Little Bean prepares for church

Mira was taken for a haircut today, and thereafter for a bite of chicken. Haircut outings go with perks like chicken and icecream.
Ash, who was preparing for his oil massage and bath, did not make a fuss to go out today. However, when V came home with Mira he got sentimental and told him that we were not taking him anywhere. (That's not true, just yesterday night the whole gang in their night suits had trooped along when V came to pick me up from the workplace late in the night. Ash was lil upset as he wasnt taken to the local provision shop when V stopped to buy some eggs.) And he used that as an excuse to accuse us of being partial.
So V promised him to take him to church tomorrow, hopefully to St. Andrew's Kirk. Last week he had almost promised but did not. The Kirk and the St. George's Cathedral near the US embassy here, coming under the Church of South India, has the service in English, and has a more interactive communion than the Kerala Syrian Xian churches. Quite like the Anglican church I had attended in Dar-es-salaam years ago.
Ash is excited. He wants to know if we are going to the church where Mr Bean sang his hallelujahs!

The litter bug

Today, being a very rainy day, the lazy parents didn't send the kids to school. Ash, for one,had slept poorly owing to his wheezing that hasnt got better after the latest bout of fever.
The skies cleared later in the morning, making me regret my decision. Mira, for one, was dying to go to school until she found other activities - messing up the house - to keep her engaged.
I am waiting for her to get over that phase - of picking stuff from my dressing table, from the kitchen, books and any knick-knack she fancies and putting them in a polythene bag or her school bag; of littering the house with anything she finds interesting to play with and later discards; of unmaking the made bed and folded bedsheets. All activities that make me go insane and makes the man of the house blame the two women in the house for keeping the house untidy.
Ash seems to have got over that phase last year, but he often joins Mira in all the fun. The maid blames Ash for setting a bad example to Mira, her pet. I tell her it is a phase that kids go through and the issue is not merely one of Mira getting influenced by her brother. She is hard to convince - as it is of many adults with set ideas, and a Malloo one at that!

A happy Vezhambal*

The much-awaited northeast monsoons have set in. It made a tame entry yesterday, so thankfully the laundry could be washed and dried without much problem. But today it is in full swing, and the kids went to school in the steady drizzle. Classes were only half full, with many children absenting themselves or walking in late thanks to the traffic jams.Mira has been telling me that she wants a raincoat - "all the children put this button, this button and this button with a cap on". Guess we will have to get them raincoats as I dont feel they are smart enough to wield their colourful Popy umbrellas; though in Kerala each little kid is armed with an umbrella since we get rains a good part of the year. And when it doesnt rain, we hold it against the sun to protect our complexions!
Back to Mira. Everyday she comes up with some demand or the other.
'All the children bring noodles/bread and jam/ice cream to school, so I want that.' So yesterday I sent her bread and jam, and today noodles. I know she is cooking up the ice cream story. Requests for a Barbie doll schoolbag or a Spiderman snackbox or a Pokemon waterbottle are not far behind.
Ash however is not so ambitious. He is happy with whatever we give.
*For the edification of non-Malayalis - Vezhambal or the Great Hornbill is our state bird, and it is believed to look earnestly at the clouds in anticipation of rains.

Lucky mascots

Letting go of a vehicle that stood us in good stead for 5 years has been emotionally difficult. The vehicle is almost a family member, and V, who does all the driving for us, was the saddest to let our white Zen go today. The 5-year-old M-800 before that had been equally dear but had made way for the Zen because we thought our newborn (Ash) deserved a better vehicle. Maruti Truevalue , which gave us a fair price for both, hopefully will find a good customer who will take good care of it.
The other lucky mascots in our life have been the kids, especially Ash during whose gestation V landed his present job. And at a time when he gets another elevation in post and responsibilities, he cant but help attribute all his good fortune to his little son, who personally has not been so lucky about his health.

Just yesterday night, we realised how much the separation during the last summer vacation had affected Ash. As V casually mentioned another holiday for the kids in Kerala next summer, Ash began sobbing and said he didnt want to go to his paternal grandparents again on his own. He cried in fear about the induppu (rock salt) application that had been part of the ayurveda treatment during his two-month stay there. It took us an hour to console him, and he was still not convinced that the induppu experience was a thing of the past and that it would not be repeated.
Not that he loves his grandparents any less; but the trauma of the treatment has been so imprinted in his mind that he is terrified of going there again without our company. He is however willing to try my parents' place the next summer.

