Letting Go

I am heading home after a strange and intense week in DC. I reconnected with one old friend, “broke up” with another and had some major developments at work. The last is still playing out so I am unsure of what its impact will be on me personally. But the theme of the week has been change; that even when you think your life is settled things turn upside down in the blink of an eye.

With regards to the first, I have come to realize a couple of things over the last few years – when it comes to friendship I am picky and hold high standards. I put the highest premium on loyalty and honesty. I also acknowledge that I don’t forgive easily and hold grudges, which K (and my mother) has pointed out to me (several times) is a huge flaw in my character.  

I don’t think this is something I can change easily. I have ended only one other friendship before this and when I look back there are similarities in the two people I chose to ease out of my life. Both are unconventional, passionate and extroverted women (i.e. the exact opposite of me). I was attracted to them for their fire, their sense of fashion, the wild fun I had with them and most importantly for their lack of judgment for the horrible things I sometimes did and said (mostly because what they did was much worse). Being friends with them made me feel like I was stepping out of my world into something more exotic and unknown.

On the flip side though, I quickly understood that they were moody, flighty, unstable, superficial and sometimes disloyal. I found myself judging their smallest actions and finding fault with the things they did that they couldn’t help. Small things like wearing see through tops in small, conservative towns and stealing magazines from nail salons. It was me, I know. I was unable to accept them as wholly as they accepted me. But then there was the disloyalty. In one case it was harsh words said about me to a boyfriend and in another it was an ugly public fight at a restaurant.

Maybe this is a cop out, but when you get to a point in a friendship where there is more fighting than comfort and more anger than happiness, its time to leave. Fighting and anger are for relationships.  Its not that there isnt strife and disagreement amongst friends. I hold my friendship with D as a standard bearer. We have been through so much and had tough times when we couldnt see eye to eye. But we worked through it and stayed together. Mostly because she was there when I needed it and vice versa. And because we shared the same values and knew we were looking out for each other.

From your girlfriends, you want understanding and support and unconditional love. If you are unable to give or receive that, its time to end things.

And so I did.

Sleep Baby Sleep

Putting a 14 month old to sleep is equal parts frustrating and delightful. Let me rephrase that. Its mostly frustrating with a dash of delightful. But mostly that delightful makes up for the parts where you want to bash your head against the bed posts. There is a reason a book called "Go the F**k to Sleep" was written and became a best seller. As Baby L morphs from an infant to a toddler, she has become so much more interesting. She is a great kid overall. She eats well, doesn't throw tantrums and is so friendly. But one thing she hates to do is sleep. She doesn't want to miss all the fun that we are having (sic) when shes not around.

The interesting thing is when K or the nanny put her to bed, she usually falls asleep under half hour. With me, its a different story. First we cuddle and kiss. Then she snuggles up to me, looks at me with those big beautiful eyes of hers and whispers secrets in baby gibberish. Then she goes through a 10-15 minute phase of tossing and turning, all the while chanting "sh-sh-sh" (which is our code for "time to sleep baby"). Finally she climbs on my chest and covers my face with wet kisses. All of which melts my heart, but most days I am exhausted from working all day and then coming home to spend quality time with her, feed her, bathe her and get stuff done around the house.

At the half hour mark, I usually flop her on her stomach and start my sh-sh-sh process. Which she proceeds to resist valiantly. She doesn't want to sleep and I just want her to, so I can kick back after a long, long day. She tries kisses again, but by now I've entered the phase where that kind of manipulation doesn't work. She cries, I scold and after an hour more of that she falls asleep. I know, I know. The best parents train their kids to fall asleep on their own. But I carry a lot of guilt about the little time I spend with her and even through my frustration I don't mind the time spent putting her to sleep.

These days however, I have discovered a new weapon to get her to sleep. Malayalam lullabies. It happened purely by chance one night, when I had spent all the other tricks up my sleeve. I remembered this old song "Unni vavavo" which I started humming to her and lo! she fell asleep in under 10 minutes. I dusted up my (limited) repertoire of Malayalam songs (just 2 other songs) and singing those three repeatedly over half hour seems enough to put Baby L to sleep these days. Hallelujah.

The truth of the matter is I was kind of a snob in school. I was a typical Indian elitist, English medium type. I listened to only English songs, read only English books and thought anything to do with my native tongue was uncool. That changed as I grew up and went to Engineering school. Through the friends I made there, I got to know the beauty of the Malayalam language, the music, movies and books. But to this day, I don't know enough and remain disconnected from the core of the culture built around that language. Its something I regret very much and its partly why I make it a point to speak in Malayalam to Baby L at home so she knows where her roots are whoever she may grow up to be.

