to be seen to be believed. The characters may have been seen before - we have all seen Kuttans, Arjuns, Saras (Parvathy),  Meenakshis (Isha Talwar) and even Michelles (nameless-to-me) - they are common enough. But it is the way in which they are blended together in a tapestry of love and hate that the movie becomes a thing of beauty, to be watched again and again, ad nauseam.

Although it is essentially a story of youngsters, the elders also play notable roles - be it Kuttan's mother (Kalpana, in a lovely humorous role she handles very well) who blossoms in unforeseen ways, Divya's hidebound parents (Maniyan Pillai Raju and Praveena) who decide that an astrologer's prediction is more important than their daughter's dreams or Natasha's (Nithya Menon) embittered parents played by Pratap Pothen and Vinaya Prasad and Sara's ambitious mother (Rekha) who wants only the best for her daughter. We have seen the likes of these characters as well - but not like this and we cannot but empathize with each of them.

The last time I went to Bangalore, I saw lots of traffic jams, construction of the metro going on everywhere and a general breakdown of infrastructure in several parts of the city. Which makes me wish I had gone with Sameer Thahir and Anjali Menon. Together they take the best of the city and make it appear a dream destination that everyone aspires to. The picturization of the final bike race has such a dreamlike quality that was calming and exhilarating at the same time.

The whole cast does an exemplary job. Fahad takes on a partly unsavory character and comes out brilliantly. Dulquer has us rooting for him all the way. Nazriya and Nivin handle their roles with consummate ease. Parvathy is a revelation - this girl has come a long way since her half-baked initial performances. 

A highlight of the movie was the incredible montage of childhood pics of the three central characters in the intro. It was enthralling, to say the least.

But the movie is causing me some deep disappointment: There is nothing to find fault with!!!!

Final verdict: Paisa vasool, time vasool, even lost-sleep vasool (and that's an encomium very, very few movies can hope to earn from me!) Go ahead and book your tickets, you won't regret it!!!

Movie Review: How Old Are You?

Ever since this event, we have known this would probably happen. At Karthi, we followed all the unfolding of events with an eagerness that even surpassed the interest in the formation of a new central government for the country.  Each bit of news was savored and shared. It hit the screens right after one record landslide win was announced. For the sake of one person alone, we hoped that the same would happen for this movie too...

It was hard to hold on to our maxim of "Never go for a movie in the opening weekend" this time.  But we did it and went to see the movie at the first opportunity last Sunday.

No actor could have asked for a better comeback vehicle. The first movie that was announced for Manju was one by director Ranjith and for old times' sake, it was pretty disappointing to have it come to naught due to story problems. But proving the extremely cliched but true adage that "Everything happens for the best," Rosshan Andrews' How Old Are You has happened.

Manju Warrier comes to life as Nirupama, a UDC clerk who somewhat all of a sudden becomes aware that the society thinks that she is past her prime. And she is, as she says, "Just 36." Certain factors clash and combine to make her feel unwanted, undesirable and a butt of jokes. Her saving grace comes when she is reminded of what she once was and how people still have that resplendent image of her. Whether Nirupama can recapture that old essence of herself is what the movie is all about.

Writers Sanjay and Bobby have concocted a gold mine of a script this time - especially because it will resonate with most around-40-year-olds regardless of gender. I think all people who are immersed in their respective callings and harried lives take a moment to stop and reconsider what they are doing in life around 35-40 years of age. In fact, it was my 35th birthday that provided me with the impetus to start this blog four years ago. Well, this movie will certainly sound the clarion call for those who are still sleeping and are unaware of their true selves!

Okay, okay there are other people in the movie too! Kunchacko Boban essays a slightly negative role as Nirupama's selfish and manipulative husband - does well too. Amritha Anil plays the brilliant 13-year-old daughter who is at once Nirupama's nemesis and salvation. Since the audience will become haplessly involved with Nirupama, it will be easy to overlook the character of her daughter who is a heroine in herself.  All the rest of the cast provide wonderful support for the central characters.  Starting from Kalaranjini who plays a spaced-out mother-in-law to Nirupama (and has dubbed for herself for the first time after her vocal cords were damaged) to the lovably hypocritical Thesni Khan all play memorable characters.

