A regular Wednesday

It rains suddenly. The wind brings in the clouds; thousands of small drops fall so quietly, evenly, nicely, I have to watch. There is a slight, cool breeze. The worst of the monsoon is gone, I think. I'm sure not. It's my first monsoon season. 

The three days of rain, and the roads flooding, and people's cars shutting down was all new. Now I understand why they use manual cars here, not automatic. The rain. Months of nothing and then it rains, relentlessly, with so much perserverence. It's water that will be taken away again, at some time. It collects in puddles and makes our clothes dirty. It seeps into our shoes and worse, our socks. 

I don't know what adventure I was expecting, but I was expecting adventure. Not simple plain, rain and the occasional flooding (witnessed on the news, not first hand). There is no fun in that. It's just wind and rain. Soft and cool. Both clean and dirty. 

I have a new umbrella I've never used, opened only once when Fizzah had an accident on it and I had to wash it. Should I go out? Should I go out to use the umbrella? It seems foolish. It's just rain. Lots of it, sometimes, sure, but it's just water.

Chai time

Chai is the sweet something that runs down your throat and warms and cools you at the same time. It seeps into your blood and relaxes all the little nerves. It rushes up behind your eyes, like a gentle massage, eases all the headache away. It is the life force. It is the reason I wake up in the morning. It is what I wait for when my daughter falls asleep. The good heat of it, the aromatic smell of it, the rainy hug of it. It is what brings us together, and comforts us when we are apart. It is my best friend. It is my greastest secret: shared, universally.

Friendships of Youth

I've been watching Anne with an E (Anne of Green Gables) on Netflix and I want to be her. She's so brave. So outdoorsy, running around in fields, and just happy all the time doing her own thing. She's a good daughter to her adoptive parents, a solid friend, the brightest student, admired by the other brightest student who is also handsome. She's naturally open-minded and good-natured and modern. And she has her best friend. Of course I want to be her.

I miss the friendships I had during my school days. I miss how we were young, we loved each other so much. We would go places together. We were going through the same things: figuring out who we are, what we believed, what we were going to do. Our every step in the world was so new and fresh and invigorating. I remember making money for the first time, liking each other, being liked, being accepted, being rejected (well, not so much missing that part).

Did I slip away, or did they slip away? Everyone moved for their careers or their husbands. School no longer brought us together after we graduated. Getting together started becoming an effort. People started working full-time, only available on Sundays to hang out, if their Sundays weren't occupied by other demands already.

This is just the nature of things, perhaps. How can a person be 30 and have a toddler and a husband and still have the kinds of frienships that they had in their youth? Maybe I'm not opening myself up enough, not allowing anyone in. Moving to a different country doesn't help. But, like Anne, I should be brave. I should be optimistic about what each new day will bring. (I know what it will bring: more cleaning and cooking and the usual nonsense, more staying home afraid of the coronavirus. But no, there are still possibilities). There are possibilities. Fizzah thinks of new things to do. I can be brave, too. 

Creating Happiness

I have to get the house ready for guests. I haven't had guests in a year, so this makes me a bit anxious. We are to give and to receive though, right? That's life. I hate participation. I hated participation marks. But, it takes a village to raise a child, and it takes a village to celebrate her birthday. If not a village, at least a family. She deserves it.

I remember planning a Halloween party and it was so much fun. It took a team of us to do that, too. Mummy with the food help, H with picking up the ordered food and helping me decorate and clean. Papa with his opinions and feedback. Happy times.

I have a pretty similar team, still. Mummy, over the phone, telling me what I need to do and telling me to enjoy it. Funny, how I needed permission, but it's true that I needed it. I can and will enjoy this. This is fun. People getting together. All of our fondest memories are of fun get-togethers with people. These parties have to be orchestrated by someone. I am basically creating happiness, in lieu of Fizzah's birthday. Isn't that something. 

H, a different H, will help me decorate and clean. It's actually much less work for me this time than the Halloween party I'd thrown: there are way fewer guests, the guests have invited themselves, they're bringing their own food, and I don't have to get any RSVPs! There are also no costumes and no planned games.

My main job, that I'm assigning myself just now since it suddenly doesn't look like I have anything to do, is to make my house look less embarassing. I've got to dress her up. I'll give her a shower (get the scribbles off the wall), put her in a nice, unstained dress (roll out and vacuum the carpets) and put some make up on her (balloons & streamers).

Best part: There will be cake.