Even then, I somehow think life is laughing at me in an ironic way, as I sing these songs that I once disdained, the only songs that will now soothe my daughter to sleep. 

Travels With A Baby

Until a few years ago, I loved to travel for work. I thrived on it - the packing & repacking of the suitcase, the flights from one city to another, the thrill of discovering a new place (albeit for a few hours or days), the constant movement. I lived through flight delays, disastrous weather conditions, smelly seat mates, bad rental cars and plastic airport food. But I also got to go to some amazing places - Milan, Paris, San Francisco, London, New York, Puerto Rico and smaller cities like Cleveland, Minneapolis, Cincinnati.Then my switch flipped, I wanted to become a mom and slow down, settle down. These days I just want to get work travel out of the way and my aim in life is to minimize the number of nights spent away from Baby L. The good news is that my travel schedule is down to two trips a quarter, a week or so each time. The bad news is that doing those trips (usually to a place 8 hours or more away) is brutal on my body. It also doesn't give me much (any!) time to enjoy the place. 

For instance, I just got back from Sydney last week. I was there for just four intense days, packed with meetings. I used to go to Sydney a lot in the beginning of my career. Even in my 20's travelling to the Southern Hemisphere did weird things to my body. I felt a little "off" each time I went there. Not very eloquent a description of my state of mind, but basically I felt like my mind was almost on rewind, like I was outside of myself watching the slow, slow words coming out of my mouth. I also couldn't sleep or eat well. And once I got back, getting readjusted was worse than coming back from the US. It was like that this time around too. I am convinced that it has something to do with the magnetic axis of the earth or something. K laughed at me when I said this, but a week in, my sleep patterns are still out of whack and I still don't feel a 100%.

I do like travelling for pleasure though. My biggest regret is not having taken enough holidays in my 20's. And now with a baby, travelling is a full blown production. We went to Cambodia in February with my parents to celebrate Baby L's birthday. Usually I have detailed itineraries planned for each day, but this time, since we had a 1 -yr old in tow, we didn't over plan the trip. Let me start with the negatives. We had to cut short the trip because Baby L ended up falling really sick on Day 3 and my mom had a bad fall at the Angkor Wat. But the little we managed to see and do was wonderful and if I can I will go back in 20 years to see the place at a slower pace.

Siem Reap is a sleepy little town that has had to suddenly grow up with the influx of tourists swarming its temples. And there are a lot of them. This year alone I know about 10 friends who have planned or are planning visits to see the Angkor Wat. One thing you quickly realize when you get to Siem Reap is that there are so many other temples there. Too many to see in under four days, especially when you're travelling with a baby. We stayed at Prince D'Angkor hotel bang in the middle of town. While it has really high ratings on Tripadvisor I wouldn't recommend it if you are used to a Westin or Hilton. It reminded me of the Woodlands hotel in Chennai. Dusty and worn around the edges albeit with very polite staff. The only advantage is we were in the middle of everything, 15 minutes away from the temples and Pub Street.

Our first evening there we ventured to Pub Street, which is exactly what it sounds like. A busy, almost hip little lane lined with restaurants, trendy boutiques and bars. Its closed off to traffic after 8 pm, which meant our tuk tuk dropped us off at a corner and we joined the crowds of tourists pushing their way through to the next cold beer. We had dinner at Khmer Kitchen, a simple restaurant with rickety chairs and ancient ceiling fans. The food was good - amok, a coconut based curry with crunchy greens. Since Baby L was asleep in her carrier by then, we wandered through the Night Market, fingering cheap silks and bargaining over tchotchkes. My mother and I felt adventurous enough to try a fish pedicure, a creepy experience where you immerse your feet into a basin full of tiny, hungry fishes that chew off the dead skin from your soles. *Shudder*

 
The next day, our guide and driver picked us up and we headed first to the ancient city of Thom. This was the capital city and its entrance is guarded by a row of lifelike statues of devas on one side and asuras on the other. From there we went to Bayon, a temple built by a king called Jayavarman. This king evidently loved himself very much because the temple's main feature is a series of massive stone faces with different expressions, all of which are supposed to be the King himself. For a temple built in the 12th century, it was quite amazing to see how these faces have stood the test of time even as the temple structure lay literally in ruins around them.

