Day 15 | Yes Yes Yes!!!

Marriage equality and LGBT rights has always been a cause close to my heart. I know very well what it means to be denied the right to choose who you want to marry, to face judgement on choosing your life partner, not being accepted by societies for your choices or simply even being judged because you are the way you are. Although my marriage was in a different context, I can relate to how LGBT community must feel on being denied basic human rights by law.

In Australia, the debate about legalising same-sex marriage has been going on for ages. Couple of months ago the government decided to arrange a postal survey to get the general consensus. Although there was opposition to this by commissions that support LGBT rights, the high court ruled out their argument. Government finally launched the survey where Australians were allowed to vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the question – “Should same-sex marriage be legalised in Australia?”. There were campaigns run by both groups that were for and against the proposal. The result of the survey were due today.

As the title of my post suggests, it was an overwhelming victory for love today! And I have been elated with the results all day. It felt so good that there was close to 80% participation in the voting process. And about 61% of the people voted in favour. It feels so great that people’s opinions do matter and their votes made history today.

Let there be love. True love triumphs!

Day 12 | Return of Mantam-isms

Although these conversations did not happen today, they do bring happiness as I jot them down. So, cheating a bit to get today’s post done with 🙂

All four of us were watching the movie Queen on Netflix. There is a scene where VijayaLakshmi hurls abuses to a guy in French. The subtitles flash with the F word over and over again.

Abbas and I: (share eye contact wishing the kids didn’t notice the subtitles)

Mannu: What does that mean?

Abbas and I: (Again looking at each other yet clueless what to say, each hoping the other one manages the situation)

Tammu (takes charge): Mannu, it’s a bad word. So you don’t need to know!

Abbas and I: (Rolling eyes and trying to control our laughter)

Mannu: What???!! So you know it and I don’t need to know! Seriously?!

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Abbas brought a bunch of greens which is rarely available and I made a traditional Bengali dish with it. As we sat for lunch, Abbas looked at the dishes on the table

Abbas: Haven’t you cooked the greens?

Me: Yeah, I have made this mix veg dish with the pumpkin greens

Abbas: What? Seemu, they were bottle gourd greens and it is usually added to lentils.

Me: No no, they were not bottle gourd greens. I know very well that they were pumpkin greens.

And the argument goes on for a while in a fun way. Abbas makes fun of me and vice versa. We go on to google to look for images but are still confused who was right. Abbas looks for bottle gourd greens Bengali dish on Google and gets the same link as I get when I googled for Pumpkin greens Bengali dish.

It was a laughter riot in parallel to the argument.

Mannu: Guys, please stop it now?

Tammu: Mumma Baba, can you both first decide if you are arguing or laughing?

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Mannu, Tammu and I are walking to the station in the morning

Tammu: Mumma, you know what?

Me: What?

Tammu: I think I am a good person

Me: What makes you think so?

Tammu: Because my friends throw food in the bin, some of them drop food on the ground and others stamp on it. I try to make them understand that they shouldn’t do it.

Me: Yes Tammu, you are right.

Tammu: Actually I feel sad for the food. For example, the other day S dropped crackers on the floor and D stamped on it. Now imagine how the cracker might have felt. It must  have been thinking how excited the day is going to be, I’m going to go inside someone’s mouth. But it got hurt instead.

Mannu (Who was hardly paying attention to the conversation so far, suddenly got alert): What is she talking about? Who gets excited about getting into someone’s mouth?

Me: Mannu, that’s because that someone we are talking about happens to be a cracker 😀

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We went to a friend’s home and her mum had made fish fingers which were out of this world. Mantam enjoyed them so much and asked for seconds.

Me: Mannu, you loved the fish fingers, didn’t you?

Mannu: Yes Mumma, they were the tastiesst food I have ever had.

Me: That’s good

Mannu: By the way Mumma, no offence to your cooking skills, ok?

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Sunday evenings are routinely allocated to folding the truckload of washed and dried clothes and organizing them. Mantam usually help me with this chore. Tammu, being the lazy bum that she is, always gets distracted by the mirror and starts posing or acting weird. Mannu is the sincere one, always tries to learn folding techniques and always tried to improve. Tammu always picks undergarments as they are easy to fold. We named her the chaddi (underpants) girl. She always sits down and Mannu keeps flinging chaddis at her as she drags them from the mountain of clothes.

One day, Mannu wasn’t in her usual spirits and did not turn up to help. Tammu had already begun her chaddi folding business. Mannu dragged herself reluctantly to help us.

Me: Tammu, let Mannu sit down and fold the chaddis today. Why don’t you fold the other clothes.

Tammu (agreed half heartedly): Ok fine!

After a while, she remembers all the chaddis being flung at her by Mannu. She starts taking revenge. It was funny sight to watch and I couldn’t stop laughing. When she ran out of chaddis to flung, she took the ones she had already folded!

