Cinderella Only Lost One Shoe… AND She Got The Handsome Prince

Hard on the heels of forgetting to send the kids rice for their lunch, which, for the record, was Amit’s slip-up, not mine, came another “little” goof-up.

Forgetting to send them rice happened on the day of my birthday, which was a little more chaotic than usual, because we all left home together in the same car and we had to be extra organized to do so and we had an extra load of stuff to pack because of the impending late night out and so on and so forth.

Amit, strangely enough, selected the following day, Wednesday, to send his car for servicing. This meant that following the late night, he had an extremely early morning ahead, when he had to clear all the rubbish (sorry, important stuff) and car seats out of his car and get to office extra early so that somebody could come and pick up the car for servicing. All of this he managed and he got the car back that evening. Thursday morning was still very hectic for him, because he had to put all the rubbish back in his car, along with the car seats, and then he had to put the girls in the car seats and drive them to school. Thursday was my day for tennis, which meant that I was sleeping late and could not be counted upon to help. Anyhow, he managed everything and got to school ridiculously early as he always does, only to find that, although he had got both the girls plugged in all right, he had only one pair of shoes between the two of them. The other pair was lying on top of a pile of empty cartons in the garage. Yeah. That’s what comes of having a garage large enough to stack piles of empty cartons and other such junk in.

Being the practical and level-headed fellow that he is, he carried Tara from the car to the classroom, much to her joy and Mrini’s amusement, and updated their teacher about the current oversight. “Have her carried to the school van and she’ll be fine,” he said, cavalierly. Lucky for him that the school teachers were not aware of the previous lapse in the matter of their lunch, or I don’t know what they would have thought of him and, by extension, us.

Of course the daycare teacher knew all about the oversight with their lunch. She had questioned me about the wisdom of not sending any rice the following day and I’d had to explain the whole thing to her. So she already was not very impressed with our efficiency. Now Amit wanted me to be the one to call her and tell her that Tara would be arriving barefoot at daycare today, but I flatly refused. “You’ve got to handle your own messes,” I said and handed him the phone. “I’m SO not getting involved in this one.” I, after all, would never have left either girl to manage without shoes for the whole day. I’d have either gone back home for the shoes, or gone and bought a pair at the nearest shop. What WILL they say when they grow up??

We found out later that the school teacher – or the assistant, perhaps – had sent Tara off wearing a pair of bathroom slippers; all kids are barefoot in class, which keeps the place clean, and they all share a few pairs of bathroom slippers when they go to the bathroom. The bathroom slippers are not quite appealing as a choice of footwear, really, because if you’ve seen kids between 3 and 5 years of age take themselves to the bathroom, in school, you have some idea of what all goes on in there; and the smaller the kids, the smaller the slippers, the messier they are likely to be; and the slippers Tara had on were as small as they could be; but I suppose it’s better than having to wander around barefoot.

Luckily, the girls don’t yet know how completely infra-dig it is to be seen anywhere wearing bathroom slippers. In fact, they both thought it was a bit of a lark. They didn’t seem to mind that the other kids were laughing at Tara. That’s the magic of being three-and-a-half. With great delight, she took the bathroom slippers back to school today and announced to Akka that she was returning them. There was nary a handsome prince in sight.

We have been sleeping at 10 p.m. the last couple of nights, so if we can catch up on our sleep deficit soon, then maybe we can stop being such immensely neglectful parents. Otherwise some social worker probably will come calling soon enough…

Sleep Deprivation Disasters

January was a tough month. What with two jobs, no household help and a change in residence, we were sleeping past 11 each night (usually closer to 12) and getting up between 5.30 and 6 a.m. all days except Sundays, when the kids kindly let us sleep till 6.30 as a special favour. After one full month of this, we both have a serious sleep deficit. I’m not one who thrives on six hours of sleep a night – even had I been getting it; I need between 7 and 8 hours, the more so when life becomes more busy and stressful.

So this week, I’ve been practically falling asleep at my desk – all day long! The struggle to keep my head on my neck and my eyes open starts at 10 a.m. and lasts till… midnight, actually. It’s terrible – I really don’t know what kind of work I’ve been doing and whether it is at all up to the mark or not.

So it was probably not a good idea to add to our stress levels and sleep deficit by going out for dinner on a weekday evening, but Amit was adamant: Birthdays must be celebrated on birthdays, not on any old “convenient” day. Perhaps, too, I should have skipped tennis yesterday and settled for an extra 30 minutes of sleep – but what the heck: on my birthday, at least, I should get to play tennis, shouldn’t I? It was a bad idea, though, because what with the terrible cough I have (remnant from an exhaustion-induced cold I got some ten-odd days ago) and the general tiredness, I just couldn’t get my game going. That was frustrating and disappointing, and the only redeeming thought was, at least I tried.

I’d decided that I wanted the Best Ever Fudge Cake for my birthday. That’s not just a description of the cake, that’s its name. I’ve made it many times over the 15-odd years since I first discovered it, and I’d have to say that its name lives up to its promise – it is really delicious. But, it’s a lot of work. Since Amit hasn’t ever really gotten into baking, I knew I’d have to do it myself. So I started on Sunday. Night. Right around 10 p.m. after the kids had gone to bed and I’d got their lunch and stuff packed for Monday. It was past midnight before the cakes were done, which gave me all of Monday to do the icings. But first, I had to find icing sugar.

Icing sugar is one of those things that is practically impossible to find when you really need it – just like cocoa powder. When I’m baking, I usually need both and it’s a given that I will, at best, find one – and perhaps not even in sufficient quantity. And that was back in Koramangala, where you can find most things in walking distance. Here, out in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t really expect to find it easily and I was right. I drew a blank on Sunday, so on Monday evening, I drove around the shops near office and eventually got lucky. Then, of course, I picked up one year’s supply of it.

