My first guest post ..

A fellow indiblogger – Pramod Lohia, is trying to revive one of his two blogs. So when he opened Marriagebook.in for guest posts, I could not resist writing for his blog. As the name suggests the blog is on marriage and I had an interesting story to tell.

Do have a read and let me know what you think of it.  

http://marriagebook.in/total-filmy-2/

Cheers,

Sangrywords

At the end of the day ...

Since my little one started school, we've been falling sick. I am told it’s a regular feature in every household when the toddler goes to school.  So when I fell sick (yet again), my husband decided to give me some break and took up little one’s entire responsibility over the weekend. I have to say he is very helpful even otherwise, when it comes to helping me with Smera. The daddy daughter duo love to spend time with each other- be it 4am or 10pm.

A recovering child and my extreme cold and cough – didn’t sound like a wonderful combination.  I didn’t want Smera to again contract the flu that we have been passing on to each other. So when my man offered up to help me with in through this difficult state of affairs, I couldn’t help but to take up that offer with relief.

The weekend started off really well, they fed each other breakfast, played in the pool, went out to the aquarium– leaving me home alone recuperate.  Back after sundown, after a packed itinerary, all Smera wanted to do was to sleep. The ever-helpful husband took the little one to sleep and managed the task effortlessly.

Then came Saturday and both of them had fun again. Feeling proud (and a little smug!) of the two-day achievement, the Daddy offered to help her put to sleep again.

With a bottle of warm milk for Smera, daughter and daddy retired into the bedroom. Ten minutes must have passed before I went to check on the progress. As I got near the room, I heard two distinct yet familiar sounds – one that of baby talk another of a heavy breathing.

As I walked in to the room, I saw a restless Smera with the determination of a Duracell bunny, trying to wake a fast asleep Dad !

Guess Dad was so tired keeping the little one busy over a packed weekend that he slept off instantly while Smera had the charge to go on for some more time.

But hey, I could not have asked for a better weekend given the circumstances. It’s been a great two days of daddy daughter bonding and I got another story to tell Smera when she grows up. The day baby put Daddy to sleep :)

Super long wait !!

Childhood is really the best part of one’s life. I spent most of my childhood wishing to be a Super-girl. Time when most kids would aspire to be doctors or engineers, I had something entirely different planned out for myself. I could have taken the regular route – being doctor or engineer. A tradition followed by most Malayali kids, but then there were two problems. Number crunching was never my forte and then biology really sickened me. 

I tried a number of things to test out if I had it in myself to be Super-girl.

• Jumped from stairs, boundary walls to check if I could fly.
• Ate spinach hoping to release some extraordinary muscle power to bash up my brother.
• Walking after lights out at night – hoping that my X-ray vision will guide me through darkness.

Alas, all that came out of those escapades were a few broken bones and shaken confidence.

Soon I realised that I am just another girl, feeling dejected and disappointed - I decided to pursue other things in life.

When parenthood dawned upon us, I had a new found desire to try my hands on becoming a Super-mum. I thought just like my mum, I too would be a super-mum at managing our little Smera, our white tiled house, my family, work (which I do not do) and our life.

It’s no secret - everyone knows about my obsession with squeaky clean house and for the most part I managed pretty well except on some occasions.  My first eight and a half months of motherhood were fine and then Smera started walking! Suddenly my neat house suddenly started looking like a war-zone.

Tell you very frankly just like most mothers I tried to resist getting angry since that is what every kid does. Just then I started giving in to my evil side, while that had very little effect on my angel. With a sheepish smile and impish look from the corner of her eyes she would continue on her rampage. From spilling to crumbling, smearing food and even rubbishing the house with minutest pieces of torn paper.

After months of hard-work and patience, I finally have the power - my extraordinary Super-mum power. My 2 month-old power has rescued me from numerous panic attacks.

I am now unflustered even when I see her crumble a cookie, attack the tissue paper box or when she empties the detergent powder box on the couch. My little power machine can tackle all this and much more, leaving me with the Super-mum feeling.

It’s my hand held vacuum cleaner – cordless, bagless wonder. It’s so handy that I am going to be taking it on my next vacation!

Image courtesy: Corbis.com 

Dream, Do or is it the other way around?

Yesterday, I met a young girl from Sri-Lanka. Let’s call her Chandrika. She’s must be in her early 20’s and is working as a maid with a cleaning company here in Dubai. I can’t exactly place what it is, but I took an instant liking to this girl. Chandrika was accompanying my life-saver (aka my part-time help). We chatted up over a cup of tea and thus I became drawn in to her story.

Growing up, Chandrika wanted to be a doctor.  Yet, she was happy to settle for becoming a nurse.  She passed her nursing course with a first class and was overjoyed when she got a job offer from Dubai. The placement agent promised a position with a clinic and a salary which she could only dream of back home.

Shortly after that, Chandrika landed in Dubai to take-up the promised job. Quickly, she found out she was not going to be working in a clinic, but a cleaning company.  She had two options – to curse her luck or to make the best of a bad situation; she chose later. The silver lining is that she would be earning more than she would earn as a nurse back home, even if it meant cleaning toilets.

I know of so many people including myself who didn’t utilize the opportunity that was available for us. I am sure I could have been a doctor or something big, if only I’d put my heart to it. And here was a little girl, struggled to studying nursing and ends up working as a maid.

Life feels unfair to all those wanted to study and do something big life and didn’t have the opportunity to do so.  I feel the world would be a much better place, if some of us who are fortunate can help such people who have a burning desire to succeed.

Back to Chandrika, she is working on improving her English language skills. She spends her weekends preparing to write the nursing test that’ll help her get a nursing license in Dubai.

I am saying a prayer today for Chandrika and her dreams.

I’ve also signed up for helping a doer to dream – English Language Tuitions.

I am back !!

Just incase if you were wondering where Sangrywords has been for over a month, well then I have come back to the blogosphere unfortunately with nothing really exciting this time to tell. My family has been playing pass on parcel with viral flu. For over a month and boy it has been absolutely tiring. 

It’s different when you are sick and miss your mum, but what would you when you are the mum and your little one is sick. Little over a month back, Smera started pre-school and just like most kids, she too fell sick with this change in her routine. 

All was well when she recovered in a week, but then duhddudy aka daddy fell sick, the little girl who was well recovering from the flu fell ill again. And yes not to forget the mamma and then back baby again for another 2 weeks.

While this month had been plagued with the flu but it was just as bad as it sounds there were few highlights too:

• Smera started her play-school  and made her first painting in school
• My mum us visited twice this month and each time she cooked us a sumptuous meal and some more to last a week
• We celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary with a wonderful weekend getaway to Hatta ( a welcome break from the hustle and bustle of the city)
• And we got the first complaint from Smera’s school for excessive use of the word daddy which reminded other kids of their dads and made them cry!

Image courtesy: Fotolia