Sameera Saneesh is surely gonna have ladies thronging shops asking for wide-bordered "How Old Are You" saris. This is one movie costume designer who delivers with every movie that she does. 

Okay, untangling myself from the gorgeous saris, let me deliver the final verdict:

PLEASE go and watch this movie before you are a day older!!!

Movie Reviews: 7th Day and Ring Master

Aaaah, it feels so good to be back. I find that when we have a tour planned way ahead of time, my routine life just goes into suspended animation. I don't feel settled enough to pursue any of my regular activities and am always thinking, planning, packing and this becomes worse in the week preceding the actual trip. Besides there is DH who wants to explore all avenues of possible things to do and asking me to research the same. I have to use all my power just to restrain his enthusiasm or he would have us return from the trip all fagged out! 

But yes, we managed to watch two movies the weekend before we traveled. One was purely for the kids; you guessed it:  Ring Master. Dileep's latest should be taken only in that spirit so that you can avoid having any high expectations. We had a bunch of our neighbors' kids too in our entourage and they had a good time. There are any number of reviews online that say that the actor has used this movie to get back at his estranged wife. Please be advised that it is ONLY a marketing stunt to attract more people to this movie. 

7th Day: Kudos to Prithviraj for choosing to back this debutante director's movie. Syamdhar shows promise as a director. Akhil Paul's screenplay has some lacunae, but is still strong. There is an emphasis on slow motion sequences and extremely controlled dialogue delivery with punch lines popping up everywhere. But aside from all that, it has a very good thriller feel although I did predict the climax 10 minutes before it happened. Sujith Vaassudev (boy, is he into numerology or what) does excellently well with a camera - turning even a morgue into a wonderful piece of cinematic scenery. Tovino Thomas gets another good role, Vinay Fort, Anu Mohan, Janani Iyer - all pass muster. Definitely good for one watch. 

Taming the paper monster...

What were you taught about organizing your paper work? What systems did you see as you grew up? Did those have any influence on your current paperwork organizing style?

My father taught me never to lose a piece of paper. At home we had rows and rows of box files in which he meticulously punched and put in each piece of paper that came his way. When I passed high school, he bought me a few box files too. I still have a couple of those with me - the rest I combed out of my system.

Now me, I am a nut for organization thingamajigs. Along with productivity planning, I love trying out new styles of organizing everything - so much so that I think in one of my previous births I must have been an office secretary who passed away before she could perfect her innovative filing system - perhaps somebody like Miss Lemon who was always fiddling with Poirot's case files.

Since this is one of my pet obsessions, I have studied the organizing traits of people around me. I have told you about my father's style - the only drawback with his system is retrieval. He just files away paper after paper in no order without categorizing by year or anything - so it's a real headache as I found out again two weeks ago when my Mom needed emergency care and Dad set me to search for their medical insurance papers. I gave up after two minutes - rushed to my home and retrieved my copy of their medical insurance (which reminds me, I have to get it back!)

Other styles of organization that I have come across:

1. Sweep it under: One of my relatives stores every bit of paper that comes her way - under her mattress.  The only problem - again - is retrieval, not to mention the chance of losing a few each time she makes up her bed. She once confessed to me that whenever she was required to find a piece of paper she usually had a bout of irritable bowel syndrome!
2. The Omnidiary: Several people just thrust their paperwork into a diary. I have seen several who use this method. The diary could be from their parent's times - ancient and discolored and absolutely bulging with multicolored paper bits thrusting out willynilly. Again retrieval and risk of loss each time the diary is opened are problems. 
3. The Holdall Shelf: This could be an open shelf or a compartment in the clothes cupboard. Several of my generation favor this style. They just thrust in the piece of paper and then forget about it until it is required.
4. The Box: Now this was DH's style before he married and got me to look after his papers :). Since he moved abroad and back frequently, each time he went out of India, he sent all his belongings to his Mom in suitcases. Within three months of our marriage, I had to get his fourth PF passbook since the previous three had gone AWOL. Once I went through his boxes back in Kerala, I found all three previous passbooks. That is when I decided that I should be the paperwork keeper for our little family.
5. The Entertainment Center: Since the TV table has now grown into shelves, many use this piece of furniture to hold their paper. I have found everything from cable service receipts to property deeds on this in various homes.