Tense tensions

The kids are yet to get a sense of tense and time. So the sentences range from "Lia peed in the class next month" to "Didnt you give me a chocolate last year/month" (when it is actually last week). Yesterdays and tomorrows are easier for them to comprehend, the rest of the dates are either too advanced or too long ago. So, Ash begins his conversations with pandu pandu (once upon a time...).

No, it is not a matter of worry but one of entertainment as the kids master their mother tongue.

***

While a sick Ash continues to co-sleep, Mira is learning to sleep on her own at night. I know it is late by Western standards but we are still not emotionally ready to wean them. She sleeps alone on the big bed in the children's room while the maid sleeps on the floor. Twice, she woke up early dawn and joined us. She continues to be a baby for us and we are just not ready to let go....

***

Mira likes minimum adornments on herself - no hairclips, bands, bangles or chains. The school rules suit her fine - no necklace or nailpolish or fancy jewellery. Only black bands and hairclips. But a bindi on the forehead is no problem. However, Mira has been shunning all forms of make-up this year as she fears her bullying peers. She tells us that the kids will take them away, so today when I put a watery bindi on her forehead she was in tears. I pretended to wipe it away and she ran off to catch the school van happily (though a bit unhapy that she couldnt doublecheck the erased bindi in the mirror)

When she came home and found the yello bindi still intact on her forehead, she gave her poor nanny a dressing down. "Kalli, you tell me that the bindi has gone and it is still there," she fumed.

It gave us adults some moments of mirth - our domineering, tomboyish, little girl.

Festive spirits

Diwali went past in a fury of crackers and flurry of sweets and other goodies from our benevolent employers and neighbours. An excited Ash examined the crackers that his dad had bought a couple of days in advance from the Reliance store in the neighbourhood, which turned out to be damn good and gave us all the fun and excitement we needed. While he had his share of fun lighting sparklers and flowerpots and that other thing that looks like flying saucers on the ground on Thursday and Friday, he spent much of Saturday watching others burst crackers. As for me, I was content watching the skies light up in colourful arrays of stars and rain (the latters seems to be a new invention from Sivakasi, I think).
All of us had a proper 2-day weekend for once (I must say it is me who doesnt get a 2-day weekend all the time). A carnival at our parish church kept V busy on Saturday (the conference and culinary efforts that went into the preparation of many Kerala delicacies and snacks for sale the next day) and Sunday (in charge of a stall that sold some indigenous tubers).
I picked up a coffee mug pair from the Youth Movement's stall and V picked up a couple of curios from the Jerusalem stall (stuff brought by folks who toured the Holy Land this year - visiting Israel/Palestine is becoming the preferred goal of well-to-do Malayali Xians in recent times though I wonder how much they are actually allowed to see in the war-torn land) while Mira opted for an icecream and flavoured milk at the Aavin stall.
Upon returning home, Ash asked us why we hadnt woken him up the way we do when he has to go to school in the mornings. He is not ready for church in his present state.

A weekend adventure

It was Mira's turn to get sick this weekend. On Friday night, she started throwing up and had to be rushed to the Emergency of SMF's children's hospital, which has been relocated to New Avadi Road - less depressing interiors than the old one but a lil noisy since it is bang on a very busy road. It former occupant, the RIGID hospitals (a very eerie name for a hospital), seems to have turned rigid or departed elsewhere.
We groaned as we sighted the duty doctor, whose diagnosis as far as some of Ash's ailments have been off the mark. We had to wait while the dr did the rounds - most probably catching a cat nap, since there cant be any rounds at 11 pm. Sometimes we are told the dr is in the ICU, when in actuality they are napping. She advised admitting Mira in the hospital if she continued to vomit after the intravenal injection. Throw up she did upon greedily taking a glass of tender coconut water half an hour after the injection, but we were spared an admission.
She began to improve the next day, but began throwing up in the evening when an ambitious and doting L fed her more than she could take. We rushed her to our regular paed. and just about managed to see him thanks to his friendly attendant. The dr requested a lift home, so we had to wait a while till the last of his patients went away.
Since the dr had been egging V to attend his church harvest festival on Sunday morning, the two of us decided to attend the mass at the CSI Holy Trinity church on Ritherdon Road. To my surprise I met Ash's teacher, who is a member of the parish, there. Burgers and fruit salads later, we realised that we had not bought in time the coupons for the kappa-fish curry delicacy. Disappointed, we decided to have a lunch of the same at some Kerala hotel in the neighbourhood.

