Mother's Day

When I came drenched in the rain,

My brother told, “Why don’t you take an umbrella with you?”,
My sister said, “Why didn’t you wait till it stopped?”,
My dad angrily said, “Only after catching a cold, will you realize.”.

But my MOTHER, as she was drying my hair with her saree,

was shouting

not at me


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . But at the RAIN.


But no, in real life my mom wasn’t like the above mentioned mom. She took care of me no doubt but she would never wipe my head with her saree, instead she’s get the towel and thus teach me that each utility/luxury/item in life has its particular use and we should use it for just that.

Well, you see my mom, Mrs. Ranajan Chhabra a graduate, was a very different mom than the normal Indian moms. If I ever had a fight with the other kids, it was I who’d get the scolding and not the other children, whereas other children’s parents would readily scold me instead of scolding their own child. L I would question her with tears in my eyes, but I obviously didn’t understand then; she was teaching me to take responsibility of my actions. In her own subtle ways, she taught me the ways of life.

I still remember I would pester her to become a working mom. It sounded so cool, when in school my friends told me that their moms were working and they’d have their own keys to their house and they’d go back home and be by themselves. Wow! They could watch TV, play games, their life sounded their own and not ruled by moms. But one day when I came back home and mom wasn’t there at home I realized, I had to have my lunch by myself alone, I could watch TV but it wasn’t interesting anymore, I had to finish my homework by myself, I missed mom. I questioned my mom on her return and she said that it was just one day when she’d gone out, if she were working, she’d be out 6 days a week. I never asked my mom to be a working mom after that.

She taught me to forgive and forget, she’s forgiven me for unaccountable unforgivable nuisances, well you see, I wouldn’t describe myself anything less than a problem child, and my mom had her hands full with me. Individuals who know me today may find it difficult to believe but as a child I hated my studies, I loved going to school, hated getting up early though, loved maths, loved climbing trees, loved cycling, loved short hair, hated jewelry, hated eating food, etc., etc. But mom handled it all, and yet let me be myself. The perfect eg of this would be that my mom’s a fantastic cook but I never took interest in cooking, and though she’d remind me that it would be difficult for me after my marriage, she allowed me to have my say in that matter.

All said and done I never realized the efforts she put in for me till I was to get married. I’ve always adored my dad, and appreciate him for making me the individual I am. And I felt that since my mom was a quite conservative, she didn’t understand me and our generation. But this thought vanished into thin air when I fell in love and she understood my love for Mahen. This new phase of my life made me see the other side of her, I saw her care in her worries, and the love in the things she did for me, her insights in her advice.

When Ira was born In 2000 Dad was posted in Roha, a place 3 hours run from Vashi. Therefore our Shivalik (Vashi) house was rented away and we had just kept the master bedroom with its 2nd entry door as a stopover location whenever required. It had an attached bathroom and a balcony. When Ira was born in 2004, mom lived alone in that single room for a month. She’d catch a bus to Nerul (my place), help me out with Ira and household chores, and in the evening catch a bus a get back to the lone room, all this to help me in the transition of becoming a mother from a woman.

I haven’t been very easy on her even as an adult, and many a times have been harsh and blunt in pointing out her mistakes. Yet she honors me by listening to all my advices and appreciates me for them if they turn out to be right. She accepts that she finds it difficult to change herself but she puts every effort to do so. She teaches me to keep my mind open to new learning by example. She always says, ‘Child is the father of man.’

Thanks to her encouragement I’ve come out of many rough patches of my life unscathed. She has always been there for me, always given good motherly advice. And even if I found it difficult to implement, she has always encouraged me to be unbiased and do the right thing.


But this isn’t all.
I’d be biased if I didn’t mention the second mother that God has blessed me with. My mother in law, Mrs. Jayanti Singh! Now let me be honest here, my mother in law and I didn’t really start off on the best foot. Today though I realize it was my misconception, but then I had obviously assumed she didn’t like me. But as time taught, I learnt. She taught me, how to make rotis, how to bargain, how a woman is the backbone in the making of a home from a house. These little gestures showed me the love she had for me.

