Swings & Roundabouts

I am reasonably sure one of these days someone is going to show up at my doorstep and aim a swift kick up my butt. I moaned and groaned, whined and moaned some more about how the hell is my son going to cope with the madness that is India and since then, I have been writing post after post about what a card he is and how awesomely he is doing.

What to do? We are like this wonly

Before my move to Chennai, the blogger in me was rubbing her hands in glee. There shall be no dearth of blogging material and I shall have blog posts coming out of my ears! Woo-hoo! Yayy!! And words of similar jubilation followed.

Fast forward to T+2 months and the blog posts, instead of coming out ears, have been written in the mind. ONLY in the mind, unfortunately. R2I, Chennai life, schooling, you name it, I have a post for that. Where is it you ask. Well, in the wrong side of the ether
These days, I am to be found oscillating between the two schools (making an excellent point in favour of putting all of your children in one institution) – get one child packed off to school, get the other one ready and drop off in front of school 2, rush home, eat, bash out a few words, pick up child 2, get home, feed lunch, feed self, start the battle for afternoon nap, get one hour of blessed relief if lucky, welcome child 1 from school, get tea, referee the fight for remote, start the homework nagging, nag child to practice violin, feed dinner, collapse on the bed. for variation, some days have slightly varying themes of violin classes – drop, come home, go back, pick up, return – or drama workshops with the same routine.
In the rare event of getting my hands on my laptop and inspiration striking, the blessed Internet connection refuses to play along. I am cursed with the worst connection in the history of broadband connections and can only curse it for swallowing my words.
There are days I want to curl up and give up all dreams of writing.
Please, my dear readers, send a pick me up my way.

Yet again, India was caught unawares – three powerful bombs blasted through Mumbai last evening. The horrific, uncensored pictures have been flooded in the media and even as I see headless chicken routines, the familiar lack of paramedics and the local people pitching in, as is usual.

July 13 becomes 13/7 and is added to the familiar dd/mm (or mm/dd, depending on which side of the pond you are in) terrorist date marking rota.

My heart goes out to Mumbai and Mumbaikars. Stay strong. Meanwhile, if anyone wants  to help, please visit India Helps to see how you can.

It has been a month since P started his new school in Chennai. In that time, he has done many firsts – taken his first exams (well class tests, but let’s not be picky!), signed up for various Olympiads, participated (and won a gold medal!) in his first ever relay race, to name a few.

He did really well in the first round of tests – much better than I hoped, considering he attended a grand total of six days worth of school before he sat for the tests. Hindi and French were the main hurdles but I am sure he will do more than fine in the next round of tests – starting in a week’s time! Before that, he has his school trip to look forward to, with a swimming competition the day after – and knowing my boy, he is just gagging for both!

Last week, he decided to broaden his horizons a bit more – apparently school work, impending Grade 1 violin exams and various sports activities aren’t enough and the chap auditioned for a  Drama Workshop at school.

When he was 5, we had enrolled him with the local Jo Jingles in London but he didn’t like it much and we abandoned it after the second session. So when he announced last week that he has been selected for the workshop, I was surprised. But with public speaking and personality development being the part of the mix where Theatre is concerned, I willingly consented to ferry him back and forth every Saturday morning.

As the session was to have lasted for only an hour, I didn’t see the point of not staying back so The Mintlet and I sat around, watching the fun. Personally, I was happy with how he threw himself into the proceedings. He was totally into it, doing everything that was asked of him. His team was asked to perform a short 5 min skit and they had chosen to enact the story of King Midas. P was King Midas and he had a ball, being King Midas, albeit a giggly one!

The workshop was conducted by three young men, all former students of the school. Whilst they were adept at getting the children jump through hoops, I found them lacking in two aspects – one, dealing with children. Most of the assembled lot were aged 8 – 10 and were spoken to like adults. Children need lots of praise and after they put on their skits, when the reviews were given, the negatives were listed one by one. I watched P literally deflate in front of my eyes. A “well done” followed by a litany of their faults would have worked better. Two, the excessive use of jargons – words like ‘improv’ were being thrown about and I don’t thing every child understood that, not on day 1 of the workshop.

One thing I have learnt so far is that my son needs to toughen up if he is to survive in this environment. England, I found, was much more child-friendly and accommodating. With people coming out of our ears, these are attributes that have no place in society. A month back, I would gave fretted at this, but now, I have a feeling he can deal with this just fine.
Well, you’ll read about it in these parts anyway!

Today is P’s third day at school and today is also the day I visited the place for the fifth time! After not setting a foot inside the gates for 16 long years, I have now gone back and forth so many times since I landed!

The reason for today’s visit? The child didn’t take his swimming kit with him. And as I had some work at the school office, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and take it to him.

Because of that, I had a chance to see how he has settled down in his class. He was sitting in the third row and despite the fact that he was the only one not wearing the uniform, I couldn’t pick him up straight away. There were boys jumping around, solving math problems while discussing their impending cricket game during that afternoon’s P.E session. As I finally located the boy, he was doing some calculations using fingers from both hands and even seemed to have borrowed a few off the chap sitting next to him!

Typically, he was embarrassed to see me at school and when I hoicked the swimming kit bag up high, just pointed to the shelf which had the lunch bags. As I put the bag down, the lovely boy that had befriended him on Minute 1, saw me and said, ‘Aunty! Don’t put it there! It will get lost! Here, give it to me – hey P, put it in your bag, da, you don’t want to lose your things, do you?’