Monday evening was a busy evening even by our standards. Some aggressive efforts over the weekend had resulted in one domestic help being engaged and she reported for work on Monday evening. She speaks only Kannada, which I speak very little of, so somewhere in our communications I understood that she would both clean and cook. By 8.15, when she had finished cleaning and washing dishes (and practically emptying our water tank in the process; why do these women always use much, much more water than required to wash dishes? Haven’t they ever faced water shortage in their lives? Don’t they – they of all people, they, who might have to carry water in buckets to their homes, who might have to share a toilet with 20 others, which will obviously run out of water – don’t they realize how precious water is????)

Anyhow, when she had finished wasting our water and giving Amit a heart-attack, she tied up her sari and made to leave. Cooking? It’s too late – some other day, perhaps, she said. Great. If I’d known that, I’d have made her do the cooking first. Who wants a clean house when you can have a hot meal instead? But it was too late now. So after she left and the kids went to bed, I got to work on the cooking and then right around midnight, I finally finished up the cake and it was ready to eat.

Why wait? I plunged the knife in with minimum ceremony and…

It got stuck!

Oh, right – that’s why the recipe calls for baking powder, which, in my sleep-deprived state on Sunday night, I’d forgotten to put. So instead of the light, soft, melting cake I usually get, I got a tough, leathery load of lead. Great. This was clearly not the best ever Best Ever Fudge Cake.

At least the icing was ok, so I gritted my teeth and stolidly worked my way through a slice; Amit, of course, gave up after a few bites. That was probably a smart thing to do – I doubt that kilo of lead in my stomach late at night did anything to improve my tennis six hours later. But what the heck – I had to have birthday cake on my birthday, right? (Sometimes, determination is SO counterproductive.)

So late nights, bad cake, and erratic tennis notwithstanding, we were headed for dinner out on birthday night. We drove to work together, dropping the kids at school, their lunch at daycare, and enduring innumerable traffic jams along the way; and a little after 5.30, we left office together, picking up the kids, enduring further traffic jams and heading for our old home. There, with many disclaimers as to the quality, we dropped off birthday cake and kids with S&P (many thanks, guys) and went for dinner. We went to Via Milano, an Italian restaurant that we’ve been to once before. It was a good evening – good food, good beer, good ambience, good service. (It was, of course, ridiculously expensive… but we only go out thrice a year without the kids, so we didn’t mind too much.) It would have been a fantastic evening if we hadn’t both been falling asleep immediately after dinner. From around 10 p.m. onwards, we both had a battle on our hands – and, in my case, a losing battle at that – to keep our eyes open till we could pick up the kids and drive back home. Luckily, Amit was driving – he does a better job of keeping his eyes open at critical junctures. Also, we did get stopped for a breathalyzer test, which I would probably not have passed.

Leaving home for a late night out with the kids is like going out of town for a week. We had the kids’ school bags, with snack boxes and water bottles; their lunch bag, with a zillion boxes of food and a change of clothes; their night bag with yet another change of clothes and a blanket; their shoes, which they had worn all day, but weren’t wearing now because they were asleep; our laptop cases; my handbag; and a bag of stuff we’d picked up from S&S along the way. At least some of this would have to be sorted out before we could crash out.

Just as I was dumping a bunch of dirty clothes in the laundry bag and the quadzillion lunch and snack boxes in the kitchen sink, I noticed that the rice box from the kids’ lunch bag was missing. Where could it be? The daycare was too organized to have forgotten to send it back. With a sinking heart, I opened the fridge, and… sure enough, there it was, sitting neatly where I’d left it on Monday night.

We had forgotten to send them any rice for lunch! Poor kids!

I was so exhausted that I didn’t have more than 5 microseconds to feel horribly guilty about it before I fell asleep. That’s what sleep deprivation does to you.

So today, the new woman in my life is going to be hit with a load of cooking; she is going to have to wash dishes with a tiny fraction of the water she’d normally use; she is going to manage the laundry; and I am going to bed at 10 p.m. Or sooner.

Let’s hope I can make it that far without slipping up on something critical.

I Must Be Desperate. Or Crazy.

Or both.

One of the nice things about our new home is its balconies. We have four – one at the top of the steps, one attached to the study, one attached to the master bedroom, one attached to the dining room and one attached to the kitchen. Ok, that’s five. Two of them are deep, squar-ish, and covered with a sloping tiled roof. The others are small, and largely or entirely uncovered. The one attached to the kitchen is enclosed by a metal grill, which makes it safe to keep the washing machine there and hang clothes there, though everything is exposed to the elements. The one attached to the study can actually be accessed directly from the ground floor, which makes it a slightly public balcony, though it is hidden from view from the road. The other three balconies are very visible from the road, but they are nice for sitting on with a cup of tea. Not, of course, that we’ve ever done that yet; or ever did in our old home which also had a couple of balconies. As a matter of fact, we don’t even have chairs and tables to put on the balcony, yet.

In addition to the five balconies, we have terrace at three levels. Technically, the terrace is shared with the tenants on the ground floor (and I suppose that, equally theoretically, their garden is shared with us), but I’ve never seen them use it.

And of course, we have a large garage, which should do for two cars but for all the junk lying in it; and a separate side parking area for my car.

So basically, we have a lot of open space in this place – a lot more than we’re used to. Which is great, except when it comes to cleaning it.

We haven’t properly cleaned the whole house more than once or twice since we moved in, so obviously, we haven’t cleaned the outdoors areas even once. I decided to tackle the many areas one-at-a-time over the weekends. By the time I get done with all of them, it’ll be time to go back to the top and start again. It’s as good a way to spend the weekend as any…. Well, almost.

So on Sunday I decided to tackle the balcony attached to the dining room. Since it is larger than the others and covered too, and since it is centrally located and cannot be access from anywhere other than the dining room, it has unfortunately been elected as the best place to hang clothes to dry. Unfortunate, because I’d much rather not have to see our clothes drying every time I pass by – about 200 times a day – but it seemed to be the only practical option. The other balconies are either too far away from the laundry area, or too small, or too public, or too exposed to the elements. So, since we had to hang our clean clothes there to dry, it seemed logical to get that balcony cleaned up as quickly as possible.

