All you dog lover friends..beware

I have an axe to grind with all those dog – moms that eulogized keeping a dog as the best stress buster ever! Really?

I can tell you a hundred reasons why Jibu has made my stress levels gallop skywards but I will only start with this morning.

I was late to work and had to push the daily status meeting by 15 minutes.

The first snowfall of the season – and the world outside looked pristine and white. But that’s not why I was late. 

Before I became a dog-mom, this would have meant staring out at the beautiful world and sharing this beauty with my Facebook friends. Today I worried where Jibu would go poo. Because my very knowledgeable husband had found out last night that dogs cannot be let out in the snow to do their job. The rightful owner of Jibu arose and leashed Jibu close to his pad.  I sprayed his pad with the training stuff and Isha bleary eyed departed for another round of sleep.

But Jibu is a summer dog and only knows to ‘go’ outside. Of course sometimes, just to torment me he has gone on the carpet outside my door but today he remembers he is ‘trained’

So all the while I prepared the kids lunch boxes, he whined and squealed and barked and I took him and his pad to the powder room and locked them inside hoping he will act like all of us do. He normally does that when we eat he says me too please or when I bring home the shopping - he is quite clear he is a member of the family and asks me where's my stuff?  But not this time. He continued to bring the house down. I am of course only concerned by the horror that does our daily performance appraisal. He comes down, and yells at me for being a dog abuser and to make the dog stop barking.  Very early appraisal today. :(

By now Isha and her dad know that the rant to put Jibu for sale in Kjiji is about to begin so they come down and try to take Jibu out on the porch. Our boss departs for another shut eye.

 Jibu as soon as he sees Isha and Ameeth forgets everything but fun and frolic and starts eating the snow. They declare he does not want to go and again tie him up in the kitchen table and depart - Very strategic move by both of them. For future reference this will be put down as ‘We tried’

By now Jibu is quite desperate and continues to curse me in his dog language. I keep trying to ignore him and once again spray the pad.. no luck… he will not let me have my tea or my breakfast in peace. I finally bring the big green foot rug and spray it. He does his job and continues to mutter darkly at me for not helping him out earlier!

By the time the ‘happy family’ is down for breakfast he is at peace and there is no reason why the adorable thing needs to be given away!

I think I need to give myself away!

One item off my bucket list

Today I struck one item off my bucket list...something I wanted to do for sometime.

Do I feel better? Or worse? I don't know.

Along with the feeling of being important comes the old feeling of being shoved behind..dragged in the dust...and the realization that this can all coexist in one window,.

I wonder if it would have been better to let the item remain on my bucket list... Would that have been more honest or most deceitful...I don't know.

 

All is not well

Every now and then my body tells me that all is not well.

I have been floating in a state of nothingness - wondering if my desire to curl up with a book and do nothing- meet noone-talk to noone is a state of complete satisfaction with life or complete dejection.

Then my body comes down with an ailment and I know... All is not well. I need to explore and introspect and set things right again. I have to find something to look forward to

Lines that touched me

Death Is Nothing At All

Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped away into the next room,
I am I, and you are you,
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still,
Call me by my old familiar name,
Speak to me in the same easy way which you always did,
Put no difference into your tone;
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect, without the shadow of a ghost on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was; there is absolutely unbroken continuity,
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am just waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner.
All is well.

Henry Scott Holland

 

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

 

 

One in a series..Life's Purpose

Days morph into weeks will morph into a month and then a year.

I exist moving from one email to another, dragging myself from one meeting to another, ticking off complete on each list of ceremonies trying to ignore that dull ache and yawning hole that two people I did not even live with or spend enough time with in their dying days have left behind. Because of whom I have this life, because of whom I am what I am or what I am not.  I have asked my mediocre self before “Why do I exist?” and there has always been one certain answer. “You exist to take care of your parents” So much did I invest in this one single reason that others for who I must live learned to live without me. So here I am, suddenly retired almost purposeless trying to find meaning in things. Acutely conscious of that one destination that we must all reach making every current act meaningless. This is it then. This is Life. That must end in Death. That is the one and only truth.