When Ira was born, I remember, she would boil 2 liters of water with ‘ajwaine’ twice a day and religiously send it for me to drink so that Ira and I do not suffer from stomach aches. She got methi ladoos especially made for me. She’d cook me food so that I could relax. She goes to the temple and prays for me. She was my inspiration and my backbone of support when Ira was a year old and I got the opportunity to pursue my career further. She loves it when I dress up for an occasion, whether a marriage or a party and appreciates me for it, which makes me feel beautiful.

When I would came back from office in the evening, tired after travelling in the local trains, she’d make sure that the dinner is ready before I reach home. Especially on Thursdays when it is my ‘fast’, as soon as I reached home, she’d make me sit on the dining table and serve me even before the rest of the family ate. Any time of the day if I ever go to her place, she’s ready to cook and feed me. She knows I don’t really enjoy cooking so she lets me be.

When I’d go for my EMBA classes on Sunday, she’d look forward to taking care of Ira for me and cooking us a lunch. If I fared well in any of the projects or exams, she’d appreciate me making me feel proud of my achievements. Her say in my life matters a lot. Her smile has become a part of my life and I find it difficult to pass my day if I know she isn’t happy. She does so much for her kids (that includes me) that I feel honored when she asks me to help her out in anything. She makes me feel special by appreciating me in her friends. She loves to wear sarees chosen by me and loves to shop with me, thus appreciating my choice.


I do know that I’m a lucky person!
God couldn’t be there always for us so he gifted all of us a mom!
But I got a double deal out of him ;) (You see, I got good at bargaining) I got myself two moms.
Thank you moms.
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY

Educated illiteracy

One day on a chat:
Indian1: wow, your tour snaps are great. Everyplace is beautiful, except India :(
Indian2: That's not fair, I love India n its beauty. Just because other places are new to us, they have a diff charm.
Indian1: lol, I meant clean
Indian2: yeah India will get cleaner day by day; it's up to us to not throw garbage on the roads
Indian1: where is de place on roads to throw anything, he he, jk. But yea you are right, India rocks.

Another Indian has stated her status to be: Once a Indian, always one...., cant grow out of it!!!!

The point is; are we ever going to grow out it? Out of being a typical Indian! We all love our country and want the best for our country and our countrymen so we always complain about the lack of cleanliness and need of better infrastructure. But do we contribute towards it? So dont we become educated illiterates?

No, I’m not in a mood to give a lecture about it, or for that matter play the blame game (uneducated people / lower class people create the litter) or the excuse game (I don’t want to litter on the road but I don’t have an option or how can I stop everyone else).

Nope, I would prefer to be practical and discuss ways in which it is genuinely possible for an Indian to behave as a literate and make our country litter free.
1. Doesn’t mean you have lecture around everyone throwing litter, but would help you could to encourage use of dustbins or garbage bags in your friend circle.
2. Carry your own garbage bag. That could be an inspiration to others.
3. Don’t just preach but use the dustbins available on the station platform and bus depots, even though it means walking a bit.
4. If there are no dustbins available and you really need to throw, look around for a corner where other’s like you have thrown the litter (spreading the litter has les chances of getting cleaned) A corner with litter has more chances of getting cleaned. (doesn’t mean u use it as an option always)
5. Behave like a literate, READ signboards and FOLLOW them. Following instructions is more than half the work done.

I don’t think it’s really so difficult to behave like a literate and not like a ‘LITTER’ate.

Arranged marriage VS Love marriage VS Bachelorhood

Arranged marriage VS Love marriage VS Bachelorhood

Mine was a love marriage. But I’m really not sure how much difference it made? I mean I feel arranged / love it’s all the same in the end. It’s marriage.

For e.g. You see a guy you get attracted to him, you like the way he makes you feel, the gifts, the galore, you get along and so you marry him.

Well, after marriage things change, suddenly the girl isn’t a girlfriend/fiancé any more but a wife, and the boy isn't a boyfriend/fiancé any more but a husband. She nags and he hates it. He expects n she hates it. Isn’t the end result the same in any kind of marriage: adjustment? So what’s the big difference in love and arranged marriages. Now look here we are in 2009, so let’s not discuss our parent’s marriages where in their arranged marriages they had not even seen each other till their marriage day, we are talking about the generation today.