Now, if I have to get my hands dirty cleaning up our new place, why should I have to do this alone? Especially when I have another two pairs of hands that are only too eager to get themselves dirty? So I tore a large rag into two small rags and one large rag, handed the smaller bits to the twins, equipped us with a mug of water with some detergent in it, and we all got busy. I cleaned the upper surfaces, while the girls worked on the lower surfaces. We did the glass doors, the ornamental railing, and the floor. By the end of an hour or so, much of the dust that had formerly been in the balcony had been transferred onto parts of the girls. I’m not sure whose idea it was – most likely, not mine – but somebody decided that the muddy water in the mug and the muddy rags in our hands would be ideal for mopping the dusty floor with. Given that large quantities of water had already been spilled on the floor, though, this probably did no more harm than had already been done.

Like I’ve said before, when it comes to my own kids, I have nothing against child labour. But… just that weekend I’d heard of two small kids who’d been hit by something allergenic and had to be taken to the hospital in a hurry and put on a nebulizer. Neither of these kids had any known history of asthma, so probably it was something in the air. And dust is the last thing you want to expose people to if they’ve already got breathing problems. Why, exactly, was I making my kids practically roll around in the stuff?

The good part of all this was that I got some very funny looks from people passing by on the street below. Hopefully, some of them were domestic help, and some of them were people who know or employ domestic help. If they have no pity for me, they might at least take pity on the two little girls scrubbing away so Cinderella-like and come and ease our pain. Till that happens, there are plenty of equally public spaces that I can coax the kids into spend the next several weekends scrubbing.

New Home

It was a chaotic weekend, made much worse by extraneous factors that should have had no influence whatsoever in the manner in which we moved house.

To start at the middle, it has to do with the twins’ adoption, which is still (yes, STILL) not quite done. The legalities, I mean, are not quite done. Our lawyer has to file some papers in court and when we went there in December and signed the papers, we didn’t know where we were going to be shifting to, so we gave our current address, which is now our old address. Then we decided that a 75-90 minute commute back home each evening was simply unacceptable, so, contrary to our lawyer’s advice, we decided we would shift home anyway. But, a social worker has to visit us at some unspecified date in the near future and this person will only visit the address given on the papers filed in court. And not only must we have physical possession of the premises, we must also actually be living there. It is not enough to show them an empty apartment with our nameplate at the door and say that it belongs to us. Actually, I’m not finding fault with this process – I guess it is done to check that adopted children have actually gone into a loving family with a proper home and are not being kept in terrible conditions or subjected to any kind of visible cruelty or abuse. As far as that goes, it is a good thing. Of course, people who really want to do child-trafficking of any kind would not be caught out so easily, but at least the authorities have to make this effort – it would be tragic if people could, for instance, adopt a child and then keep them locked up or tied up, and nobody ever even came to check.

So I’m not complaining about the process. Only, the timing is so terribly off. I suppose I should have waited a couple of months (or six) to start working and then we would not have been in such a tearing hurry to move. But then, you have to grab the opportunity when it comes, so… Whatever.

On Thursday evening we returned from Calcutta and greeted the new year with a bottle of rum and several bottles of Coke (ThumsUp, actually, but Rum and Coke just sounds so much better). On Friday, we went and investigated our new home once more and didn’t manage to achieve much of anything, really. Reluctantly, late on Friday night, we started packing clothes into suitcases and soon ran out of suitcases… and backpacks… and plastic carry bags. So we did what any sane person would do – we drank some more rum and coke and crashed.

On Saturday morning, the packers arrived. They were supposed to come at 9.30 a.m. and the showed up – ten minutes early! We started directing them – pack this, leave that, don’t touch any of the books, nor the paintings, and we won’t need that dining table either. Our plan was to take just the bare minimum stuff with us to the new home so that we still had a semblance of a home at our old home. Then, after the social worker’s visit, we’d cart the rest of our stuff away. How we’d manage for several weeks without all our stuff I don’t know… but we’d signed the lease, paid the advance and got the keys in our hands, so we were definitely moving.

Half an hour into packing, we suddenly reversed our decision and decided to pack everything; moving half our stuff just wasn’t tenable, nobody can live like that, not with two kids to manage and a full-fledged household to run. What would we do about the gas stove, the washing machine, the curtains, the fridge and TV? We decided to move lock, stock, and barrel. The confused packers threw things into cartons absolutely at random and chaos ensued. Shaba-Aunty arrived with two children in tow.

Our two were mercifully busy. In Calcutta, they had been exposed to “party” meals. That means, plates are laid out in a long line, along with bowls, spoons and glasses. Then food is served on each plate in a row, by serving men. It is a prolonged affair, course following upon course, beginning with salt and rice and ending with three kinds of sweet. When all is done, the guests rise, and the servers pick up all the used plates and bowls etc. to lay out the whole process for the next round of guests. While unpacking, Amit came across a carton full of paper plates, spoons and bowls left over from the twins’ second birthday (which, if he had uncovered this treasure trove several months ago, would have been put to good use for their third birthday). This carton he handed over to the delighted kids, who proceeded to diligently spread out rows of paper plates on our huge mattress, add all the accessories, meticulously for each place setting, serve an imaginary party meal to an imaginary throng of guests, and then, carefully, pick up and neatly stack up all the “used” plates. It was a spectacle of a lifetime – I wish there were some better way of preserving those moments than these completely inadequate words which will probably get lost in the sands of time.