Torrential Rainfall

The wind is crazy. If I were to open my arms I'd fly away. My feathers would get soaked. The rain is slashing across all barriers. Clothes are held desperately by pincers. Pukkars. Clothespins! That's what they're called. Ah the water! The wind! My daughter outside talking a walk! She'll enjoy this.

I am splattered if I sit next to the window. I am worried about wasting my free time thinking about the rain. I feel obliged into being hyper productive in my laziness and funness. My chai is not coming to a boil fast enough. I have to rush on. Find the next thing to do. The next thing to write, to read, to watch. The madness of the weather keeping time with my breathing, rushing. 

Something meaningful keeps nagging me in the corners of my mind. Something waiting to be written about. Like the sudden silences within this storm, so quiet and loud and then gone. What is it? I feel the need to pray. 

Odd broom

Things in real life are weirder than I feel comfortable portraying in my book. (My imaginary book that I'm not writing). Take, for instance, my broom. My jaaru. It's a nasty green colour, and the entire thing is plastic. When you think of a broom, you think of a long handle, with the brush at the end that's probably about a foot long. Like an upside-down T. A jaaru, normally, is made of wooden sticks that end in soft grassiness, all tied together in a bunch. I never thought in my life I would have a green, plastic jaaru. It's sort of embarassing.

Worse, it's extremely damaged. For a long time I would store it by putting it in the corner standing up, the way you would a broomstick. This made the plastic "hairs" bend. Then Fizzah started playing with it by smashing it into things, which bent the hairs even more. Now, this jaaru has actual knots and curls in it. I've respectfully started storing it lying down, at least. But clumps of hair and debris remain stuck in its hairs and it still looks like a tangly abomination. This ain't no story-book jaaru. 

home

There is a strand of rick-rack lace, black, half an inch wide. The edges are frayed, opened by my daughter. Her father wraps it around her hand like a head band and says, take a photo. Arre wah! Says Fizzah, a phrase she's picked up. A bit hangs down the side of her head like the dangly bit of a graduation cap. She smiles her teethy smile, and shakes the thing off of her head.

It's all over in 30 seconds. Now its lying on the floor; I suppose I'll add it to her toys. Her pants are on the floor as well, the ones that I was trying to convince her to wear, and there's a romper that was drying, that she pulled off the stand, and a few mismatched socks, a couple of colour pencils, and a Dr. Suess book. 

It's quiet inside. Outside, there's the banging and drilling of construction, and far off honking sounds. Birds cooing, chirping and cawing and the azaan coming on for Asr. 

Book Reviews (2)

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I don't know anything about rock n' roll but I loved reading this quick little book. It's so honest. I could really imagine these people in my head, and the way the story is told, through conversation, switching points of view, getting all the different points of view, is brilliant. It's so funny at times. Loved it. The frame is so good I thought this was a real band!

In a word: dope

Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
I tried getting into this book a few times but I just couldn't. It's about an old, married couple going to a funeral. On their trip you start seeing the problems they're having in their marriage. It's such a sad beginning. I felt tired reading the first few pages. I'm not going to go back to this book.

In a word: death

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi
This was a weird book. I was getting confused about what was happening while reading it, so I Googled it, and it turns out this is a course book! People study it. There were study notes. I had no idea. I read the summary on Google, and then went back to the book and started reading it from the middle (It's a slow book). I didn't get far. It's a fairytale. Fairytales are weird. More so when you're not expecting them and they're disguised as grown up books.

In a word: weird 

I won't share my chips

I don't like being a parent. I liked reading about parenting before I had a child. I read proper parenting books. Now I read blog entries on other moms having a hard time and feel less alone. Before I had Fizzah, I thought, of course I'll spend one on one quality time with my kid! Just 20 minutes every day? That's so easy! There are so many benefits! Why wouldn't I?

Well, hold on. She takes up so much of my time as it is, I just don't feel like giving her any more. She takes unplanned "quality time". She climbs all over me and likes to roll around on my body, pull my hair, bite me and laugh, literally, at my face. Have I birthed a bully? Admittedly, I kind of enjoy this rolling around. But I'd rather not spend (even more) time trying to teach her her ABC's and 123s and basic manners.

She finds all kinds of things to pass the time, without me. She goes into my cupboard and messes around with my things. She takes out her books that she can’t yet read and scrapes and rips the glossy covers off. She thinks everything is a sticker. She throws things out the window and we live on the 19th floor. There are people down there on the road. You see how this could be a problem.