That is when I had to take the charge and stop her! (I’m not able to bring the humour through my words, but it certainly was a fun sight as all three of us were in giggle hysteria)

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Me (Hugging Tammu on some occasion): Tammu, do you know how proud I am of you?

Tammu (cozily enjoying my hug): Thank you Mumma

Me: I’m so lucky to have you as my daughter

Tammu: It was all due to your hard work, that you have me as your daughter 🙂

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Day 8 | Simple Joys

• When you meet this old lady on your way to train station and she gives the brightest smile, you smile too in return and say ‘Hello, good morning. How are you?’ She replies – “Hola! Hola” – and this repeats almost evert other day

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• When your ex-colleague messages you saying how she was discussing with the other ex-colleague about you, how you bring so much fun, happiness and positivity around you

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• When your children ask if they will ever get to see their great grand parents, you say that it depends on your parents, they reply “Mumma, your parents are good at heart. They will accept us one day”

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• When your kids have their noses buried in Harry Potter books and all you discuss with them is where they are up to, the characters, the situations, the plot etc and the only odd man out who doesn’t read books is trying to catch up on the movies to make sense out of the conversations around him

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• When you have been eyeing on fascinators in shops but waiting for Melbourne Cup to be over so that they come on sale, and as you predicted all the leftover fascinators’ prices are reduced by 90% the next day! You go loot a bunch for the following years 😇

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• When you come home and show the unbelievable bargain of a deal you struck on fascinators, your daughter replies indifferently – “Sorry Mumma, the fascinators don’t fascinate me! No offense” 😆

Day 5 | Twin Quiz

These days the twins are coming up with fun questions and testing their parents’ IQ. Well, we mostly fail and then laugh after they reveal the answers. To spread the joy and test all you lovely readers’ IQ, I’m posting a few such questions today. (Will post the answers tomorrow) Let’s see how many of you get them right. (No googling please 🙂 )

Here goes:

1. Pete and Repeat were on a boat. Pete fell off, who was still there?
2. What are the twins’ favourite fruit?
3. Why did the toilet paper roll down the hill?
4. Why didn’t anyone give Elsa a balloon?
5. Why wasn’t Cinderella good at Basket Ball?
6. What was Cinderella thrown off the baseball team?
7. How does an alien count to 23?
8. Why was the witch first in her class?
9. Where do rabbits go when they get married?
10. What do skeletons say before they begin dining?

Will reveal the answers along with the winner tomorrow. Good luck peeps!

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Edited to update the answers:

1. Pete and Repeat were on a boat. Pete fell off, who was still there?
2. • No one as Repeat fell off after Pete, true to his/her name
3. What are the twins’ favourite fruit?
4. • Pair Pear
5. Why did the toilet paper roll down the hill?
6. • Because it wanted to get to the bottom
7. Why didn’t anyone give Elsa a balloon?
8. • Because she would let it go
9. Why wasn’t Cinderella good at Basket Ball?
10. • Because her coach was a pumpkin
11. Why was Cinderella thrown off the baseball team?
12. • Because she kept running away from the ball
13. How does an alien count to 23?
14. • On his fingers
15. Why was the witch first in her class?
16. • Because she was the best speller
17. Where do rabbits go when they get married?
18. • Bunny-moon
19. What do skeletons say before they begin dining?
20. • Bone Appetit

If you like them, I will post some more. Do let me know 😁

What’s up?

It’s been a while since my last post? This year after the Blogathon, I had vowed to be regular throughout the year. Almost everyday, I have had a blogpost drafted in my mind but somehow other mundane chores take priority on most days. On remaining days, it’s my slumber!

I just want to write down what’s been happening in our lives in my favourite bullet points:

• First things first, We got the  much awaited council approval of plans for our home on 20th of Feb (Co-incidentally the same day 3 years ago we had got our Australian visa grant letter). Subsequently, we also received the letter of authority to commence construction by the end of February. We were thrilled and couldn’t wait for the construction to kick start. But as the old adage goes, “Man proposes and God disposes”, March dawned with heavy and continuous rains. There has been no breather since and it’s going to rain cats and dogs till the end of this month. In summary, we are just waiting while paying our monthly installment for a piece of land. Sigh!!

• I have been practicing driving with Abbas (only to increase his blood pressure everytime he sits in the passenger seat). I have booked my test on 31st of March. I booked driving lessons too, just to be thorough with rules. Although I have no hope of passing in the first attempt (No human that I know of has passed in my suburb in their maiden test), I am determined this time to keep at it. Thanks to RM, Maya, TP, Roopa and some of my other friends here who were as scared as me but went ahead and gave the tests till they achieved that lucrative Licence. I am hoping for the best but prepared for the worst.

• This year when we went to enroll Mantam to the swimming classes, Abbas told me that the adult beginner class has slots too and we grabbed the opportunity with both hands and got enrolled. I must write a separate post on our journey.