After seeing all this, I decided to make a filing system of my own - when I found that my Dad's system just didn't answer my family's needs or my requirement of easy retrieval. My system consists of three types of files.

1. An accordion file with monthly tabs: This is where I put in all the things that come my way at first. I just thrust them into the concerned monthly compartment as soon as I can. I corral all the receipts etc. into my table's drawer that houses this accordion file and then whenever I get a chance, I just look at the date and file away accordingly. By June, the accordion file will start to bulge. So I take a plastic folder and label it with the year and put away as much paper in it as I am sure will not be required for that year. I leave things like medical bills etc in their monthly slot. In December, I do another purge of the accordion file, move everything that is not required any further to the plastic folder for that year and keep the accordion file ready for the new year.
2. Plastic folder for the year: As mentioned in the previous section, this holds all the receipts etc. for that year. The previous year's folder lives in a handy shelf, the others get shunted to a top shelf, which can be called the Karthi archives :).
3. A box of folders: Now this is the MAIN part of my filing system. I found an old zippered briefcase (you know, the kind you get for free from jewelers and textile shops?) and found the biggest velcro-tabbed plastic folders I could find. I labelled each with a category:

• Automotive: Anything to do with our vehicles - manuals, insurance original documents, copies of ownership etc. go in this folder
• Certificates: Currently this folder holds my old youth festival certificates and DH's certificates from work.
• Guarantees and Warranties: Manuals and warranties of all our household appliances. 
• Financial: Every bank thingy, pension papers and insurance policies.
• House and property: LPG papers, all property and tax receipts, copies of mortgage, property deeds etc.
• Identification papers: Passports, Birth Certificates,Voters' id, Aadhar, DL originals, PAN cards: all live in small zippered pouches. How many kinds of identification do we need????
• Medical: Latest complete checkup reports, latest prescriptions, medical insurance papers (including parents'!)
• Miscellaneous: For those pesky papers that simply refuse to be categorized.
• Nikhil
• Nidhin : For whatever the kids need to keep from school, annual progress reports etc.
• Photostat copies: Whenever we need copies of docs, we usually take more than required. So now when I need copies of any doc, I first check this folder.

Other than this, I also use a bank strong box to keep some docs (a list of which I keep) and I make specific folders from time to time for anything that needs the collating of several documents. So these days whenever DH asks for a document or calls in a panic to say that the property tax for last year has not been paid, I calmly go to my file box and give him the required assurance. But the man is incorrigible. Last year, I had completed the collation of medical bills and filled the xls to be given to his company's accountants. He called me and asked me to keep the original bills ready for him so that he could take them to the office the next day. I searched and searched at Karthi till I was almost crying. I called back and said I couldn't make out WHERE they had got to. He called back a while later to tell me sheepishly that they were already in his computer bag where I HAD PUT IT A WEEK AGO. 

So much for being organized!!!

Life's fitful fever...

There is nothing like an actual fever to put the greater fever of life in abeyance. Life gets simplified to the basics: slap up 3 meals somehow, swallow medications, collapse into bed. All the rest gets taken care of somehow. 

Hectic was quite an understatement for March. The days just seemed to speed up especially when it was school-closing time. Here I stand in a slight fever-haze at almost the middle of April and I have no idea of what I was doing all the time in March!!!

