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Thursday, December 13, 2012

BIRTHDAY MUSINGS


Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. - C.S. Lewis

Words have always been my friends,and stories my world.Initially a compulsion imposed by our almost solitary house on the premises of my father's work place- an electricity station and later out of choice because words talked to me better than people did.

But for the last four years I have been struggling to find a word or a few words to define the moment when I first witnessed that blinking dot on a screen and the doctor said," That's your baby's heartbeat."

How do you define happiness,anxiety,excitement,fear,love,panic all shooting at once through your heart? Probably the closest a word can define all of this is "overwhelmed".The months after that and then the four years with Priyamvada have all been overwhelming in one way or the other,smiles of all variety and tears of happiness,despair and sometimes just fatigue.

Why I write this today just two days before her 4th birthday because I guess there are so many moments every day,every year that memory might not preserve all of them accurately,so here are a few in no particular order.Some of my choicest moments with my lovely daughter in the last four years,lets see how many I get instantly:

  • answering her questions- can ants see planes in the air?, why do you make circle rotis?,who switches off the sun?,where is barbie's mom?,why is red not green? and on and on and on............
  • having her baby talc smell close to me
  • matching clips and socks with dresses
  • hoarding everything from plastic lids to broken toys and calling them "my stuff "
  • making stories about food,diapers,medicines and everything else
  • singing songs with garbled lyrics and rhymes with wrong words confidently
  • dancing in abandon to any kind of beat
  • pausing in the middle of a busy work hour and see her smiling back,just that instant
  • she becoming "chhoti mama" and I am the naughty baby 
  • saying O wow !!! at every little thing said,heard and seen
  • holding her hand and knowing she is mine forever
  • her classifying everything as boy/girl despite all efforts to break stereotypes
  • naming all her soft toys with her
  • less sleep,less me-time,less leisure,less work but a bigger heart,thanks to her !
  • trying to find the chef part of my soul to make her good meals and appetizing tiffins
  • making a code language with my husband to say things that she need not or should not hear
  • waiting for her to come back from school every day
  • holidays with her,looking at same places and same people with new eyes
  • giving her my things- books,chunky jewelry,pencils,lip balms.....
  • my husband's special smile when she says- papa I am like you !
  • watching my parents as grandparents loving her more than me- their only child
As i pause and look up she is right there across the room,playing doctor and I am the next three patients so will have to go but I hope she reads this some day,understands and knows I am because she is.HAPPY BIRTHDAY NUMBER 4 PRIYAMVADA !!!


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To Kill a Mockingbird
The Catcher in the Rye
Animal Farm
The Alchemist
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Romeo and Juliet
Frankenstein
The Odyssey
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Count of Monte Cristo
Eat, Pray, Love
Lolita
The Da Vinci Code
The Kite Runner
The Silence of the Lambs
The Diary of a Young Girl
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Notebook
Gone With the Wind
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The Human Bean Cafe, Ontario

The Human Bean Cafe, Ontario
my work on display there !!!!!