Meanwhile, the packers were quickly turning our lifetime’s acquisitions into a jumble of cardboard cartons. Since we hadn’t done anything by way of preparation, Amit and I were scrambling to get the more personal of our possessions packed away ourselves. This included a whole host of things – clothes, jewellery, documents, computers and their bits and pieces like printer, scanner, monitor, whatnot, and of course… food! At least I’d had the cook do some work the previous evening, so we had lunch ready for the kids. At last, around 12 noon, I took the four kids and Shaba Aunty and a lot of assorted items in my car and drove to our new home. Shaba-Aunty got to work scrubbing and cleaning, while I went out with the kids to buy brown paper to line the cupboards with. By around 3.30, the packers arrived with a truckload of stuff. By 4.30, everything had been unloaded and was lying around in an advance state of disarray. Our rocking chair, which we had put away when the kids came home and had decided that was now safe enough to put back in use, had had its back broken. Additionally, the glass on one picture had been cracked. Apart from that, nothing that I’ve discovered so far seems to have suffered much damage, which, considering the manner in which they packed and moved, is nothing short of a miracle. I managed to put a fresh sheet on the kids’ mattress (which was a bit of a waste, considering they themselves were nothing short of filthy) and they went to sleep reluctantly around 4.30. Meanwhile, I left for the long drive back to our old home, where I had promised Shaba Aunty I would drop her.

On arriving back at our old home, I was shocked to find that Amit seemed to have left about half our worldly possessions behind! None of the cupboards was completely empty, and some of the lofts were as full of stuff as they had ever been! Additionally, our packers had mysteriously neglected to pack sundry essentials like one gas cylinder and the kitchen trash can. It looked like we’d need another truck to get everything shifted out of there. I loaded a few items into my small car, then gave it up as a lost cause and drove all the way back to the new home again. Naturally, we went out for dinner.

On Sunday, we managed to unpack 90% of the things that we needed to keep our household going from day to day. The kitchen became largely functional, and most of our clothes were located. Certain vital gaps, however, were indisputable. We couldn’t find our regular coffee cups. In fact, we couldn’t find any cups at all. We tried drinking coffee out of some plastic mugs that were gifted to the kids in some remote era, but the coffee just didn’t taste the same. Then, our table mats were missing. It shouldn’t have been very important, but it was quite irritating to have to keep food directly on our wooden table and have stuff spill all over it. Strangely enough, our microwave was up and running right away, but, crucially, the round glass plate that fits into the bottom and rotates was missing – so, the microwave just couldn’t be used. All our toiletries made it and have been found, but of the hand towels, there is no trace. Even worse, the gas stove and one cylinder had made it and we had them connected up and ready to go, but… we couldn’t find the gas lighter! Matches? We don’t smoke – who keeps matches other than smokers?

Several days later, the coffee cups and the microwave’s bottom are still missing. And cardboard cartons – mostly full of books – litter the living room and the study. Our computers and associated paraphernalia are still stranded in our old home. Our bookshelves are empty and all our framed pictures are straddling two dining table chairs, waiting to find their places on the walls. Thankfully, our new home has a puja room into which we have haphazardly shoved an assortment of cardboard cartons, some of which, no doubt, contain the vital implements that we are missing. Only the kitchen, the kids’ bedroom, and our bedroom have some semblance of sanity. Which is saying a lot, because I think I’ve completely lost any semblance of sanity and I’m not sure how much my better half has left either.

My immediate problem is that we now have no household help whatsoever. Not only is there nobody to clean this beautiful and spacious new home of ours, there’s nobody to cook food for us either. Even worse – if anything could possibly be worse – is that we don’t even seem to have a dhobi nearby. I’ve been diligently working my way through a monstrous stack of laundry (including some backlog from the trip to Calcutta!) and the thought of now working my way through the ever-increasing stack of clothes to be ironed is driving me to the brink of a nervous breakdown! Plus, of course, the house has not had even the whisper of a cleaning since Shaba-Aunty did her magic last Saturday, and it is much the worse for it. Amit and I haven’t had a square meal at home till date – it’s all I can do to ensure that there is sufficient food of a sufficient standard so that the kids don’t starve.

Then, of course, there are the little things: no broadband, no TV, and no newspapers. But that hardly matters – what with just trying to keep us going from day to day (not to mention feeble efforts to find my precious coffee cup), who has time for all of that?

Oh, yeah, our commute back from work now is about 30 minutes. Yesterday I did it in 20. We’ve taken the kids to the park every day this week. So I know this was a good decision, but how am I going to survive another week without Shaba-Aunty?

And WHERE’S my coffee cup???

The Christmas Spirit

The twins have really gotten into Christmas mode this year. When I went to pick them up from daycare one day, they called me inside very excitedly and showed me the miniature Christmass tree they were engaged in decorating. There were streamers and balloons up, and pictures of Santa Claus. Later on, Tara told me that Santa Claus came to school and gave them chocolate and that Mrini cried. Mrini confirmed that she had cried, but the chocolate story she did not verify, so I’m not sure whether that part was fact or fiction.

On the last day of school before the winter break, there was a Christmas party in school. I’d thought it was only for the tiny tots of the Montessori classes, but when I went to drop the kids off, I saw the entire school was in ‘party’ clothes – that is, not in uniform. The Montessori classes had been decorated in Christmas colours, and the one of th ekids’ three class teachers whom I saw was dressed in a gorgeous rust-red silk churidar-kurta. School had notified us not to send any snacks, so I gathered they would be provided, and later on I saw that the kids had also been presented with jigsaw puzzles and Santa Claus caps that they might have had a hand in the making of. We had also been asked to collect our charges by 10.30 a.m. This might not have been very convenient for us, but for the fact that both Amit and I had a holiday that day. Amit went to pick up the girls and was equally delighted with the party atmosphere.

Such a thing never happened in the schools I was in, back in my days. We were allowed to be in “civvies” – that is, not in uniform – on our birthdays, up to a certain age; and on school-leaving day, the students who were bidding farewell and those who were leaving were supposed to come to school in “formal” attire, which meant that all the girls wore saris (many of them for the first or second times in their lives). Their day started late in the morning and ended late in the afternoon, so the rest of us didn’t get to see them in their finery much. (On a side note, I was quite relieved never to have to go through this ritual, because I didn’t finish school in this school, and the one I did finish in didn’t have any ritual that I can recall.)