After a quick lunch at the creatively named "Opposite Angkor Wat" restaurant we headed to

Tha Phrom, better known as the "Tomb Raider temple" where Angelina Jolie shot that film. (Speaking of Angeline Jolie, she is extremely popular in Cambodia and has been bestowed honorary citizenship for donating money to rid the country of landmines, unsavory remnants of the Khmer Rouge). Tha Phrom was my favorite temple, but also by far the most otherworldly. Even with the tourists around, both my mother and I felt like there was a presence in the air, something supernatural. This was not a place I would want to be in the night time. But since it was 2 pm in the afternoon and blazing hot, we focused on the magnificent ruins around us. This temple is famous for the enormous tree roots that have grown all over the structure and some parts of the temple are actually built around and over hollow trees. There are also little apsaras carved everywhere, but honestly I was afraid to look twice because it almost seemed like they could come alive anytime.

By then it was almost 4 pm and the heat had all but wilted poor Baby L. We headed back to the Prince D'Angkor for a quick siesta and a dip in the rather moldy pool before heading back to Pub Street for dinner. This time we went to the Cambodian Soup Kitchen mainly because of the sumptuous smells emerging from the grill right outside. We sampled a variety of grilled meats and washed it down with some tepid Pepsi before heading for dessert to the Blue Pumpkin, a highly recommended bakery where we had some really good brownies and home made sorbet.


We woke up slightly before dawn to head to the main attraction, the Angkor Wat at sunrise. While the temple itself was beautiful, the area around it is a veritable tourist trap. The minute you step foot in temple grounds you are swarmed by vendors offering you tea, sun hats, carved statues and whatnot. The really sad thing though are the children who beg for money, so many of them, dusty and ill-clothed, many looking underfed and slightly ill. No wonder Angelina wanted to adopt one from Cambodia, K and I did too. We settled for distributing some Cambodian Riel and promising ourselves yet again that our next child would be adopted. 


Sunrise over Angkor Wat is worth seeing and not something I could describe well enough in words, so here is a picture that my mother took.

We headed back to the hotel because Baby L was tired and it was decided that my parents and I would head to see the inside of the Angkor Wat while K stayed back with the baby (partly because temples aren't really his thing). Temples are my parents thing though and they had done a great deal of research on exactly what they wanted to see. The inside of the Angkor Wat is covered with carvings from the Mahabharatha and many other Hindu fables. The one that is most popular is the "Churning of the Sea of Milk." We spent several hours wandering through the cavernous hallways, my parents thoroughly enjoying the process of deciphering the stories on the walls and teaching our guide a thing or two. I amused myself by imagining mothers in the 13th century bringing their children here to show them these murals and tell them stories of love and valor teaching them morals to live by. In a quiet corner of the temple, I could look across the moat and imagine myself transported back in time with little L on my knee as I told her stories of Vishnu's ten avatars. Until of course a Japanese tourist flashed his camera right into my eye and brought me back to the present.

My mother and I decided to brave the climb up to the top most part of the temple, the innermost sanctum of Mount Meru. The climb is dangerous and scary, up a flight of flimsy wooden stairs, but once you get up there you're again in a different time and world. There are several four-sided compounds and long hallways, very similar to Madurai temple architecture. Carvings of apsaras and devas abound and the views across the lake and the library buildings in the temple compound are astounding. Alas, this trip wasn't fated to end well because it was at this  point that my mother took a fall. Thankfully she is full of grit and strength because I don't know how else she would have made that climb down without her presence of mind.

We decided to cancel our afternoon trip to Banteay Serai and instead relaxed in the hotel. In the evening, we went for coffee to Central Bar Cafe near the market and watched the sights over cappuccinos. By then, poor Baby L had developed a nasty cold and the signs of a fever so we decided to shorten our trip and head home the next day. Once we had put her to bed however, my mother and father packed K and I off for dinner because it was Valentines Day. Although V-day isn't really my thing, K was so sweet and got me a red rose and took me on a romantic tuk-tuk ride through the city. We had dinner at Abacus, an expaty French restaurant set in a dim-lit courtyard in a residential neighbourhood. As I munched on lamb chops, I felt like I was in a Somerset Maugham story surrounded by weathered old foreigners who had stayed in the tropics way too long. To add to the feeling of surreality, a magician stopped by our table and performed tricks that seemed truly magical although all he did was make coins disappear and flowers appear.

And even as we cut short our trip and couldn't see many of the other sights we'd wanted to (the Village on Stilts and the Flooded Forest), that will be my lasting memory of Siem Reap - the feeling that magic and spirits really could exist.

