Late night

This song.

This. Song.

"Seride kujanara"

You

If there has been any goodness in me,kindness and any iota of love or affection or selflessness or anything that is nice and beautiful and warm and light and bright.... It is you. Every beautiful thing on this earth pales in comparison to you. You my child light up my otherwise dark and bleak existence.
You are my raison de être. I love you my baby.

If ever you find shades of darkness in you... If you ever think you are on the doorstep of grays, remember those monsters aren't yours. They are mine. I am the dark the gray and everything in between. You are a ray of sunshine and the rainbow that lights up the skies. Remember this for ever.

Being a mom

Dear daughter,

Believe me when I tell you what a privelege it is to be your mother. I know all mothers will say this and it is probably the mother of clichés to say you are the best daughter anyone could have.

I have always craved for unconditional love.  The kind of love that laughs for no reason, doles out hugs by the million, the love that is so vocal that it doesn't feel embarrassed to shout out a " I miss you" even when I'm away only a minute to take a bath.
You, my sweetheart, embody that love and much more. Whoever it was that said children are god knew what he was saying.
I see myself as fat, ugly and so many more derogative adjectives, but you have a genuine compliment to give me when I'm down and out.

You know how to kiss me and make me forget all the worries of life, you know how to smile and wipe that annoyance and anger off my face, you know how naughty to be and get me laughing.

I think you are more than what I deserve, the brightest ray of sunshine in my gray existence, the rainbow of my monochromatic life. The unexpected treasure that life has given me.... and trust me, even when you think that I don't get you or I hate you or I resent you when you grow up and be a teenager, I will always thank you for being in my life... For giving birth to all that is good in me.

Love you baby.

looks are deceptive

Cos this li'l angel can be quite the devil when she wants to :)

you, are my reason.

there comes a time when the world overwhelms you. when you feel so small, and insecure and insignificant, and the troubles and travails you face seem insurmountable.

At times such as these, one contemplates walking away from all of it, just getting up and giving it all up, thinking about the uselessness and profanity of existence.

One look at you dear daughter, and no matter how hard these feelings are, no matter how huge the need to pull away and walk away, to cede some relations, to end some and kill some, all are swallowed inside.

you are the reason for my being, the reason i try to keep my sanity, the reason why i push through and keep brave. you, my love, you are my ray of sunshine and my ball-n-chain all at the same time.

thats why when i look at you, i smile and cry at the same time. i love you dear daughter. i hate the loss of my freedom due to you, but i love you as much as i love my freedom.

the struggle

To be practical is not always the most easy thing to do.

Everytime you turn to your nanny when you are sleepy, hungry or hurt - everytime I spread my arms for you, and the person you run to, is your nanny, all pretensions of being practical are thrown out of the window.

To say that it hurts, is an understatement.

I think of why I choose to spend 10 hours in the company of strangers and not you. I think of why I leave you with a nanny, instead of holding you myself, but it does little to ease the pain.
some day, my dear daughter, when you are old enough, I hope you understand why your mother wasnt with you when you took your first steps or said your first word, you will know why every small little detail is documented in videos that are crudely made.
you see, I love you. I want you to be able to choose the life you want for yourself, without having to worry about any financial implications.

I want you to be able to attend the colleges of your choice, travel by modes of transport that do not include copassengers who are lice infested fisherwomen, and maybe someday, the freedom to spend your daughter's childhood with her instead of spending 10 hours a day working and worrying about the projects and bottomlines of companies whose CEOs and CFOs you havent even heard of.

I want all those things for you my baby, that I deemed as luxury when I grew up,

but I cant stop wondering, if we both are losing out on the luxury of knowing and loving each other today, for the luxury of a tomorrow, that I dont even know will shape the way we want it to.

stepping stones

there is something so bitter sweet about seeing you walk.

An urge to gather you up in the arms, willing you not to grow up, ever. not to leave the arms of your parents. to stop you from falling down and hurting yourself, from learning the lessons of life the hard way,

and then there is a pride in seeing that the little one you created is now walking independently. to see that you have the grit to fall and then get back right up. to get hurt and swallow your ego and hurt, and learn to do things right the second time.

This is, probably what the poet meant, when he said

"a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye".

Is there any other way that makes you feel so full, so complete, so much a human being than having a child of your own?