• Mantam’s school music band conducts try-outs for kids when they enter Year 3. Mannu was sleected for flute and Tammu for Clarinet. Mannu had already completed her basic course in Drums and was so passionate about it, so we requested if there was an option for her to do drums instead of flute. Initially they denied but later told us that there is a spot available for drums. Tammu had also done keyboard last year but we saw that her interest in keyboard had hit rock bottom by the end of the year, so we let her go with Clarinet. They have lessons every Monday after school and rehearsals every Monday morning before school.

• I had joined a bootcamp near office and went atleast twice a week but ever since the Monsoon season started, workouts have taken a back seat.

• While we are talking about learning new skills, I have learnt to make the heart pattern on coffee that the baristas make. We have a professional coffee machine at workplace where we start from the scratch by grinding the coffee beans. After several failed disastrous attempts, I am now able to make the heart pattern and planning to slowly graduate to the leaf pattern.

• Mantam are continuing with the gymnastics classes this year too. But they don’t have the same enthusiasm as last year. Abbas and I are wondering if we should let them continue or quit. We did ask them a couple of times but got very neutral answers.

• Mannu got selected in her school’s dance group this year while Tammu got selected in the T-Ball team.

• Too many things going on our lives and we are loving it. 2017 has been a great year so far and we hope it continues to be so

How have you all been? How’s this year treating you so far?

 

Random Raaga

This draft was written in the first week of Nov, I’m publishing it now. More updates to follow soon.

Life’s at its craziest best. We have all been down with cold and cough one after the other in vicious circles. Weekends are passing at lightning’s speed with us mostly out hunting for schools. With very less time spent at home, the usual chores are conveniently getting procrastinated. Our home looks like Sealdah Railway Station and staying in the clutter is suffocating me. But my health is not permitting me to muster the strength to go about cleaning the mess we are living in. How I wish I had Mrs. Weasley’s wand to chamkaofy my home without moving my bulk!

Couple of weeks back Abbas spent some hours in our balcony garden to tend to the plants with fertilizer, changing the soil etc. A few plants which were on the verge of dying have regained life, seeing new leaves and buds on them are brightening our mundane days. Yesterday morning saw me jump like a kid when I saw a lone green chilly in the pot where we had sown chilly seeds almost a quarter ago and had given up hopes.

Update on the birds is that Potli laid 4 eggs again rather reluctantly. Poor girl, Potla is always hovering around her showering bouts of love whenever she is out of the pot. Two of the eggs haven’t hatched. Among the two young ones that were born, one expired within a couple of days, lots of tears were shed yet again. Abbas says that frequent laying of eggs results in unhealthy babies. The only surviving chick is growing at a firm pace. I’m having my fingers crossed and praying for it to be the Black Bird that we lost. Abbas is gonna remove the breeding pot as soon as the chick grows up to give Potli a break!

Have been reading a lot although at a snail’s pace. Completed The Twentieth Wife, The Feast of Roses and The Shadow Princess – the Moghul trilogy by Indu Sundaresan. Was completely transported to a dream world all through the course of these books. Liked the first two better than the last, I grew to be an ardent admirer of Mehrunissa. However cunning, power hungry or sly she was, she sure was a woman of substance.

A post after a long gap will certainly be incomplete without updates on Mantam. So here goes:

In a departmental store:

Tammu picks up Garnier Men’s Face Wash and insists on buying it for Abbas.

Tammu: Baba ke liye ye le lo na Mamma? (Buy it for Baba na?)

Me 🙄 : But Baba doesn’t use face wash!

Tammu: Lene se hi to use karenge na? (He’ll use only if you buy na?)

Me: Okay, you ask Baba tonight if he’ll use it. If he says yes we’ll buy it tomorrow. (Expecting her to forget it)

She promptly asks Abbas if he would use face wash. (And here I was betting on her infamous forgetfulness which I now doubt if she has been uncannily faking it)

Abbas: No, but I never use such things.

Tammu: Baba, then you please use na? (She pulled up such a puppy face that any person with a rock solid heart would instantly melt down)

Abbas: Errr, alright! But then will you wash my face with it?

Tammu: Yes ofcourse…

And then, next day she promptly remembers to pick it up from the shop, the biggest one at that. I almost fainted looking at the MRP. I looked for a smaller pack and convinced her to exchange.

That night she refused to sleep and waited till Abbas reached home. As soon as he entered, she hid the pack behind her and said to Abbas, “Baba, close your eyes, I have a surprise for you” The doting dad immediately obeyed. Then she slowly brings the pack forward and asks him to open his eyes. He lets out a shreik of surprise. The look on Tammu’s face was priceless.

She had Abbas wash his face with it and told me – “Dekha Mamma? How beautiful Baba is looking now? See I told you so”