Usually the criteria’s for selection for both types of marriage can be behaviour, physical chemistry, looks, family background and professional/financial background

A handsome/beautiful spouse : trust me give them 5 yrs and they’ll all have a paunch, and not cause they’ve put on some fats, it’s because of some loose muscles :P

A rich spouse: nowadays there are marraiges where the girls earn more than the guy, so I won’t take that into consideration.

Family background: Trust me with the kind of leverage our Indian government give to the so called backward class now people are profited if they are backward class

Behaviour: that’s never constant; it changes with change in everybody. So what colour a marriage can bring in a person’s behaviour the wisest can also not predict

Physical attraction: No comments on that dear, you can create and say whatever you like.

And yet I have friends my age and even elder to me complaining that they haven’t found the right guy/gal yet, and so they prefer bachelorhood. Who’s the right guy/gal? What’s a right guy/gal? It's all the same in the end!

Let's talk about bachelorhood? What’s the end result there? Guess you have a lot of freedom, but at the end of the day you either have the television / laptop / mobile / book / dog for your company! Eating alone, no one to ask how am I looking just after checking yourself in the mirror! You depend for your daily piece of conversation/argument on your friends and their free time. Isn't all this adjustment too?

So what’s left except adjustments!! Guess that’s what life’s about? It’s all about 4 people sitting on a bench meant for 3, about going to school in your dad’s car but having to get down and walk before you reach school cause there’s a traffic jam, it about eating a bhelpuri cause the panipuri’s are over, it’s about studying a subject you hate cause it’s a compulsory subject in the curriculum, it’s about going to a mall cause now garden don’t have friends to play with, it’s about being friends with someone you don’t like so much cause s/he lives close to your place, it’s about sacrificing everyday homemade food cause you’ve had to relocate for a better job, it’s about coming home to a lonely apartment cause you don’t want to compromise your life with another person, it’s about tolerating the boss cause the pay is too good, it’s about loving another person cause you want to be loved back.

So tell me who wins the debate?

Arranged marriage VS Love marriage VS Bachelorhood

Child is the father of man (part1)

Hyperactive behaviour: A term very loosely used in the current days. Hyperactivity can be described as a physical state in which a person is abnormally and easily excitable or exuberant. I myself use it very often to describe my childhood and my daughter’s. About 9% of kids are hyperactive.
But today I realized the true meaning of a hyperactive child.
Today being a Sunday, as a ritual, we have ice-cream for dessert after dinner. And while sailing (sailors would be aware) we have dinner at about 6:00 PM. But my daughter as every child does at her age, dragged her dinner for an hour or so. And therefore to get her to finish her dinner I promised her the next available enticement to finish her dinner: the chocolate Ice-cream with chocolate syrup topping once she finishes. Whether she completely finished her dinner, is not the question here, but she got her ice-cream eventually by 8:00 PM Oh!! Did I mention this before; it was chocolate ice-cream with Hershey’s chocolate syrup as a topping! (Psst: won’t ever forget that). Now experienced mothers would definitely be nodding their head understanding my plight further.
But this after effect was the first for me as my 4 yrs old daughter has just recently taken to ice-cream. While, Khushnum (if you’ve read my earlier blog you’ll know the characters/individuals in concern) and I were chitchatting , which we can do for hours, I realized my daughter was running around, room to room, laughing loudly at the silliest option available and even if it wasn’t silly enough. I assumed, she’s bored and she’s trying to entertain herself. She was running from the officer’s dining room, to the crew dining room, passing weird n funny comments to anyone who’d listen to her or even if not.
She came to me claiming that one of the crew members onboard was the same one with whom we had sailed earlier in the previous ship (which is not the case). When we all tried to explain that is wasn’t so, she started screaming though still in a happy tone. I’ve not known my daughter to do that ever. So I excused it as a one time incident, and asked her to go to our cabin, to which she willingly agreed (I was pleasantly surprised). Soon in a while we heard her shrieking at the top of her voice. Afraid that she might have her hurt herself we all rushed to her and found her jumping up and down the stairs. She was as happy as a kid in a carnival. When asked why she was shrieking, she answered just like that while I was jumping around I thought I’ll scream too.
Phew!!! I wondered what’s got into her. What’s wrong? And Khusnum a mother more experienced then me with her 9 yr old daughter understood my knotted eyebrows and explained that this is the doing of chocolate ice-cream. And this behaviour is hyperactive behaviour. Oh!! Yes, the mystery was solved for me. I could clearly associate.
Let me also mention, my daughter was so hyper, she actually came back to the cabin and in the bargain of not wanting to go to bed she sat and completed a page of her homework. Oh! Yes, she did do that. Some loss, some gain ;)
Hyperactivity can cause kids to act in different ways, depending on who has it. Most hyper kids have problems concentrating and paying attention. Some kids might also have trouble sitting still in class and waiting for their turn. They might yell out the answers before other kids have a chance to raise their hands.
Sometimes they can be disorganized, distracted, or forgetful. They might lose things and have trouble finishing assignments. They may wiggle around in their seats, move around a lot, talk too much, or interrupt other people's conversations.
It's important to remember that everybody does these things once in a while. It doesn't mean that the child is hyper as we all tend to assume it to be.
After seeing a hyper Ira today, I’ve realized that I’m a very proud mother of a normal child, and further on I’m not going to complain about her (this is just a momentary promise, no one is allowed to hold a mother to it). Also I thoroughly sympathize with mothers who actually have to live with hyperactive behaviours day in and day out.
So here’s to Ira, my sweetheart, for teaching me another lesson in life. After all as my mom never forgets to remind me, ‘Child is the father of man’.