Apart from school-leaving day and annual day, which was a very organized and rehearsed affair, the only other occasion on which we might have worn civvies to school was Children’s Day. On that day, I think, we also got a small packet of goodies to munch. But that was only while we were very small – I don’t think we had it all the way up to sweet 16.

As for festivals – I don’t recall ever learning anything about them in school. Whatever we imbibed was from other children around us, not because there was any formal focus on them. I don’t think we ever decorated our classes or did rangoli or had our teachers come especially dressed up in the festive spirit. The main thing we got on festivals was a holiday. The rest was up to our parents. Since I’m not too much into any festival, I think it’s a good thing that the kids’ school is so enthusiastic about them.

Paradise Lost

I suppose this would not be everyone’s definition of Paradise – and in another context, it would not even be my definition of Paradise, but in the context of someone who’s just returned to work after a two-year stint of doing nothing but managing the house…

See, there’s a lot of work in managing a house. Way more than anyone who hasn’t done it can conceive. It’s
even more if it’s the only thing you’re doing. I don’t know why (and I might well have opportunity to reconsider this statement). But one thing we can all agree on is that housework, like gas, expands to fill all the space/time/energy resources available. It expands infinitely. If you clean, it gets dirty again. If you wash, it gets used. If you cook, it gets eaten (and then requires washing). If you shop, it gets consumed. It’s never ending.

So I realized that it was simply impossible for me to keep a handle on all of that in addition to a full-time job. If I tried, I would spend all my awake-at-home hours doing nothing else. And I suspect that the kids (not to mention the other half) would not take kindly to that. But why blame others? I would not myself take kindly to it.

Enter Shaba-Aunty.

Actually, she can’t enter, because she’s been onstage all along, albeit usually not in the spotlight. I’ve already written quite a bit about how indispensable she has become; now that I’ve gone back to work, she’s more indispensable than ever. Like the elves in the shoe-maker story, she comes in when nobody is around, does all the work, and silently goes away leaving the place neat, clean, and fully functional. In addition to just cleaning the house and washing the breakfast dishes and folding nightclothes and bedclothes that have been flung all over the place in the mad rush to evacuate the house before 8 a.m., she also:
• Puts out the laundry
• Picks up the laundry and folds it up neatly in separate stacks
• Mends the kids’ clothes, which frequently have buttons and things falling off, and also often need to be tightened an inch or two; today I even left her a teddy bear who is in serious need of stitches after various operations carried out by the twins on several parts of his anatomy; in fact, he is in imminent danger of losing an arm and a lot of his intestines (stuffing)
• Irons the kids’ clothes
• Buys veggies and bread and milk and suchlike
• Cooks, when required – and does a better job of it than her sister, the cook
• Baby-sits, when required – and I really like the way she interacts with the kids, she is extremely gentle and patient, but can also remonstrate gently

Yesterday she earned herself some serious brownie points by taking the initiative of buying, apart from those items I’d requested, a bottle of some floor-cleaning potion and scrubbing the dining room floor with it. I really appreciate people who take initiative.

Without her, I really don’t know how I’d keep the household running from day to day, now that it is no longer my primary occupation.

So, in this context, Shaba-Aunty is Paradise. Now comes Part II – Lost.

Despite our best efforts at placing our two jobs and the kids’ daycare all in a 10-minute driving-radius, and despite leaving office really early (5 p.m. is really early in Bangalore; I know people who come in to office at that hour!), we still have to endure a one-and-a-half hour commute from office to home each day. Times four. Actually, for the kids, it is around an hour, sometimes a little more, while for the person picking up the kids it can exceed 90 minutes. We don’t combine our commute – Amit and I drive separate cars to office. It is criminal in a way, considering we go from the same home to the same office complex. But car-pooling wouldn’t work for several reasons. First, we alternate tennis days, so we have different schedules in the morning. Aldo, we can’t always be sure that we can leave office at the same time in the evening.

And, even if we could co-ordinate all that, for both of us to be in the car that drops the kids to school in the morning and again for both of us to be there to pick them up from daycare in the evening is sheer luxury, complete self-indulgence. The person who’s not driving would be better employed doing one of a million other things that need to be done; or even just enjoying half-an-hour of quiet time at home. True there’s much to be said for the environmental benefits of car-pooling, and even more to be said for the social benefits of quality family time spent strapped into your car enduring endless traffic jams together… but it’s clearly not the best solution for us.

Yet the one-and-a-half hour commute, which Amit has been enduring silently for the past two years, suddenly seems too much now that all four of us have to go through it every day. It’s especially hard on the kids, being forced to sit still in the car for one whole hour just when they’ve just woken up from their afternoon nap and are itching to run around and play. They get cranky, and we feel bad for them.

Clearly, the only thing to do is to move to a place closer to our workplace and daycare. So we’ve been looking around for a place to rent and seem to have found something. All going well, we will be moving in January.

Which means… no more Shaba-Aunty.

Of course, we will get someone to cook and someone to clean… but someone like Shaba-Aunty doesn’t come along every day. It could take years to find someone like that and to give them that level of responsibility. So, while we might cut our commute time in half (hopefully), I’m probably going to end up with double my current load of housework. This equation only makes sense when you realize that getting home half an hour earlier in the evening means the kids get half an hour to go to the park and play. Right now, we get home just as it gets dark and the mosquitoes come out in the hundreds, so that’s all but ruled out, which is really a pity. So if they can get some park time and make some friends in the new neighbourhood, then it’s all worthwhile.

Still, it’s going to be hard for me to manage without my Shaba-Aunty. And the kids are going to miss her and her crying baby too. And, of course, though it’s not exactly Paradise, we’ll all miss the comfort and familiarity of a crowded and friendly neighbourhood where all the conveniences are just a short walk away. And we’ll miss our friends. And our favourite home-order eateries. You have to wonder whether it really is worthwhile for the sake of a shorter commute, but it looks like we’ve decided to take the plunge and we will find out the answer to that one soon enough.