I have to force myself to mother (see how similar mother is to smother?), and most days I can't bring myself to do it. It doesn’t come naturally. What comes naturally is the love/rage/hate/shame/guilt/LOL moods flickering throughout the day. What comes naturally is my raging against this prison of having to make (or just heat up) lunch and trying to get Fizzah to eat it. Trying to get her to eat it without spilling, or running all over the house. Trying to get her to agree to let me pick her up so that we can wash her hands after she’s done.

Trying, and often failing. Then yelling. Then letting it go because it’s not really worth all the screaming, is it. I feel terrible now for judging other mothers in my free, childless days. [Note: It is difficult to pick up a toddler against her will and force them to do anything. They can sense weakness. If your intention has the slightest, hair-like crack, if your eyes contain even a drop of mercy, you can be sure you’ve already lost. May as well give up in advance.]

Don't get me wrong, I love this little person. I love her to pieces. She randomly hugs me 20 times a day. She runs in towards me and throws her hands around my legs and sticks her head in. It feels amazing. It’s like she wants to go back into my womb. I pat her back and feel pretty damn good. Joke’s on you, kid. We’re long past the point of no return. 

She won’t let me change her diaper, she won’t go to the washroom, she won't wear pants, she won’t let me comb her hair, she won't, she won't, she won't, she won’t.

So excuse me, for eating my breakfast before feeding her, for giving her a piece of the chocolate while I finish off the bar, for eating chips and re-caffeinating myself at 11am while she naps. I may not be a good mom but I'm a grown up so I can do these things, thank you very much. I won't share my chips with my kid.

Book Reviews (1)

Golden Child by Claire Adam
I absolutely loved this book. It broke my heart. This novel is about twins, one bright, the other autistic (but no one in the novel knows this, they describe him as slightly retarded). It's set in Trinidad and I loved the bits of Indian-ness that come up as a result. This novel follows a family, relatives and so on, and builds up to a scary-difficult choice. Its rare to see money so openly in a story, I mean, the story hinges on money in a way that I haven't ever read in fiction, and its so real, the whole money issue. I can't recommend this book enough.

In a word: powerful


City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
Really good, entertaining read. This novel isn't written like high art but I couldn't stop reading it. The frame is interesting, although sort of not that convincing because who would write such a long and detailed personal letter? But the story is great. This book is about a girl's life; she moves from a small town to New York and she's good at sewing. The story mainly concerns women and their lives so the title seems appropriate, and the book tries to be feminist so that's something.

In a word: fun


Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
I didn't like this book. Too much nonsense. It's all How does he/she think of me. Its all How do I want to portray myself. How am I defined, by county, by interests. Its so full of shit. The whole American-London thing is meh. I started it twice and left it because honestly, I couldn't give a damn. Given the title, I was expecting something a lot more exotic. This book is about two couples, American/London mixes and their stupid moaning and whining.

In a word: whiny


As Long As We Both Shall Live by JoAnn Chaney
Totally gripping. I couldn't stop reading this book, literally. It's a crime fiction novel about a couple. It starts off with Husbands, you can't get away with murdering your wife. heheh. And then it turns out the wife is insane, and she's in control, and they're both evil so you don't feel bad for anyone. Its crazy how this story unfolds and the good guy changes half-way. It has a nice feminist finishing with a line about gender and what we expect. I loved it. What a thrill, for a book with such a long and clunky title. To think that I could relate to characters that were crazy murderers...

In a word: thrilling


American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson
This was a really good book, and one of the good things about it was that it was interesting without being ridiculously addictive. It is about an FBI agent, sexism within the force, and a mission she goes on where she falls in love with the President of Burkina Faso, who she's supposed to kill. It's a bit about politics too. Brilliantly writen, it's framed as a letter to her kids in case she dies in pursuit of someone trying to kill her.

I love entering this agents mind, its so direct, like a cop, and a woman! Her life is about her finding her identity as an American even though she's black, from Trinidad, and works in the FBI which is full of sexism and racism. Super interesting. Sad that this stigma against female officers, especially officers of colour actually exists.

In a word: spy


The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1993)
This book is old but gold. It is very well-written. I only skipped some of it, while reading. It's long. The characters are very well portrayed, I especially liked the women, the variety of people across time and space, and how their lives unfold. Sometimes things just happen, and its somehow comforting to come across a book that shows this.

In a word: real


Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
I could only read this book in bits and pieces. This book doesn't have the satisfaction of giving you answers but there are lots of heavy things to think about. Gay takes media seriously, while I don't. But media does have an affect, especially on children's perceptions, especially in this day and age when kids spend a lot of time with books and movies. So it felt good to be made a bit more aware of where feminism is at. And yes, I am a feminist, especially after reading this book. I'll lump myself in and call myself a bad feminist. Or worse, an okay feminist.