tee-tee

this is when you teeth and realise there is other food out there, not just mamma's milk ... bitter sweet moment

this is a keepsakes

Im sure you will hear this a thousand times over in your life time. What you did when you were 6 months old. I want to just make sure you read it here - words filled with the pride that a parent has. You are the naughtiest of all the 6 month olds I have EVER seen. Mom tells me, that I was naughtier, but thats just the mom in her talking. (maybe when you read this, you are going to roll your eyes and go - M..oooo....M! but hey! if my mom is proud of me, I have all rights to be proud of the creature I carried around for 9 months too :) ) So, we go to Cantoment, to visit A's son (a cutie he is, I must say - A and I have already begun matchmaking you guys, like a couple of old hags :P ... dont get any ideas though, he is a full 3 months younger to you). So, anyways, we go there, and he is just so cute that I want to hold him immediately (ME! I used to hate kids and stay away from them like the plague, you my dear baby, have truly changed me in more ways than one), so rambling back, I hold him in my hands and make all these coo-ing noises that you have usually heard me making FOR YOU. you my little devil get all jealous and lean over to him and pull his hair and pinch his hands and kick him and head butt him. Nothing works. Comon! what did you think? the poor A Junior is just sitting there wide eyed and confused about why you are acting such... you repeat the process again and this time with more vigor and vitality. Nothing works again, so what do you do? you decide to completely lean over him, and push him away with your entire body - so here's you (and if we didnt know better, we would have thought you were this cute little baby trying to lean over him and kiss him) you little devil you, and A Junior who is trying to (unsuccessfully) get out of your way - you rowdy you!

and you got a walker

yeaaa :)

this is where

we try gymnastics.
Some day dear M, when I stop procrastinating, I'll get this framed and put it up on our wall :)

this is where,

you decide to help mommy by typinig out her emails to her boss.

some more memories ...

how soon are you growing up?!



it seems like just yesterday that I was howling in the labor room asking for you to get out of my body, and today its already 16 weeks since that day. very soon you will slowly stop needing to suckle for nutrition, it will be an exercise just to bond. Love you baby, you make me want to be a better person, you make want to be alive for you.



This is when you were just about to sneeze ...

This is,

when we got ur ears pierced :((




and took snaps with all ur grand uncles and aunts. :-)

Please

Please Please dear baby, please go to sleep. Please!!! Sleep is an essential part of life, it is a different thing that when you grow up and have exams, I'll nag you and wake you up at insane hours so that you can study, get good marks and become a NASA scientist. (if you have any doubts about my nagging abilities - assk your dad and ur uncle, both of whom are subjected to my specialised torture when they dont wake up on time).
But, for now. PLEASE go to sleep - especially at nights, please sleep. The whole world does.

Growing up Tales #1

my love has learnt to smile, she has learnt to play little games with her mother, playfully she plays with her mother's nipples as she drinks her milk, she pees and gurgles and coos sweetly and gives a broad smile to her uncle who cleans her up, she has put on weight and has grown a little taller too. she can see now, and loves the color red.
Its been two months, and her mom is thinking - "oh, how soon has my little un grown up!"

"mujhe pressure nahin aata"

Remember that scene in Salaam Namaste where Saif Ali Khan is sitting with a bottle of milk in the loo, and when Preity shouts at him to get the hell out of there, and acts disgusted at him drinking milk in the loo ...he goes

"mujhe doodh peeye bina pressure nahin aata"

well, looks like we have an official Saif fan in the house

M's first collage

Life and its import

Dear Baby,

Life is full of ups and downs. Don’t let that bog you down. Remember baby, life will never go along the way you have planned it. Life will never go the way ANYbody has planned it. Life is an unruly spring of water; it cuts through rocks, erodes terrain, turns jagged sharp stones into smooth round ones, and makes its own pathway to reach the ocean. Thus is life. Do not despair if life doesn’t go the course you want it to, occasionally you might want to build a dam, channel the water using a canal, but life has its own course, all that you do, is only but a minor deflection in its pathway. It cannot be tamed.
However, that, does not mean you cannot live life. For a small being that doesn’t even proper eyesight and bowel control, what would life mean? What would it be its import? I would say, live the way you live now. Harbour no expectations, harbour no “right” or “wrong”, but go by what your conscience says, what allows you to sleep at night. See new things, be open to perceiving new ideas, cultivate a set of core values and live and suffer for them, take a day as a day, work hard, but yes, party harder. Lead by example, and be led by example. Be happy and be content – never be satisfied though, like Steve Jobs (who is he? – well, dear baby, I will leave it up to you to search him up) said – stay hungry, stay foolish.

Above all, dear baby, you are an individual, currently you are dependent on me, but you always will not be. Live your life, as an individual. Learn to know who you are.

smiles!

its a colicky day and night, she refuses to sleep, asks for milk constantly, and me being me, am extremely sleepy. Mom offers to take care of her, but she refuses to be held by mom, she insists on clinging on to me. being sleepless for almost 2 days, im irritated, im angry and im sleepy, her wails dont make it any easier! Having a long history of avoiding children like the devil incarnate, i have no clue how to handle a colicky baby, one thats just over a weeks old, and weights less than 3 kg! Heck my lappie weighs more than that!

Thats when it happens .... somewhere in an insane hour of the night, i lose it, and shout at the little one like im screaming at someone with road rage ... she forgets to cry, looks up at me, and there you go - a wide toothless grin. her first smile of her life and im not sure what to do, smile back? cry in exhaustion? act relieved cos she's stopped crying? oh well, I just did what i had to, squeeze her close and kiss her hard and coo her to sleep.