On Missing The Bus

Kids really are amazing.

In a conversation some days ago, sup33 mentioned what her daughter’s to-be school principal had said: kids are much more hardy than parents think they are. They have more stamina, more energy, and are more adaptive than we give them credit for. My own kids have proved this to me many times already, yet they still surprise me.

When I was much younger – not a child exactly, but just growing up – I was scared of being left at school. This actually happened once, when one of my parents turned up a little late to pick me up – I must have been 6 or 8, or possibly even 9 years old. But much later, even up to the age of 16 or so, I used to have anxious dreams of being left at school. In those days, I went home by school bus, and I had a constant, though mild, paranoia of missing the bus. My recurring dream on this theme lacked the intensity of a nightmare, but it was definitely a worrying and anxiety-laden dream, and one that persisted for a while even after school itself – or at least the school bus part of school – had come to an end.

We started the twins on the school van ten days ago, just before we left for Pondicherry. I went with them for two days, and left instructions with their teacher, the van driver, and the daycare attendant that from the following day, they would come on their own, unattended.

Then, the weekend intervened.

And we went to Pondicherry.

And by the time we returned and sent the kids to school on Wednesday, something got lost in transit between the school teacher and the van driver and the kids didn’t get on to the bus (or in to the van, in this case).

It was my last day of unemployment, and I had spent the morning getting their lunch ready. I drove to their daycare with the intention of greeting them as they got off the van, to ensure that they reached safely and were not unduly worried about the commute, and also, at the same time, delivering their lunch. I had just about reached the place with a few minutes to spare, when Amit called.

“Where are you?”
“I’m almost there, at their daycare,” I said.
“Ok. You have to go to their school right away.”
Naturally, thoughts of illness, accidents, and other possible calamities flooded into my mind.
“The van didn’t pick them up.”

First I called the van driver. He was unperturbed. He had thought they were starting from tomorrow. In any case, he was already quite far from school and couldn’t possibly go back to pick them up. So I called daycare, updated them, called Amit back, updated him, and set off on the long drive to their school.

I was tense – were they very upset? Were they scared? Lonely? Crying?

I knew that their teachers would not leave them, that they would keep them engaged and do their best to allay their fears, but… Just a few weeks ago, Mrini had been in tears fearing I wasn’t coming to fetch her, and I wasn’t even late that day. And just this morning, Tara had said “don’t go,” and clung to me tearfully, while her teacher tugged her away and assured her that mama would come early today to pick them up. And I hadn’t turned up! What trauma they would be experiencing!

So I drove blindly, stupidly, preoccupied with these thoughts. Narrowly escaping various catastrophes, I reached school at 12.45 to find… two perfectly happy, laughing, playing, children who greeted me with “hey, what happened to the van?” (or words to that effect). Not a word of complaint or a single teardrop in sight.

Huh. So much for all that worrying. Why on earth did I think that my childhood fears, which I had forgotten all about until now, would be their fears? They were in a familiar environment, they had their teachers, their work, their friends. One of the things with Montessori is that older kids – up to 5+ – are in the same class as younger kids (3+). The older kids get to stay back for an extra hour or so, so by the time I reached, the seniors still hadn’t gone home.

And then, of course, there are the two of them. Although that more than doubles their naughtiness and all the mischief they can get up to, it also means that each of them is very rarely totally alone.

I greeted them unconcernedly, as though my turning up was just a special bonus for the day, and we drove to daycare, and they were somewhat late for lunch but none the worse for it – despite the fact that they’d returned from a hectic trip out of town and had an extremely interrupted sleep last night. They both slept in the afternoon (thank goodness!) and were in top form that evening.

One good thing that came out of this entire experience was that something that would doubtless have worried me – the prospect of the twins missing the bus – happened even before it had occurred to me to be worried about it. And once the worst has happened and has been handled, it loses its fear factor. I know now that if they ever miss the bus in future, their teachers will call us, and either of us, wherever we are and whatever we’re doing then, will drop everything and rush to pick them up. And until we get there, they will be in their school, with their teachers and friends, and they will be fine.

Overall, they are just amazing in how adaptable they are. They’ve just been two weeks in daycare, and that’s been interrupted by a change in daycare, and a trip out of town; but they’ve settled down with a minimum of fuss and are absolutely cheerful and positive about the whole thing. Tara had taken to fussing a bit when we dropped her off at school in the morning, but today she told me with great determination that she was going to go “quickly” into class, and she did – she waved to me and went off smiling!

I still have twinges of guilt at how much time I’m going to be spending away from them… but it’s worse when they make it so easy for you.

Adoption Update: The Pondicherry Saga Continues

I was struck by reading, in my friend Christina’s blog, recently, that Pondicherry was where she went to find herself. I’ve been to Pondicherry as a tourist once; I wasn’t very touched by it. I could easily have never come back here.

And then it became the place our twins were born. In the past two years, we’ve visited it about seven times so far. We’ve never been tourists after that first time; we’ve always come to get something done. We stay in a hotel that is comfortable, practical, and conveniently located. We eat mostly in our room, or at least in the hotel, because it’s convenient with the kids. We come and go by taxi or sometimes by our own car. We have been to the beach only once. We are always in a hurry to get our work done and get back home – after all, we are not on holiday here.

Although we see so little of Pondicherry each time we come, I am gradually coming to like the town. It has a relaxed feel to it, everything is only a ten-minute drive away and most of the traffic consists of cycles and other two-wheelers. Of course, it is much easier to like Pondicherry in December when it’s not really hot, than any other time of year when the sweat rolls off you all day long. It is also much easier to like Pondicherry mid-day, when there’s mostly stale cowdung on the streets, than in the evening, when there’s a mad rush of small vehicles on top of the cow dung.