Reboot

I shut down my blog for a while because someone I didn't want reading it was doing so. Which maybe a strange thing to do for a blog that pretty much lays out my entire life quasi-anonymously. But this time I felt a little too exposed, a little too vulnerable and figured I would take a small break for a while.

I am back now after a hectic couple of months which included a trip to Cambodia and Baby L turning one. I can scarcely believe its been a year since she came into the world. Sometimes it feels like a lifetime and most times it feels too good to be true. When I look at her, my heart swells with such unmanageable love that I feel I could blink and find she has vanished, that she was simply a beautiful dream, a figment of my imagination.

Even after a night like this one, where she spent 6 hours screaming and tossing in a crazed almost-sleep, some unnamed pain torturing her. Even when I knew I would be bleary eyed in the morning, that I would have to miss work and a few important meetings. Even when I felt like screaming myself because I couldn't get her to calm down. Even then, I love her with a love so huge, so enormous that it threatens to crush my heart to pieces.

Which it probably will one day. Because if one thing is clear, its that I cannot protect her from everything. Nay, most things. I cannot protect her from this virus that has had her coughing for the last 2 months. I wont be able to protect her from bullies at school. I wont be able to protect her from her own insecurities and anxieties. I can only try, but the world is so huge, so unpredictable and she is so little. To me she always will be.

When I watch her at the playground, grabbing other babies' hair in her friendly, but aggressive way, I worry that she will never have friends. When I see how she falls sick by just spending two hours a day at a play group, I worry that she wont be able to manage pre-school. When I read horror stories about child abuse, I worry that I cant trust anyone with her but myself because everyone else could be a predator.

Is this what being a mother is about? This worry and this untamable love? Is this why my own mother asks me if I have eaten every time she sees me (to this day) and always calls right on the dot when I am worried or upset about something? I have a feeling I am only beginning to find out. 

Press Pause

Suddenly I had nothing to do. Its Chinese New Year, a long weekend in Singapore. Its the equivalent of Thanksgiving weekend in the US - everything just stops. Shops are shuttered, the locals celebrate with their families, expats leave the island, even public transportation is hard to come by. K had to leave for the US on a business trip and I had just returned from one. The crazy train that has been work screeched to a sudden and jolting halt, our friends (most of them) had left for Phuket and here I was staring down four days with absolutely nothing planned.

Its been a while since life paused like this. The only other time was the last month of my maternity leave, but even then I was breastfeeding non-stop, so it felt a bit like work. Of course, I mean to spend all my time with Baby L, but lets be honest there is a limit to stacking and restacking plastic toys and crawling around the room with a giggling baby, however cute she is (and she is uber-cute!). So I placed her on the floor and reorganized my wardrobe. Then I reorganized hers. I cleaned the guest room. I reordered the books on the book shelf. I decided to bake, but discovered I had no baking sugar. I started the next book for my office book club ("The Fat Years") and discovered I hated it even if I shouldn't.

For the first time in a long time I was bored. Really, truly bored. I had forgotten what that felt like. All the things that I used to do that would keep me occupied I don't do anymore. I don't volunteer, I don't write (not really), I don't go out that much and honestly I don't even have that many friends here. I suddenly picturized an existence without K around to provide adult stimulation and realized that he was the only person on this island I could call my best friend. Hmm. I have become that cliche, a woman whose life is completely built around her husband and child (and job).

I suppose if I don't do anything about it (and soon), I will be looking down a whole host of lonely weekends in about 30 years or so. 

What Comes Next

I have been 34 for two weeks now. I can scarcely believe it because large parts of me still feel 16 and other parts feel 21 and then there’s the part of me that’s a mom that just doesn’t fit with all of that. 

2011 was a glorious, tumultuous, emotional year. Next to being born, becoming a parent is really the next big milestone in life. Not even getting married comes close. While I learnt (slowly, painfully) to be a mom, I found that my relationship with my own mother remained as fractious as ever. We have come a long way, the two of us, from the days of throwing things at each other, but we still have the capacity to hurt each other horribly.

I went home in December for my cousin’s wedding, the first family affair I had attended in years. It was wonderful, reconnecting with some of my relatives and showing off Baby L. There was one cousin in particular, who I used to be really close with, but drifted away from over time. As little girls we played together and shared secrets, but in later in life it became very clear that we were meant to go our separate ways. There were many reasons for this – divergence of opinions & values, distance, time. But if I am truly honest with myself, it was also my persistent envy of her (there I said it!) because I have always felt (true or not) that my mother saw her as the perfect daughter, the one she could never have.  On the last day I was there, my mother made some offhand remark comparing me to her, which cut so deep that I said things that I shouldn’t have. It is always so with my mother and me. Things are said that cannot be reversed and we have to start the slow process of rebuilding our fragile bond all over again.