I will tell you what we did right at the end though. We went to the town of Wind and Jupiter. Okay, THAT was a fancy way of saying Guruyvayoor. Our niece was scheduled to have her first morsel of solid food in front of Unnikkannan and we too went off for a darshan of the Lord.

This time I didn't carry a camera with me. It was a conscious decision to omit that one accessory this time. No camera can capture the joy of the darshan anyway and I don't need pictures to remind me of the same.

But at one point in the trip I did wish I had brought the camera. It was when we went to the Guruvayoor Devaswom's elephant keep at Punnathoor Kotta. Since we had already been there once, I decided to let the boys roam while I sat in front of the old നാലുകെട്ട് (naalukettu) and watched the great pachyderms feed. Okay, I will add pictures from when we went there back in 2011...

See that low wall there? I was sitting cross-legged on top of it and gazing off into the enclosure. It was around 5 pm and all the kariveerans were having their tea (?).. ahem, with a side of palm leaves. It was a joy to just sit and watch them methodically separating the leaves, bashing them to and fro on the ground or against the forelegs to shake off any dust/insects and then eating. One youngster I saw had kept some of his snacks on the top of his head. I was wondering about the new trends in elephant headgear fashion when he pulled it off and used it to scoop some fresh dust on to his back and then left the leaves on his head again. Oh, it was hilarious.

Even more fascinating was the use of the trunk exactly like we use our hands. I saw one of the tuskers rub his eye just like we would. Some of them seemed to be multitasking, doing yogic stretching postures while having their tea. One was rotating his neck so fast that DH and I felt tempted to try emulating him, but soon stopped. Then there were two or three who looked like they were dancing. I looked hard to find dangling ear-pieces, but couldn't. Probably they use blue-tooth devices to listen to FM radio and since all three were dancing differently, I can only surmise that they were listening to different stations...

The elephants all had their names on placards attached to their stations. I was gazing at the place of "Nandan" when I saw him being led to his place after a bath. Till then I had thought the other elephants were black, but I got to know what real black was when I saw this freshly-washed hulk. He was so magnificent, it was all I could do to keep myself from running forward and hugging his trunk. Probably his mahout wanted to keep him that way for a while, because he made Nandan lift his pile of palm leaves and carried it away from the other now tatty-looking elephants and made him stand on a grassy area where there was no dust to play with.

What was that, you want more pics of the Aanakkotta? Okay, here are more from our earlier trip...

Here's one helping himself from a hose. Not all are well-mannered like this, some put the hose straight into their mouths! Hmm!

Here is another view of the front yard and the building. There were fewer elephants the last time we went. This time, sitting in my spot I could count more than twenty elephants in just one direction. Currently there are 59 elephants in the Kotta, most of whom are away on duty for temple festivals and such. After the long queues, blaring speakers and glaringly bright shops near the temple, it was so peaceful to be sitting around these magnificent creatures. I don't think any visit to Guruvayoor would be complete without a visit to His elephant herd!

Cat family update: Many were asking about what happened to the kitty family and I was too busy to write about it. Here is what happened. Within a week of delivery, the momma seemed to feel the Flipkart box was too small for comfort. And I guess she didn't want me to wear down myself by trudging with milk bowls all the way from the kitchen to the bedroom. So she shifted her kitties to a kitchen cabinet that was missing its door at the time (one of the hinges was broken - fixed now) and resisted any attempt of mine to dislodge them.

Not about to be outwitted by a cat, I waited till I heard momma going outside, shut all windows and doors and put the kitties back in the Flipkart box. As I had guessed, momma cat was waiting by the door when I opened it. I showed her the box and her progeny in it expecting her to follow me, but she stalked to the kitchen looking, "Come and put my babies back where they were!" So there was nothing to do but catch her and put all three in the garage. Miffed by the downgrade from 5-star to 1-star accommodation, she stalked off with her kids. We still see her around, but she always turns away her head in disdain, however sweetly we call to her. Hope her li'l ones are safe and she will bring them over some time to visit!