This time, for the first time after we got the kids, we decided not to drive down to Pondicherry. I felt the drive is too long and tedious for the girls, they’re so very active now. So we opted to take a train to Chennai and then a bus. The train was comfortable enough, apart from having to wake at 4.30 a.m. to get on the train at 6. There was a nice man travelling with his daughter, who was about a year older than the twins, sitting across the aisle from us. He involved the twins in conversation, games, and nursery rhymes on his laptop, so we didn’t have to make any effort towards keeping them busy.

In Chennai, we hopped on to a bus to the bus stand, and there boarded a bus that was just about to leave for Pondicherry. By about 12.15, we were in our way.

It was the twins’ first long-distance bus ride. We had expected a thin crowd on a Sunday afternoon, but were shocked to find the bus soon packed to the gills. We took the row right at the back of the bus, hoping the girls would be able to stretch out and sleep, but it was much too crowded. The four of us and our three bags were crammed into three narrow seats and the girls slept uncomfortably crumpled up in our laps. A car is certainly more elitist, more boring, more expensive, and their car seats are not the most comfortable of beds; but on the whole the car ride would probably have been easier on them. The entire car journey can be done in six hours without stopping; the bus journey from Chennai took almost four.

Frazzled by the whole experience, we reached our hotel around 4.30, and ate and enormous “tea”, followed, eventually, by a substantial dinner. The food in this hotel is excellent.

The next morning, after baths and breakfasts, we went to the lawyer’s residence-cum-office and from there we piled into her car for the short drive to the courthouse. It is a very nice court, an imperial-looking, sprawling, white building, still clean and gleaming; I think it’s quite new, or else it’s been freshly painted. We waited outside the courtroom for some time, the kids running around everywhere and generally being impossible. Eventually, I took them down to the courtyard – a large, manicured garden area, where they could run around and play. They got excited watching and teasing some caterpillars, and rolling on the lush grass. At 10.30, we were told to go away and come back at 11.30. One person told us there was a boycott on (disaster!) but our lawyer said that one judge and three lawyers had passed away over the weekend, and mourning (or something) was being observed for the next four days.

We went back to the hotel, spent half and hour, and then went back to the courthouse, where the girls and I resumed our games in the courtyard. After about an hour-and-a-half, Amit gave me a double thumbs-up sign from the first floor, where he had been waiting outside the courtroom: he had been called by the judge in his chambers, the petition had been granted, he had requested the judge to pass the order the same day, so that we could collect the documents the next day and go back home at the soonest, and the judge had agreed. My presence had not been required at all. Frustrating but wonderful.

At 4.00, we were back at the courthouse, hoping to collect the documents. Everything was ready, we were told, but the judge had to sign something. He had a doctor’s appointment and would be back at 5.00. This sounded ominous: if I had a doctor’s appointment that ended at 5.00, I’d probably just go home after that. Thankfully, the judge was not as irresponsible as I might have been, and he turned up and did the needful. There was some more waiting around while the documents were located and verified. We both had to sign somewhere. Then the papers were handed over to our lawyer’s assistant (our lawyer was busy elsewhere and hardly appeared during the afternoon session) and we were on our way out.

We went back to the hotel, where, optimistically, we had checked-out and left our luggage at Reception. Having picked up our luggage, we went to the bus-stand, got on a bus, and reached Chennai uneventfully around 10 p.m. The bus was not too crowded and we had four seats between us, but the kids were still uncomfortable and only fell asleep after 9.00, so they were, naturally, reluctant to wake up at 10.00. It was a pitiful excursion by auto to the railway station and a long hike down the platform to the First AC coach, but by 11.30 we were all in bed. Only to be woken up at 4.30 for another transfer, this time by taxi. At least it was the last leg of our long journey – by 5.15, we were all at home and asleep in our own beds.

By 7.00, I woke the kids up, and we all started the usual mad rush to get to school and office. It was my last day of unemployment – I had a few precious hours to make the most of, before I climbed onto the bandwagon of being a working mom.

Adoption Update: Return to Pondicherry

In case you thought we were done with the adoption legalities… think again. We still have to file for adoption under HAMA – the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act. For this, we first have to get all the original documents back from the Family Court, which granted us guardianship under GAWA (the Guardians And Wards Act), and then we have to file for adoption in the Civil Court.

We could have done this sooner, but had been advised by our lawyer to wait, due to the long backlog of HAMA cases in the Pondicherry Civil Court. Now, it seems, the backlog has cleared a bit and we can file our petition.

First, to get the original documents back. Until recently, either one petitioner (parent, that’s us) could go to petition the court to return the original documents to us. Now, just right now, they need both parents. They don’t need the kids, luckily, but guess what? Where we go, our kids go. We don’t have anyone to leave them with.

It’s not as if it’s a matter of a few hours – driving to Pondicherry and back itself means about 12-14 hours on the road. And apparently petitioning the court on one day means that we might actually get the documents only the next day, or possibly the day after next. So that means three whole days in Pondicherry. It’s not that Pondicherry is not a nice place to be… it’s just that one would prefer to pick one’s time for a holiday and right now is not a really good time for us. Not with a new job coming up, the kids to be settled into day care, and an Archaeology assignment that I seem to be making a total hash of.

On the other hand, if we have to spend three whole working days in Pondicherry, it’s just as well to get it done before I join my new job. So that means, come Sunday, off we go.

Yet again.

Still not for the last time.

Sigh.

Day Care: Do They Care?

So we had decided on this daycare for the kids. You know the one – big, fancy, expensive, dead convenient, being in the same campus as both our offices… We bought ourselves a three-day trial period. Well, I still have only a verbal offer and the entry load at this daycare was coming to something over 80 k for the twins, so a trial period definitely makes sense, right?

Right.

The kids clearly liked the place. It’s large, well set up, clean, has nice child-sized toilets (clean) and places to climb and things to jump off of. Oh and there were these toy car things they could drive that they fell in love with. They didn’t talk to anybody much there, but as long as I was giving them lunch and they could play with the toy cars or climb and jump off things, they were ok.