Perhaps it will be the same with me and Baby L. I cannot imagine a time when I don’t feel as connected to her as I do now. But it must have been so with my mother and me and look where we are now. But in 2012, I will try more. Try to be a better mother to my daughter and a better daughter to my mother.

2011 was also the year that redefined my marriage in many ways. K and I have had our share of ups and downs. 2007 in particular was a year I thought our marriage wouldn’t survive. But we got through that and many other bumps. But then here we are, new parents in a two-career family. Proximity to our parents also brought it share of tensions. Somewhere this year we descended into a rhythm of arguing, blaming and nit-picking. Being parents was great, but being married didn’t feel so good anymore. We went to work, played with Baby L and rolled into tired heaps on our corners of the bed. On K’s birthday, we came to a head and realized that unless things changed – dramatically – there would be no “us” anymore.

At my cousin's wedding, I had several pangs of nostalgia. As I watched her with her new husband, all young and shiny eyed, I thought back to what K and I used to be. We’ve evolved from a couple that just WAS to a one that has to work on it. Such is life. On the bright side, we’ve entered 2012 resolved to make things better. 

As for friendships, 2011 was a hard year for that. Many times I was so absorbed in my own life that I didn’t make space for my friends. Even phone calls felt like chores. Two of my friends had major operations, two had sick parents and one lost a father, another grappled with depression. I knew I should be there for them, but I failed miserably. I was there in pieces or not at all. I hope to do better this year.

The world revolted in 2011, but I stayed in my safe cocoon. It was the year my apathy crystallized into inaction. I am becoming that cliche – the youth activist who turns into a corporate sellout. I found myself caring more about my job and an upcoming promotion than everything else that was wrong with the world. I don’t know how much that is going to change in 2012, however hard I try. The truth is maybe I don’t want to try.

In many ways I feel settled. I have found my own small piece of the world and all I can do is try and make that better.

Learning To Be A Mom

I stayed home the last couple of days under the pretext of being sick. Not that I was pretending exactly. I was unwell, but not so much that I couldn't go to work if I wanted to. I just didn't want to. For the last few months, work has been intense. My ambition and drive has revved up again and I find myself wanting again all the things that I had laid to rest during my pregnancy. This meant getting sucked back into the politicking, climbing-over-others and passive-aggressive competition that is the corporate world. My time with Baby L was limited to an hour in the morning before I headed to work, couple of hours in the evening before I put her to bed and every minute I could squeeze out of the weekends.

Finally, a couple of days ago, when I came back home from work, my daughter - who usually crawls towards me in a frenzy of happiness when I get back - looked up indifferently from her toy as I stepped through the door. And went back to what she was doing. I was hurt more than I could possibly admit. She is growing up, learning to sense things and know who is who. I am hardly around and she spends all day with her nanny. I had made peace with that, especially since the nanny is so good with her. I am not one of those mothers who is jealous that her baby loves her nanny so much. In fact I am happy she does - it sure beats the opposite.

But for the first time, I got a sense of what having a career that's important to me could do to my relationship with my child. At worst, she will resent me for it. And at best, she will stop missing me when I am not around. So when I got the sniffles, I decided to take two days off and spend it playing with my daughter. What I realized is that spending all day with a child - even your own, much loved one - isn't an easy task. While she is a bundle of cuteness, she also constantly craves attention, wants everything that you have in your hand at that particular minute and shifts moods from happiness to crankiness in under a second. It requires infinite patience to deal with a little person.

This much I know. Being a stay at home mom is out of the question for me. If I did, I would dissolve into sloth and ennui. I would sleep whenever the baby did, have no social life and become a hairball of irritation and anger. I am not one of those women who could mobilize around play dates, mommy's groups and children's activities nor find pleasure in it. Sadly, I had to force myself to play with Baby L all day and the only thing that kept me at it was the thought that this is the least I could do.

Does this make me a bad mom? I don't know. Plus I did enjoy most of the time I spent with her. We horsed around, I fed her all three meals, I held her hands as she took tentative baby steps, I cleaned up her poo, she grabbed at my face and planted open mouthed wet kisses on my cheek, she screamed and threw tantrums and I screamed back at her. And when we both got tired and cranky we lay on the bed all spent and stared into each others eyes till we fell asleep.

Not perfect parenting. But its good enough for me. And hopefully her.