Ma

My first hero. The one that smelt of Ponds Dreamflower talc and whose smile crinkled up her eyes has also moved to that place where no phone calls or airplanes will reach.

The sweetest most patient and honest person I knew when I was growing up. Who I wanted to emulate has left this world. And has remained forever with me.

Her pallu was my first refuge and I was so insecure when I could not cling to it when they sent me to school. I remember asking her ‘Why can’t I stay home and learn what you teach Bula? Why do I have to go to school?’ She used to have so much fun relating this story.

My devotion to my mother was more than most children’s devotion to theirs. I hated to see that face without a smile. I strove to keep it on her always. I worked hard at my academics and did not trouble her in the least bit. While trying to stay ahead became a passion for its own sake, I owe the rousing of my passion to her. I was her favorite child. I loved pink if she loved pink. If she changed her preference so did I.

I died a bit every time she was sick. And when she fell sick because of worry for me, I hid my troubles and put on my happy face.

I remember today the many faces of Ma. The strong sweet patient person who held our home together and instilled the right values in us - The picture of calm when others were shrieking in hysteria.  It pans then to the lady who suddenly landed up in hospital every time there was a little stress, the one whose favorite topic was her illness and the a visit to the doctor a lifeline. Such a sea change over the years. Ma had never been a demonstrative or communicative person. Her illness made her more inward focused. I have never seen her weep. Perhaps another handicap she suffered from?

She suffered from that rare affliction Addison’s disease that was diagnosed only 13 years back. This made her much misunderstood and finally claimed her life. She was ironically an enigma to the doctors as well. Over the last few weeks I have read enough on the disease for me to write my own thesis about it and have also kind of understood why my mother always felt sick whenever there was a stress of any kind - Too much happiness or too much strife. We did get tired trying to prevent her from falling sick and often wished she would cooperate. Little did we understand that her trying hard not to fall sick made her sicker.

At some point during these years she became a child and I the parent. Among my four children two of my own, my father and her, she was the most demanding in a very quiet way. She stopped being my hero though I never stopped being hers. Everywhere she went, she spoke about me with pride. She just did not deem it necessary to let me know.

This last one year has been tough for all of us and for her. And the last one month has been torture. But before she fell sick Ma and I had some really happy times together. She was so sporting so ready to just get into her shoes and try all kinds of cuisine. She insisted on being photographed in the snow. She wanted to take back these memories to show her new friend in Baroda.I almost felt I had that old Ma back, the one I had lost in 1989.  I wished I could keep her with me forever. She heard me and stayed back. She fell sick and sicker and sicker puzzling the doctors once again.

All this while my family and friends have been telling me as I have to myself, this too shall pass. All along at the back of my mind I wondered what it will take in this passing. It took her with the passing. She has led a full life and was very lonely this past year. She also was not in the best of health. What happened was for the best, but dammit couldn’t it have happened after she saw the first blooms of spring and quietly in her sleep without that one month of torture?

Of course it hurts like hell. There are these huge empty spaces inside of me. My parents were my children too. All of a sudden, I feel lost, like I have an empty nest. I don’t know where I have to put that share of responsibility and duty that was allocated for them. Sometimes my heart feels so full of emptiness, I feel it will burst. This will pass I know.

I also know from the moment she passed and I stood with my head on her chest after 30 years, she is not far. She is with me as my first hero with her crinkly smile calmly holding me together when I let her. Did I also know when I kissed her on both cheeks and called her my shona ma that it would be my last meeting with her? I never did things like that with her. She held on to my hand and looked at me and worried I had not had anything to eat till then. That sounded so much like my first hero. I feel such a sense of calm between the spasms of grief. I know she is with me then and will always be.