In a word: woke


I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
A book about the experiences of an old, rich Jewish playwright in New York. I couldn't relate, but it started off quite funny, and I somehow read the entire thing.

In a word: gross

Tomato

She crushes the tomato in her hand. Juice runs through her fingers, all the way down her elbow, dripping on the floor. The tomato seeds stick to her fingers and when she wipes her hand on her chest, they stick to her body. My baby girl. I hold her and kiss her and she smells just like a tomato.

Her face and hands are sticky and delicious. She grabs my glasses and insists on putting them back on my face herself. If I dare take them away from her, she'll break them. She twists them terribly, threatening me. I give her an angry look and she grins, which makes me smile. My lioness.

I keep looking at her, then at the movie, then back at her. She is so alive, so whole and curious and active and full of life, and not at all interested in the screen. She feeds me her tomato.   

Tube Lights

For better or for worse, we all die. That is a fact. We are usually remembered by a maximum of two generations after us. Unless we do something significant, write or create or somehow change the course of things in a memorable way, leaving something behind. 

Our peers remember us according to how we have affected them, negatively and positively. For a person who spends a lot of time alone, and a lot of time inside my head, this is bad news. 

I don't know how I come across to others, though I have my suspicions. Fizzah has no choice at this point except to tolerate me... and what choice do I have but to tolerate her? My husband says he's happy but is often walking on eggshells around me, afraid of my mercurial temper. What sort of happiness is that? But it must be real, because he is grounded in reality. He accepts things for what they are - a remarkable trait. A difficult trait. A confounding trait. Most people (I mean me) think often of how they want things to be. 

I want my white walls and shabby tube-light house to have soft yellow lights, easier on the eyes, much comfier to hide in. I want a comfortableness that doesn't exist in our house. A soft chair, a single sofa perhaps, to sink into. A sofa that doubles as an ottoman or a rocking chair or something equally terrific. And I want a library at home. I won't go on anymore about what I want. What a dull paragraph - full of neediness. 

:)

We don't always know what we are doing, but when we do, isn't it nice?

I know how to sit with Fizzah and show her the colours and shapes and animals in her books. I know how to take her to the bathroom, and how to cut her nails while she sleeps. I know how to choose a movie on Netflix, when I go on without knowing what to watch.

I know how to write. Sort of haha. I know how to colour with colour pencils. I know how to cook and I know how to sleep. Look at all the things all of us know how to do. Eat, clean, sweep, wash dishes, mop, hang, fold, and look at all the machines we know how to use: washing machines, laptops, phones, microwaves, dishwashers, stoves, food processors. Aren't we talented! 

Geography

In another life I would have been a geographer. Someone out there with diagrams and a computer and a video camera, chasing tornadoes and traveling to the core of the earth. I would read weather signs in the wind. Me, a team, a map and a whole lot of data recording equipment.

Resarchers, Masters and PhDs go out there. The other options are either you work for the government, as an environmental scientist, which sounds cool, or, you take the better paid position of being the environmental person that consults with construction companies and other private companies that want to build over the land and effectively destroy it, as long as you can give them the go ahead, and tell them where the drainage areas are so their buildings don't flood. 

A woman by happenstance

When I was studying English at U of T, I was furious that writers like T.S. Eliot and Yeats were considered intelligent when they were obviously so sexist. Why do we study such people and give them time and space? Why are they respected?

I would leave class fuming, hyper-aware of myself as a woman, seeing signs of social injustice and inequality everywhere, offended by these old, dead poets. The patriarchy was at work right in front of my eyes. My own home had my mother doing all the cooking and cleaning, even though both parents worked full time.

I left a South Asian Lit class in tears, angry and embarrassed, because Salman Rushdie is a misogynist. I stopped attending the class. It was too much.

I don't remember what made me realize the chains were all in my mind. I was suffocating when I didn’t need to. I had felt fine before coming across all these issues. So I broke my mental chains, and decided to live it up. I consciously chose not to analyze the decisions of my life through this “women are powerless and disadvantaged; men run everything” lens.

I don’t go around thinking of myself as a woman all the time (though I often think of myself as a mother - a very seperate thing). Being female is not at the forefront of my mind. But obviously being a woman affects my life in several ways.

One of the ways is how I socialize. I am new here, in Anjeerwadi, and in this Indian / Bohra culture that we live in. Since I am a woman, I mainly socialize with other women. I hardly talk to the men, and when I do it is always a much less personal conversation than when I speak to the women. The women ask me about Fizzah right away, and listen when I talk about whatever new things she’s up to. The men don’t ask.

This is not the case necessarily for family friends. But even then, the men talk to me about India and its state compared to Canada, or about work opportunities or something like that. The women ask about cooking, and about Fizzah and the family, they talk about work sometimes, but not in the same way as men.

I don’t like making these generalizations. Women this and men this. I don’t like saying that because there are always exceptions and it’s wrong to assume things. But here in Anjeerwadi and surrounding Mumbai, in this culture, the men talk to the men and the women talk to the women.

Here in everyday life, misogynists are not respected. In some households, I think, they are tolerated. But the number of talented, ambitious and remarkable women definitely balance out the status quo.

Regrets

Anger comes rushing out, making my voice and my face ugly. It is a dirty mess of vomit out there. Worst of all, or perhaps best of all, it has no effect on Fizzah.

Well, it must have an effect, of course. It teaches her that this is an acceptable way to respond when someone does something you do not want them to do. But it doesn’t work. I want Fizzah to not throw food, I get angry, I bark orders in my vomit voice, and she just sits there, watching the show.

After a minute, once I’ve calmed down, she changes the topic, asking me for something else.

Run Along Corona

We are about to enter total freedom. I can almost taste the hotel chicken on my tongue. The yumminess. The red masala-ness. The following diarrhea-ness.

I am looking forward to going back to normal in this coronavirus world. We will bunch up together tightly in the taxi, and the Covid molecules will stay away from us. We will show them a united front.

There is a kind of therapy called laughter therapy, where just the act of laughing out loud is believed to boost your immune system and give you a whole cartful of other benefits. I think this will be a potent weapon against corona. Ha. Ha. Ha!

Who We Are

What gives you that "living life to the fullest" feeling? At what times are you in the zone?

We are not cut-throat business people, with our eye on the profit line at all times. We are engineers, teachers, professors, salesmen, accountants, tutors. We are people that do something for other people, and thus go through our day-to-day life, living. Rock climbing and swimming and hiking, cottaging and getting together on Thanksgiving and Christmas and in the summer. We are readers and writers and dreamers and builders. Creators.

We are transitory. What do we live for? A sense of peace, perhaps. A sense of balance. A feeling of walking within truth.  

Cyclone No More

Cyclone Nisarga came and went this afternoon in a couple of rainy, windy hours. We were all terrified by a precautinary message sent by the administrator of our building: that we will have no power or water for the next 4 days. We stocked up on water, for drinking and for use, and I realized in times like these we really should have an emergency kit ready to go. In this kit I would have two things:

1) A flashlight with fresh batteries (or even better, a rechargable flashlight)
2) A power bank

You can always buy drinking water from the kiosk on the corner.

P.S. They don't take returns. 

Grey or gray?

The thing about the lockdown lifting is that I want to go out, but I don't want to go through the effort of wearing clothes, or finding clothes to wear, or dressing Fizzah or taking her to the bathroom first.

I am sometimes not here, if you know what I mean. I am at a beach or in a studio or in a forest cottage. I am not in Anjeerwadi in Mumbai. If I was really here, I'd know what people here were up to. We would be up to the same things.

What are the people here up to? And how do they manage to keep their homes presentable? Or do they?

A drop of rain

What a breath of fresh air! This morning we wallowed in our first rainfall in eight months, and with the lockdown measures relaxing it feels like a second life. The sky is cool-grey and cloudy. Sounds, muted, float up into the air: construction and car horns and crows; the pulse of the city. I never thought I'd want noise.

Inside, it is quiet. It is my favourite time of the day: Fizzah is asleep. I chuck my duties aside and sit down to write. Who I am blurs, no longer defined by motherhood.

Although, this, too, is part of the definition. This teasing recess: 1.5 hours of toddler nap-time. 

Blessings

Mumbai is slowly coming back to life. For two entire months, birds were the loudest noise-makers in the sleepy afternoon. No longer. The lockdown is in phase 5.0. Shramik trains rumble past. Cars are allowed. Horns blare once again. Various voices fill the air, singing freedom.


It is Sunday afternoon. The city is empty of migrants and daily wage workers - the ones from the other states. We still have to wear a mask before going out, and practice physical distancing. But meat is now affordable when once it wasn't, and is there anything more satisfying than having a late lunch of gosht and parathas?