And V suggested that we try the new Kokum restaurant in Anna Nagar, which is supposed to serve dishes from the four South Indian states. We were greeted with a 'Closed' signboard but were soon welcomed in by a waiter who changed the board to 'Open', since they open for lunch at 12 noon and it was already 20 minutes past 12. We dug out the kappa-meen curry combo from the stylish menucard. The prices seemed exorbitant, so we hoped the quantity would be good.
The interiors were well done, and we sat talking idly to the sound of waterfall from the hidden fountains. A welcome drink of lime juice in a glass that was a wee bit bigger than a test tube and two miniature dosas made of wheat and maida followed with 6 exotic looking chutneys of different flavours and colour.
By 1 pm, the elderly hotel manager told us apologetically that he was sorry to keep us waiting and his chef would serve us a carnival of something - which turned out to be 3 fried red fish (that we call Unni Mary back home, after an actress!) and a spoonful of banana chips and sarkaravaratti.
Twenty minutes later, as we kept examining the fossils of the fish restlessly, the waiter announced to us that the kappa was just not turning out right (some dont cook well) and would we mind ordering something else. Tired and at our wit's end, we decided to settle for the Dindigul mutton biriyani (since the Hyderabadi version was unavailable) and mutton sukka (fry). The order was honoured this time but the quantity was alarmingly small for the price they carried - say, 2-3 tablesoonful of mutton fry for Rs. 285 and a small bowl (the amount a diabetic is advised to eat by the dietitian) of small-grain biriyani that tasted like something else.
An altogether unsavoury experience, and I had to beseech a seething V not to lose his cool and pay the bill without any negative remarks (instead, I had already planned to make a disparaging post about the experience). It was to be one of those restaurants we wouldnt step in more than once (like the so-called Thai restuarant Benjarong, though some swear by it).
We reached home to find the maid had cooked a more delectable fare, and which we decided to have for dinner.

Jokes apart...

For two weeks until school closed for the 2nd term, Mira had classes for less than three hours. However, since the older kids had classes for another 30 minutes, she had to wait in class since the van driver didnt want to make 2 trips to drop them all home. The first day she was tired and in tears. She had to sit with 'Joker' till the van appacha came to fetch her.

"Joker? Who is this joker?"

"Dont you know joker? I will show you next time," she said. 
We three adults were puzzled. I assumed she was referring to the lame and short watchman near the nursery gate. Maybe the kids had nicknamed him Joker.

This Monday, when I peeped into her class after dropping Ash (who hasnt gone to school after that single appearance this term owing to an itchy skin and poor sleep at night), I saw a little plump girl sitting with her. When Mira came over to me, the girl trailed behind. "Who is this?" I asked trying to familiarise myself with her classmates.

"This is Joker!" she told me. I looked at the list of names stuck outside her class and found the lil girl was Joanna.

The past two days, Mira has been talking about one Erupussy in her class. However I cant find any name in the list that remotely resembles that. Aaron Koshy or Aishwarya, I wonder.

So much for her diction. Anyway provides some mirth for this parent who is trying to byheart the names in the list and ask her whether such and such names figure in her class.

Caring ways

It has been a busy week at work and at home. With the kids having holidays the whole of this week, the first half of my day went in managing them.
Since the swamiji has prescribed a lot more medicines to hasten Ash's "blood purification" (which is the core of Ayurvedic treatment), the poor boy spends much of his day drinking concoctions of arishtams and kashayams. Two before food and two after food and each intake to have a 15-minute interval, which means that breakfast itself is a 2-hour process. A homeo (!!) ointment after bath and oil massage before bed has been prescribed in place of an oil massage before bath. I am a lil averse to going to bed with oil on the body - it makes his clothes and the bedsheet (over and above the regular bedsheet) stink!
The kids have been busy with their games with the Dolly as the protagonist. Only yesterday morning, we managed to take them to the park while we parents took turns at our brisk walk sessions. The park was crowded being Gandhi jayanti, a public holiday. Big boys from the nearby slums had invaded the kids' play area, trying to walk up the slides and enter it from all the wrong points. Half of the playstuff meant for small children - swings, see-saws, merry-go-rounds - are broken as a result. I wish the corporation will hire staff to monitor the play area.
Meanwhile, while I am at home, I prod Ash to finish all the classwork that were done on days he had missed school. The homework metaphor came in handy yesterday when the kids, alarmed to find that their mother hadnt returned home even after 11 p.m., called up to know what I was doing. I told Ash that my sir had given me homework to finish in the office, and I would be coming soon. It pacified him though apparently the duo kept worrying about me - what work is she doing, will the watchman open the gates for her etc. - until sleep got the better of them