The trip to Gabon

As I write this, it seems to me like the recollections of some movie we might have seen. But I wish to state here that indeed the experience was very real.

My daughter Ira, and I are sailing on Maersk Nautilus, a N class VLCC ship, with my husband C/O Mahendra (Mahen). We are at a port in Congo in West Africa. Along with us there’s Chief Engineer's family onboard too, Khushnum and their 9 yrs old daughter. They are Parsi's based in Mumbai too. Khushnum is a really nice lady and we get along very well, Ira as usual God worship's Shinjini since she's elder to Ira but both the kids have quite an age gap to really get along.

4 days ago, on 22nd April 2009, we visited Port Gentil, in Cape Lopez, Gabon, West Africa. Saying it was an experience would be an understatement.
On 21st April 2009, there was a possibility of shore leave. And so Khushnum and me both demanded to be allowed to go onshore. We were to go onshore but the shore passes could be arranged only by 9pm and therefore only the guys were allowed to venture out in the night.
But eventually we managed to fix up with the agent for next day morning, whatever that would be possible in the 3 hours that we had. As I got ready in the morning, we got the news that the previous night the shore-leave group had had a bad time and had ended up paying $54 for a fried pizza (I wonder if it was a delicacy or they got fooled). But yet we were all ready to go, and so we wanted to go onshore and so comes into picture ‘Benhud’, a taller than 6ft African man dressed in orange overalls with the hugest hands and feet I’ve ever seen.

Well, the trip to Gabon had already begun with negatives, one, being delay in shore pass, two, the pizza news, so I thought the next negative had completed the traditional bad luck trio. The pathway from the ship to land was made of small iron grills, n my li’l cute heels got stuck in them and broke even before I could actually step on the soil of Gabon.
Phew! We had just stepped on the soil when it started pouring, n we took shelter in the security office of the French African security guards, and we were not even a kilometer away from the ship. By now the vivacious optimism (for which I am quite well known in my friends) had died down, and I was actually considering walking back to the ship without really wanting to know what lay ahead as I sat there watching the French African rap songs being played sitting in the midst of 6 ft tall security guards. But yet still the adventurous side of me said ‘nothing drastic has happened yet’.
A wait of 20 mins and we were out in Gabon, riding in Benhud’s car, heading out of the terminal security gates. But all we could see further looked like we were entering a jungle safari. I guess Benhud who knew tits-bits of English understood our comments of safari as he accompanied us in our amused laughter.

