Butt Friends Forever

Kaleidoscope

The past week/weekend has been colorful (and sometimes the lack of it) in its own ways. In the seven years that I've been married, I've realized that spending a whole week with your vacationing spouse 'at home' can get a little out of hand. My schedule gets entirely thrown off track, house seems to get messier, chores keep getting suspended, and we end up sleeping for half the day, which means I have to cram everything I need to do in the other half. And life isn't half as colorful without some major poop duty. Evani has been going at it for nearly a week now. Not her fault though - I think she reacted to the yogurt I introduced in her diet a week back.

Speaking about seven years of marriage - this Thanksgiving morning after both husband and wife wake up, we wish each other a very groggy happy anniversary. Still trying to recover from the 3am diaper duty and in the process of another 6am one (btw, both of which hubby took care of as part of my anniversary gift ;), we joke about how life has changed and what a way to start this special day. This year we were hosting both lunch and dinner and I could see a whole day of cooking ahead of me. So I jumped at the opportunity of having hubby fetch breakfast - since that would be all the anniversary celebrations we would have for the day. So the day goes on. We (actually I) cook, clean, have my MIL over for lunch, clean up after lunch, prepare for hosting friends for dinner. All along we keep wishing each other 'happy anniversary' just to reassure ourselves that this day IS special and we WERE doing something about it. Just as I was finishing up the dinner preparations, hubby offers to take the trash out. Halfway yelling from the garage he asks me to check the trash calendar for recycle or green waste. I go to the calendar stuck on my refrigerator door and as I look for the date, I stand dumbfounded. I yell back - 'Honey, are you sure today is Thursday?' Okay, I'll admit, I did not say 'honey'. I'm a typical desi wife who is incapable of showing any public affection towards her husband. I get the reply - 'Of course - today is Thanksgiving AND our anniversary. Why do you ask?'
Me: 'Ummmm...apparently today is NOT our anniversary - the 23rd is tomorrow, Friday!'
Him: 'huh? Are you sure you are looking at the right month?'
Me: 'This is November - right?"
Him: 'Yup'
Me: 'Yes, I am looking at the right month'
Him: 'Today is not 23rd? Our anniversary is not on Thanksgiving?'
Me: at that point I can barely control my laughter at the whole situation and have to break it to him by saying 'NO'.

Life has surely changed drastically. We get along just fine even if we forget special dates (or mix them up), by not geting each other gifts and wanting only peaceful sleep or ready made food in exchange. No, Shomeek did not end up doing diaper duty the next morning of our actual anniversary and we did share the whole episode with our friends at Thanksgiving dinner and had a good laugh. But we did have Thai take out for our anniversary dinner on Friday. It was peaceful to sit at home and have a quite dinner watching Evani roll around on the floor in front of us and giggle and squeal in delight for no apparent reason. Life is colorful - it just depends on what patterns you make out of it.

Hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I'm sure I did.

bhai-er kopale dilam fota

Classical meets Contemporary

The past few weeks has been very invigorating due to several dance experiments and choreography. I had been in a mode of trance, where I lived and breathed dance till we got done with two of our shows last week which enthralled the audience. The satisfaction lay in the fact that we were able to introduced a whole new genre of Indian contemporary dance to Sacramento. more info and pics.

Blast from the past

Mrs. Dutta Roy of Gokhale Memorial Girls Hostel - our head matron, who referred herself as the MOTHER of GMGS. The reason I bring her up is because I very recently received an email from my cousin who mentioned having run into Mrs. Dutta Roy recently in Kolkata. She seems to be very lonely, having no one to take care of her other than a sister in the U.S. whom she is financially dependent on and has to live with her out of no choice of her own. She now wants to look for a place to stay in Kolkata and figure out a way to earn her own living. My cousin will be helping her and has asked me for some financial help which I will be more than willing to extend. After all I did spend more time with her than I ever have with my own mother.
The email took me back to the hot and humid Saturday afternoons, where we all lay in our 'girdle beds', too full of the chicken stew lunch to even move a limb. I can still here the mechanical screeching of the fans and the melodious "mathar ghono chool jokhon...morubhumi hoye jaye" followed by "shonibarer barbela...kyaaaNch" playing on the radio. We had not television in the hostel back then and the radio was the closest we got to entertainment. We would wait all week to grab the little black box on the weekends to listen to the songs of the year's biggest hit - QSQT. Aamir Khan was 'THE' man back then and his picture postcards were our most valuable possessions.
I cannot believe how time has changed and I've come such a long way in my life. My art teachers 'Practish' and 'Murgi' (I hope they are not reading this ;) would probably drop dead if they heard I had ended up being a Graphic Designer. I still remember scoring 8 out of 100 in one of my art exams. I was asked to draw a scene in the living room and my teachers had not been able to differentiate between wall, floor and ceiling in my sketch.
There is just so much I want to write about growing up in a boarding school. The most I miss is the friendships we shared. We were an extended family and we spent more time with each other than we did with our own families. Everyone had a reason for being in a boarding school at such an early age, and that reason made our bonds stronger. However much we loved staying with friends, we missed family big time. I still remember being admitted to Pratt Memorial hostel at the age of 5 and my very first day there I remember telling my aunt who had gone to drop me off, that I feel a pain in my chest. I wish I could have shed a tear that day - it might have eased the pain I felt.
I'm glad I received the email about Mrs. Dutta Roy. It made me think and thank a lot of people who played a major part in my growing up. Gokhale Memorial Girls School and hosterl - I shall always remember you.

My precious lil' pea

Evani's first Halloween! :)