How?

How did it happen that I have no one to talk to? When did that happen? Why did i let it happen? How?

And so it begins...

Why gupshup with chai?

Because honestly the thing I miss the most of all is precisely that! I desperately miss chatting with people over copious amounts of teh-c & masala chai & chai tea lattes! 

The kind of conversation that starts when the sun is still high in the sky & we're talking about work & relationships to when the sun dips just below the horizon and we move onto conversations of life, love & such.

At times the conversation would follow wee into the late night accompanied by martinis, margaritas & cosmopolitans...but then again that was a different life altogether no?

For now, let's begin with some gupshup over chai 😊

Not Ready!

*begin rant*

There are days like today when I am just not ready to be a mom. Not ready to be a wife, a homemaker. I just don't want to be. All of these labels are just too constricting, too tight and I feel like I can't breathe. Cannot Breathe.

When the LO is being especially clingy & not eating properly & fighting every damn nap?!

When the husband is so stressed at work that he doesn't even have one nice smile/word to say to you when he gets back home!

When according to ur mother, ur feeding your LO all the wrong things & that's why she is not eating right now!

When according to all the parenting books, all the choices you have made so far are responsible for your life with the LO not being instagram-perfect!

Gah

All I want is one damn minute of peace to myself

All I want is to go back & denounce these roles...I just want to be. Just be.

All I want is to not go to sleep with yet another heavy head, another fight and another miserable day under the belt - is that too much to ask for?

*sigh*

*end rant*

A tiny piece of myself!

Today, after 9 months, my nails are a pretty shade of deep violet! After 9 months, I sat down and took 5 mins to myself and meticulously gave myself a manicure & pedicure! A teeny tiny piece of myself, Sunshine, the sunshine pre-baby is back! With pretty violet nails to boot!
Amazing how one's priorities change so quickly. 9 months back I wouldn't go 1 week between manicures & hated not having nailpolish to brighten up myself!

Baby steps....

Back Yet Again!

And I'm back to blogging! After a 2 year gap this time. What is it about blogging, writing that keeps pulling me back again & again? Well, whatever it is, I am happy to be back! And with so many changes to boot!

First & foremost is the addition of the biggest relationship title of my life ever, Mother! Yes I am now the proud mother of the delightfully loud & gorgeous little girl! Joining Sunshine & Bumblebee, the newest feature of this blog is my darling little one!

Wow has life changed. Questions of life & marriage & partnership now meander to questions of parenting, philosophy, the kind of child I want to raise and the right amount of push I want to give for her to achieve milestones organically! Isn't it funny how we live in a generation where we are already talking about milestones for a mere 8 month old. And yet thats the society we live in today. Comparisons run galore right from birth!
The challenge & mission in all of this is to respect the child as a whole human being, as someone who is capable of learning, understanding and emoting the full range of life that we as adults do.

To my sweet little one, I dedicate myself to, learning, growing, evolving as only mothers can do. Each time she places her tiny little hand on my bosom as we nurse, she unlocks another piece of my heart, warms yet another wall and fills me up with serenity the likes of which i always chased and never could manage to experience wholly.

I love you Sweetheart, Unconditionally, Irrevocably, Undeniably, Forever. :)

India's Daughter

Tears running down, can't stop, can't think, can't believe, can't breathe.
A gut wrenching watch! :'(

Life & Questions

How do you define space in a marriage? How do you define abilities in a marriage? If you are not good at a certain skill or couldn't care less re it, is it right for your partner who cares so much more about it to keep harping on it? To make judgements, to try to 'improve' the other? To constantly talk about it, as if life would be impossible without?

How do you define what is acceptable to 'nag' about and what isn't? 

*sigh* life is never without questions is it?

Growing up

My bumblebee is growing up...today he says, "I think we should sell my car in the next year or so...start looking into it! Gotta plan for kids na?" Awwww, yes my love - we gotta grow up...perhaps start with replacing your beloved sports car for a sensible option!

I love you babe! *hugz*

WHY?!?

Will the blackmail ever stop? Will the undercutting and emotional drama ever cease? Am I going to victim to yet another temper tantrum just because things are not going your way? Are things never ever going to change? Will you never grow up and be an adult? Someone who can talk, reasonably & objectively? Someone who understands the word empathy...of walking a mile in another's shoe...of understanding perspectives!!! 

When the f*ck are you going to grow up?! Why can't u just talk to me instead of throwing a fit and taunting?!?

And why am I here again, a mature 27 year old, in tears because of what you said, yet again.

Why why why why why why why why???

Heart Melting happened...!!

When I went to school today late in the afternoon (a time and a day when I'm usually in my other school). My almost 3 yr old addddorable child walks up to me having just woken up from nap and rushed towards me saying, "I've missed you Mishu!!!" And followed those words with a biiiiiiiig bear hug!!!! