Small talks
Little laughters
Shot size bantering
Is all there is
Is all there will be
Crossing paths
Like two cars passing by
Short-lived acquaintances
They come and go
And there are plenty
Starting with small talks
Ending with small talks
These are loose threads
From another lifetime
This I am sure if
For
Each life
Is a reunion
Of the souls..
After a short break to take care of some life changes, I am back with life lessons. Today’s lesson is driven by my little one. He has been sad due to some changes at home. He seems sad every time I talk to him. This took me back to a time when I was sad because I wasn’t getting my husband’s time for a conversation due to his busy work schedule. I used to be down and sad and felt lost. He told me after a few days of cribbing and nagging that my happiness should not depend on another person or anybody.
When he said it, a bell rang in my head, like someone had just knocked me hard on my head. As the days passed I kept thinking about this and I learnt that what he said was a 100% true. I started observing people, happy people and saw that they were happy within. Their reason for happiness was not someone or something outside them.
This was an eye opening discovery for me as I started finding happiness within me. As I dug up those hidden coves inside me, I became a genuinely happy person.
Your happiness lies inside you, like your center of gravity, it’s your balance and you need to find it. It’s definitely there, because that is one of the mandatory parts He put in us. We just have to find it and stay happy !
Cheers to happiness.. your and mine !!
Like the past few weeks, today evening again I got an invite from a good friend of mine to attend bible study at her house. She was kind enough to call me again today, in spite of the fact that I declined a few of her earlier invitations, because I had something else to do. This was the first time I was attending bible study and I asked my kids just before heading out of the door, if we needed to carry the Bible. My younger one promptly said, “Amma, God provides!” As I thought about what he had said, I realized that his timely statement had such greater and deeper meaning. God was going to show it to me in more ways than one later during the day.
At the bible study I met a couple of other families. Honestly, it felt so good interacting with people who were not from my company or from my state or from my country. The four families gathered in that house, or whom God brought together were from four different countries. It was amazing to see how people could gather from different spectrums, different lives to talk about God. It was a group of people who genuinely wanted to be nice to each other. Only if this message could be passed to the whole world.
Anyways, so I met a young woman, single, mother of four children, who had recently relocated to Bentonville. She was working towards establishing her own housekeeping services company by starting out small and was in need of more clients. I told her about the Nextdoor app, which was new to her and how it could help her. I got her visiting card and put out recommendations in Nextdoor and the Indian community on FB. I don’t know if this will help her or not, but it was a channel that God provided to her to help her. And as I thought back to what my son has said before we left home, “God provides”, I realized how soon He teaches us.
As we progressed through the Bible study which was about quick listening, slow anger, doing (James Chapter 1:19-27) I was thinking about how God has provided for me. As I grew up, my parents lived from paycheck to debt to paycheck to debt. Most of my school and engineering fees was loans given by kind-hearted people. God didn’t provide us with a spacious house, a car, bank balance, jewelry, fine clothes, and all the materialistic things that money could buy, but He provided my parents with ideas to keep the money flowing just enough to educate their children. God provided my brother and I with enough intelligence to do well at studies. He provided my brother and I the wisdom to understand the meagerness of resources and use it well. He provided my brother and I the will to overcome, to study, to get further in life, to provide for our parents in their old age. All gifts don’t come wrapped in packages. The most valuable ones come as blessings, when God provides!
Truly, truly blessed!
New year is always an opportunity to reflect on the year gone by and renew the hope within you to possibilities and achieve something new. Technically January 1st is just another day, when you reset the calendar. But over the years this day has filled the human with what a system reboot does to the computer. You wash out the junk and temp files, and make the system ready for new transactions.
As I look at the year gone by, it was an eventful year. So many high points, and low ones too, and definitely some valuable lessons, retaught in life’s mysterious ways.
I ticked off a few items from my things-to-do-before-I-die bucket list, and some were direct blessings from above delivered to me through people I love.
All through my childhood years, my parents never owned a car. The lack of it didn’t have any impact on the quality of our life either. We walked, took an auto, rode the bus. The memories created during those walks, holding my parents hands, the endless chattering during those 2km walks from school or my father’s office were filled with stories from my father’s childhood or general knowledge about the world. I am so glad there were no mobile phones then, to intrude into our privacy. The paradox of today’s life is that we drive to the gym to walk!
So it was not until I got married that I owned a car. All credit goes to my husband for pushing me to learn driving. He virtually gave me a pair of wings. Fourteen years hence, we walked into the BMW showroom and bought our first BMW, a black sedan. Honestly, buying a car or even a BMW is no big deal in the US. You get auto loans at good rates, you can own any car you want. What makes it a blessing is knowing from where you came and where life has taken you. Counting your blessing and the luxuries that God has blessed you with. The icing of all of these blessings, was driving my father in the BMW, which was his first ride in a BMW! Truly blessed!
So, you have read blogs about my childhood years, the house I grew up in. My mother always complained that she never owned a house, until her final years when my brother and I together with our parents built a house in Wayanad. After listening to years and years of her grumbling for her own house, she looked so calm and at peace sitting in the front yard of the finished house. She looked like finally she was home. The memory fresh in my mind. Maybe I got this from her, but I always wanted to my own house and didn’t want to have it towards the tad end of my life. I wanted it during a time when I was healthy enough to maintain it. So thanks to my husband again, he bought us our first home. This house is many times the size of the house I grew up in. Again, what makes it special is knowing from where I came and where life has brought me. I now strive to create half as many good memories for my children in this large expanse of space, as my parents created for my brother and I. Again, blessed!
She is the first lady in my husband’s family I met. She welcomed me into the family with the warmest hug and a heart full of love. In all the fourteen years I have known her, she has only given love. Such selfless love, I have only read in books. She battled the worst illness during her final years and even in those times, she spread the warmth she had been blessed with. It was only befitting that she named our eldest son, Nitin. The nicest soul life introduced me to along the way, moved on to find her place in heaven. In that leaving, she redeemed me and blessed me for the years when she wouldn’t be around. Blessed to have been part of her loved ones!
Then my appa! The seventy year old, handsome fella who applies hair dye so carefully and wans to look young as he gets older. His bald head being the only obstacle. After years of nagging, he finally boarded the big bird and crossed the seas to come see America! He saw less of America, and just more and more of Walmart in Bentonville and rain and snow in Seattle. The six months he spent with my brother and I comes to an end this week. Yet having him with either of us is so much of a relief than when he is alone in Bangalore, where I call him everyday just to make sure he is okay. As he has got older he has developed some irritating habits like all old people do (which even I will, I am sure) but what he has done for me over all these years, is our personal story and is so important in shaping the person that I am today. So blessed to be born to him!
I always love spending time with my parents and sibling. We relive our childhood years, like everyone else. This maybe more important and dear for daughters who even partially adopt a different family strain through marriage. Being yourself with no strings attached is so endearing and happens only with your own parents and siblings. I got a week of this bliss when I went to Seattle to spend time with my brother and father. As I left Seattle there were underlying fears that I kept hitting down like whac-a-mole arcade game, yet the happiness of that one week is a treasure. Blessed to get that one week of me!
When you stay in a different country and miss your best friends often, getting even a 24 hour time period with them is a treat! 90% of the time is filled mostly with nonsense chatter, laughs, laughs and more laughs. At the end of the day the memory of that time brings a smile to your face. When life doesn’t offer you the best, this is where you huddle into, your punching bag, with no promises and explicit professing of the depth of the relationship. Its the knowing that they are which makes all the difference. The two nonsense-chatter people in my life have stayed on for sixteen years straight now. I can’t imagine my life without these two. Blessings!
Grandparents are a treasure. My children were blessed with another set of grandparents and their unlimited love throughout last year. My children are a bit more affectionate, softer, respectful because of the affection they were showered with by these grandparents. I am ever so grateful, that my children got this opportunity at love during these years of their life which will definitely play its part in the people they will become. Blessed again!
Letting go is difficult. Dipping myself in that cold water early in the morning, following the steps the priest dictated, putting rice and reciting those mantras supposedly frees my mother. It is not sadness or tears that I felt, its a frozen state accentuated by the dip. With my father beside me, its like she tied the bond a bee wit tighter. It was a low time, no doubt. But in the knowing that I was born to a fighter with a never-say-die attitude is the biggest blessing I have received. Her attitude to move on in spite of all obstacles is what she passed on to me. Blessed!
There were low times, but at the end of the day who wants to remember them. They are best let go. People whom I misjudged, people who helped you sail through during tough times, everything a blessing, a learning. There were days when there is no light at the end of the tunnel, just then the ray of hope shines in the form of a person or the inner strength or the force that helps go on. Through it all, God has been the invisible strength either directly or through people whom he placed in my life.
Yes, new year is a Ctrl+Alt+Del system reboot. Bring on the new challenges and blessings!
May 2017 be filled with blessings, again!
My earliest memory of a birthday goes back to maybe age 10, I am not quite sure. Even today I am as excited as I was as a kid. I honestly don’t know why.
The “traditions” we followed, too heavy a word, I know, started few weeks before “the” day. My parents took my brother and I to Chellaram’s to buy a birthday dress. Chellaram’s was okay. It was the same kind of frocks, not a glamorous place. Nevertheless, the new dress was excitement enough.
Then magic happened.
I distinctly remember the opening of KidsKemp. When we passed by KidsKemp, there was always a Santa with white beard and red attire waving at the passersby. It was so colorful. For one of my birthdays, after much pestering (my poor parents), took us to KidsKemp. It was like the mall of today. Beautiful frocks. My jaws dropped at the sight of the colors or let’s call it glamour and glitter of the place. It is my most luxurious shopping experience memory from childhood.
KidsKemp was a one time affair. The prices were so inflated that we had to go back to Chellaram’s the following year.
I still manage to get or save a new dress for my birthday, every year 😊.
Each year on Jan 1st I would circle the date on the Deccan Herald and/or Malayala Manorama and/or Prajavani calendar. Big red mark, so that nobody forgot, just in case. Well, I don’t mark any calendars today, Google does that. But I kind of start reminding my family to remember to wish me. I told you at the beginning, that I was kind of.. well.. obsessed.
Then we bought chocolates the day before to distribute at school. Oh what a privilege that was. The first period, class teacher walks in, spots you in a pretty dress, not the bottle green uniform, tells the class, “so, we have a birthday girl today.. come on class, let’s all sing for her.” As a child that was an i-am-on-top-of-the-world moment.
That morning, my mother woke me up with a very happy smile on her face saying “happy birthday Indu”.. those words echo in my mind. She did this consistently for every year I was with her on October 1st. The smile, the affection, or the love, never faded once. I long for that love today.
Then came evening. My neighbor’s kids and us bought some crepe paper and balloons, decorated the living room and waited for my father to come. He brought the cake and candles, every year. The number of candles matched my age. The light of those candles reflected the brightness on my face or maybe it was the other way around, I don’t know. I see the same brightness in my son’s face when the candles are lit and I love seeing that delight on his face.
I get them even now, a cake, candles and the light of the candles.
I don’t get a wish from my mother. The first ten minutes after I wake up are empty and quiet. But in some form I get her blessing and wish. I may be construing this completely in my mind, but the coincidences are too much to ignore. So I did receive special blessings today.
As I went to college, the family traditions of cake, decorations faded. It was a treat for friends at Nilgiris Bakery, Basavanagudi for starters, ending up with MotiMahal at Mangalore during engineering days. At work too, it was a treat for friends, I still got a new dress and cake. Gifts for birthday were never a major thing. Sometimes I got, sometimes I didn’t. What I valued were the people I got to celebrate my birthday with. All of them special people, very dear to the heart.