Amit and I weren’t so easily impressed. Though the place appeared very professional and everything, I felt it was run like a factory. There was nothing really bad about it (apart from the food; I’ll come to that later) but there were small, niggling things that weren’t quite right. One or two of the attendants didn’t seem to be the kind cut out to be working with little children. One attendant had her own child there and this skewed things. She could not give her daughter sufficient attention, but neither could she treat her like just another child there.

There was a general one-size-fits-all kind of approach there that I felt was not exactly suited for kids of this age. One day, they twins were all happy and excited and showed no signs of wanting to sleep after lunch. The attendant’s response? “Oh no, they have to sleep, or they will disturb all the other kids here.”

I mean, yeah, she has a point, but shouldn’t there be some other solution? Like giving them something to do, or taking them to another area where they can play?

I heard a couple of the other attendants threatening the kids with “if you don’t fall asleep right now, spider will come.” If there’s one thing I want to protect my kids from, it’s from this kind of pointless threatening and fear-phobia approach.

The kids were all put to sleep on mattresses spread out on the ground. For a place as large (and expensive) as this one, you’d think they’d have sufficient mattresses. They didn’t – the kids were crammed together about five on a mattress. They could hardly move.

And then there’s the food. These folks actually discouraged us from sending food for the kids because (one size fits all) they provide food. We saw the menu, and I wasn’t impressed. Kids need proper meals – fruit, veggies, dahi (curd/yoghurt), in addition to the staple dal-rice. They need fibre in their cereal – unpolished rice or whole wheat, not just white rice. Still, I thought, maybe they do actually give all that on the side, they just mention the main dish on the menu. After all, they can’t be giving only rice and sambhar, or only paratha and curd. Our girls are used to five-course lunches. We even give them non-veg – or at least egg – once or twice a week. But no, they said, you can’t send any non-veg. Ok, I thought, let’s see what their food looks like. Maybe it looks really healthy, with lots of veggies hidden in the sambhar or in the raita.

No such luck. The food on the plate looked a lot worse than it looked on the menu. Pulao and raita (rice with mixed veggies and curd with raw veggies like onion) looked to me like white rice, plain (thin) curd, and a few green peas tossed in for colour. Sambhar-rice looked like rice with thin, colourless dal.

What’s worse, on our first day there, they gave the same food for lunch and for the tea-time snack! On our second day there, lunch was the same as on the first day. There was a five-year-old at our table who commented on it… so at least we know that they don’t actually usually give the same food every blessed day. But hullo! How about adding some nutrition to this food? These guys are supposed to be in the child care business.

Afternoon snack was also horrifying. One day it was biscuits, another day it was rice kheer (rice pudding). Refined sugar, polished cereal. How about a little fruit? Or at least good old bread-n-jam, which is at least better than biscuit, especially if you make a real effort and get wheat bread.

I had thought that since they provide food, I could just send the fruit and veggies to supplement, but after seeing what their food looked like, I realized I just couldn’t.

So anyway, I packed them lunch every day. Only, the food is cooked the evening before, refrigerated overnight, and packed when I go to pick them up from school around 11.15 a.m. So it’s still quite cold when they are ready to eat around 1 p.m. So, heat it, right? We have this useful little box called a microwave, which is killing the environment but we all use it just the same, right?

On the second day at lunch time, their attendant told me very firmly that, sorry to say, we need the microwave to heat the food for the infants. So could you please send their food at a ready-to-eat temperature? Thank you very much.

When you’re giving a place 80 grand, you’d think the least they could do is to buy a second microwave, right? Yeah, right.

When I told Amit this, he was disgusted. It was Friday afternoon by this time, so we spent the weekend and Monday morning phoning around, and on Monday afternoon I dropped the kids at this daycare, then drove off to inspect another one nearby. It was a much smaller affair, homely – not actually a home, though it was based out of what was originally intended as a house – far from perfect in terms of the infrastructure, but somehow cosy and warm. Because it was a house in design, there was a small outdoors area with a small sandpit; the big, plush daycare had no outdoor area at all, so this was better than nothing. The toilets were adult sized, fitted with child seats. The dining table was in the kitchen. There was a fridge and a microwave, and the woman in charge had no reservations about using either. There were about ten kids, and three caregivers. They didn’t provide food, for which, after our first experience, I was thankful, and they had no problem with us sending non-veg for the kids. The woman also assured me that I needn’t send any fruit as she always had fruit available for the kids. This, of course, put this place way up there at the top of the list as far as I was concerned.

So today I dropped the kids off at this new place and sweated it out in the car outside all afternoon. The woman was very keen that I not hang around for long, as she said it made it more difficult for kids to get settled in. Tara was somewhat upset when I left, but by all accounts she quickly settled down, ate lunch, and proceeded to play the entire afternoon. This was not a problem – the sleeping kids slept in another room with the door closed and were not disturbed. When I went back in some time around 4.30, she was completely happy and at-home there, and didn’t bother too much about me.

So, all in all, this place seems more convincing than the other. Amit and I both really liked the person in charge (while we found it difficult to like any of the women at the first place). It is a ten minute drive away from our office complex, unfortunately, but perhaps that is a small price to pay?

And there is a smaller price to pay in a very literal sense as well – this place costs less than half of the other on a monthly basis, and has none of the entry barriers that amount to 80 k in the other place. So it makes sense to go with it for a while and see if it works, don’t you think? After all, the place with only one microwave and plenty of attitude isn’t going anywhere and we can always go back there later on if we wish.

The kids have put up a sterling performance in all this. They’ve been almost unmitigatedly cheerful and easy-going. Despite being left alone this afternoon at this new place (and Tara being a little upset by it) they were all ready to go back to the first place at the end of the afternoon, just so they could play with some of the toys over there!

I still feel a little selfish for wanting to go back to work… but I think that eventually the girls will begin to love day care (as they already love school) and that it will do them no harm in the long run. Or at least that’s what I want to believe right now. I just hope we’re doing the right thing and choosing the right daycare. It is so hard to trust our little girls to somebody else’s care.