And then we saw the first sign of some possible civilization, a kind of open wooden shack coloured black n white, with 4 men sitting outside it. And that was a restaurant, woaahhh!! Soon we moved further into the fishermen’s village, where everywhere the spectacle spelled obvious poverty. Huge ladies in torn clothes or just a big cloth wrapped around them below their arms long enough just to cover the needful and huge men shirtless or in long worn out t-shirt with shorts. Kids were mostly naked with whatever cloth possible covering them where ever possible. The vision not only was heart wrenching but also scary. We in the car were like those rich snobbish tourists who sit n the air-conditioning pitying the poor but doing nothing about it. The beauty of the village was the beautiful untouched white sand beaches and open basic wild life within touching distance. Birds, bees, crabs, lizards, hens, ducks, goats, fishes all in their natural comfort were easily visible. We did step out for about 10 mins not able to resist the sand but soon we preferred to run back to our only secure sanctuary, the car. As we went around the village we even got the opportunity to witness a witchcraft ritual which Benhud was very uncomfortable in explaining and other than repeatedly requesting us not to click any snaps he refused to say anymore about it.
It had been just 30 mins since we had moved out of the terminal gates and already the village tour was over, and we were quite eager to see more, so we asked Benhud if he could take us to the city. He explained he needed to check for permission to take us to the city which was just 15 mins drive away, and so he stopped the car to make a call. That’s when this huge African shirtless again huge guy came and knocked (which was more like banged) on our window and said something to Benhud. He was standing right outside my car door and I realized that my door wasn’t even locked. From their expressions I realized he was asking Benhud to bring us out of the car to which Benhud disagreed, and started to move the car ahead. As we slowed started to move ahead he gave me a huge smirk of a smile and banged again on my side of the car door making me jump in my seat again, asking Benhud with gestures to let us come out. Benhud this time clearly stated a ‘No, we are leaving’ and moved his car ahead leaving the fellow behind.
We were now ready to go back to the ship, atleast I know I was.
Meanwhile the call went thru to Benhud’s boss and Mahen informed us on the phone that ofcourse we could go to the city only we had to be back by 12noon. And my adventurous side again said ‘nothing drastic has happened yet’. So we all moved ahead to the city, expecting a better experince.

It was a beautiful drive, greenery byt eh means of trees, bushes and tall grass running along on one side and the other side lined with extensive lengths of white sand beaches, picturesque beauty. Benhud declared we are in the city at the first sight of civilization and we were in shock at the view of little huts and cottages in the name of a city. The huts were just a little better than the barely standing contraptions in the village. And this was right next to Gabon, Port Gentil, AIRPORT.

Further as we came to crossing, Khusnum noticed a signboard showing the direction to a ‘ZOO PARC’ and with half of our group consisting of kids the destination was unanimous. But as we moved to the ZOO PARC, the grave dangers of mosquito bites and malaria occurred to us, but Lo! We were there already. It was the fastest trip to the ZOO of my life. We moved in the ZOO like the people in those epical Carlie Caplin movies, swiftlymoving from one cage to another, hurriedly clicking snaps and in a jiffy we were jumping back into the sanctuary of our car, completing the ZOO visit in not more than 15 mins. Yet still we all had around a total of 11 mosquito bites on us (yes we counted them).

Now I guess Benhud decided it was time to end our agony and he drove us to the elite side of the city, which now was way beyond our expectations, filled with lovely pink n blue coloured French houses. No, it wasn’t a modern city of tall skyscraping buildings but a beautiful city of lovely pretty homes standin right next to the beaches. Here we saw a huge, beautifully landscaped house and Khushnum and I both instantly expressed that it must belong to a very wealthy man, only to have Benhud comment that it was the President’s house.
Soon after a beautiful sighting drive and a very short forced stopover at a building internally filled with very simple but expensive shops, to pick up a remembrance, we moved back to the ship.

It was nonetheless an experience I shall carry for long, the trip to Gabon.