After marriage, my husband pampered me with gifts. May not be every year, but the year’s he buys me something, they are out of this world. The best, always. These are gifts I never imagined I would get in my lifetime.
Today was special. Friends spent an entire day preparing for the evening party. It was a double celebration, my son and I got a “happy birthday mommy and me” cake 😊.. pampered again with gifts, happiness and laughter.
The best part was the cards my kids gave me, thanking me for the wonderful mother I am and wishing me happiness with other personal notes. The thoughts that were put in those cards, made my many many everydays’ perfect. My older one just wrote on an index card while my younger one picked out a pink flowers card, with lot of mushy words.
Grateful! This is the only feeling at the end of the day.. for family.. for friends.. for all the love.. affection.. care.. it’s a lot to be blessed with. From the childhood days of buying clothes at Chellaram’s to the extreme luxury of driving a BMW at Bentonville, life has changed seasons many times; one thing that remains unchanged are the loving people I am surrounded by year after year.. truly blessed !!
I was ecstatic when I found out I was pregnant. It was something I was looking forward to. I was 26. I know it’s a lot young, but back then I wanted to get married and have kids, family, house, a secure life. Other interests of exploring my life are knocking on my door now.
So, I got pregnant and absolutely fell in love with my growing belly and the person inside. My husband pampered me and I pampered myself! When I was seven months pregnant, my husband and I got an onsite opportunity. Honestly, I have no idea what I was thinking back then when I said yes. I didn’t realize it much when I took that Singapore Airlines flight from Trivandrum to Los Angeles. It’s only after I landed that it hit me, I definitely didn’t imagine that America would be that far and it would take that long to get there. Oh my!
I walk into West Hills Hospital on September 26th at 5am and voila my little one pops out on September 27th. The labor classes, baby care classes that I took was my Bible in taking care of the little one.
His goo goos and gaa gaas filled my days. He nestled on the shoulder in the night to a lullaby that I have sang umpteen times. We sang rhymes, danced and before I knew it, we were celebrating his first birthday. His first birthday cake was from coldstone with a Winnie the pooh theme. It had Tigers, Winnie and Piglet. We invited everyone we knew and made it a grand event. He was sort of the first kid in our circle.
Then it was time to go to daycare, something I had been putting off by bringing my mother from India to help me. A few years into daycare and we got him his best present ever, his brother, Kevin.
Kevin is his baby. He pampers him to no end and I love the bond they have between them. At times I feel Kevin matters more than me. And I love that thought. They have their share of fights, tantrums, touchy issues, nevertheless, they are glued to each other.
He started school at Indianapolis. As he was getting used to it, we pulled him out and took him to India. He did his best at Chempaka, but most importantly he learnt how to make friends. He had so many of them and probably that has been the best part of his life so far. Those three years spent at Trivandrum, strengthened the foundation of the people person he is, so much so that I was known as Nitin’s mother as opposed to my name.
School starts, the daily rigor, Christmas break, exams and more exams, and before you know it, it’s over. One year of school is done. Yeah! But when it’s his birthday I realize that he has grown by one year.
At age 10 we moved back to Bentonville. And before I knew it he was in junior high and it’s his 12th birthday. The little one who kicked inside my belly stands tall next to me, fighting his little age related issues.
Twelve years, summed up here in a few paragraphs, but in reality it’s been a lifetime of memories, with more to come. I long for the years gone by where he was little with no worries about assignments, how his friend treat him, exercising, soccer goals etc. Where I just had to feed him, change his diapers and he would jump around happily, unaware of the world around him.
I thought I was done with school when I got my bachelor’s degree. Now, I know that was cakewalk. This is more difficult, learning how to be a parent. And these twelve years I have been in college, again. There are many more years till I graduate from here, and I am full of doubts, but it’s been amazing.
Thank you sweetheart for coming into our life and making it beautiful.. happy birthday !
indupatikkal 