Ah, bless you child!

Before I could even say ‘thank you!’, the boy once again hailed me. ‘Aunty! Did you know? P is the vice-captain of our class cricket team!’

I went ‘really? wow!’ but my voice was drowned out by the chap sitting directly behind P, who piped up, ‘who’s the vice-captain? You, P?’

And then a loud discussion involving lots of gesticulations and arm waving started, chiefly about cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, bat, ball, bowler, whoseturnisittobowlfirst and so on. My son was still sitting there, in the middle of this pandemonium, busily counting with three hands.

This just in: The expected cricket game didn’t happen – at least not the way my son intended it to. A boy hogged the ball, refused to share, son didn’t get a chance to play and that was that. P was fuming at the injustice of it all but he is already full of plans for the following week’s play time.

Image copyright Getty Images

That’s how many days I have before my next birthday, when I turn 33. I know I said after hitting 30, I’d start counting in reverse. But 34 (days) to 33 sounds better than 27 to 33, no, esp as the latter sounds like rough distance or a mile to kilometer equivalent or some such.

Anyways.

That’s where I am. Where I am also is also with oodles of body fat. Despite the best advice in the world, my willpower wasn’t strong to carry me to the finish. I still eat clean food, mind, but especially since moving to Chennai last week, my meals are predominantly rice based. Running around sorting stuff for the kids, settling self and the two in and generally getting my bearings means I haven’t gone for a walk in 10 days, much less worked out.

But that stops now. I want to claw back to where I was before and go beyond and actually reach my goals. Of getting my body fat % to something in the healthy range. Ditto with my weight too. And by declaring myself here, I am making sure I don’t back out and eat crap. I will post general notes here with detailed food diaries / cooking attempts / the odd recipes etc in my food blog.

I really want to crack this and let’s hope I can.

Greetings, lovelies!
Am still live and kicking! Just going spare, trying to sort out the kids’ schools, getting P’s violin stuff sorted etc. Final rounds of P’s school seat begging will happen tomorrow. Meanwhile, if anyone knows of an ABRSM Western Violin teacher in S.Chennai, please point him/her towards me. Am at tearing hair at the roots stage.

Well, something utterly boring, is what it is. Anyways, just to spice things along, I waved my magic wand and set one of the Icelandic volcanoes to spew and spit. So now, I have to wait with the proverbial bated breath to see if my flight will take off come D-Day. Will I? Won’t I? Ooh the tension is palpable, is it not?

No seriously, cut it out. My ‘Chennai To Do List’ is already having kittens so I have no time to dick around with. I need to get on that flight – ON TIME, visit with the mad person, get on my connecting flight – again, ON TIME – and land up at the hometown by Cinderella hour. The next day will mean scheduling entrance tests for the boy, catching up on sleep, making other vital phone calls and trying not to get fried in the summer sun.

So, ash and other crazy substances, away with you! Chop, chop!

Hate them.

They make me feel unlike me. All teary and churned up. Full of what if’s. Looking back, working out the different ways I could have done things. Berating myself for not having the clarity of thought in the first instance.

There’s a sense of inevitability with endings, a sense of finality, a “this is it” quality that is so unforgiving and cruel. It is like you have exhausted all your chances and there’s nothing more that can be done. So long and thanks for all the fish, and all that.

I feel like saying “Well bully to you!” but the curious aspect of endings is that you can’t really do that, it is like a force bigger than you is saying “nyah nyah nyah” to you.

Endings. Hate them.

One of the rides

Apparently, NaBloPoMo works on weekdays only. There was no prompt for yesterday and likewise, today. As I was out making merry yesterday, I shall write about it today and call it a job well done. OK?

 
We took the children to Legoland, an amusement park near Windsor. I like Windsor much better than Legoland but as I am pretty sure my two would rather wander around the latter instead of traipsing around Windsor Castle, looking for Henry VIII’s august tomb, we headed where we did. It was a super tiring day and luckily, as it had rained buckets earlier, it wasn’t the “scorcheroo” (as Pratik’s friend’s mum foretold) I was worried about.
As decided earlier, I went with Pratik on his “must be accompanied by an adult” rides while the spouse looked after The Mint. Who, typically, protested vociferously on being left out of the fun.

The first ride was something Viking Whatzit. We sat with another family of 4 in this round floaty thing and were set afloat on a frothing course. Water was chucked on us from top, squirted from the sides and on two occasions, we had to float through water curtains. Needless to say, by the time the ride came to an end, I was giving drowned rats a run for their money. Spouse took one look at us and instead of springing for the drying tube, said we could walk it off!

Typically, by the time I dried out, it was time for another water ride and time to undo all the good work.

Anyways, this pattern continued, alternated with kiddie rides for the child, till a strident voice announced on the PA system “the park is now closed! the PARK is now CLOSED” and we hoofed it out of there.

The children were so pooped they fell asleep the minute we hit the motorway. So we scorched our plans of heading into Wembley and finding us a nice North Indian restaurant.

In cliched fashion, much fun was had by all.

We shall rest our weary bones today. Though I’m sure my daughter has ideas – I spy with my right eye her getting decked out in her “outside shoes”. sigh.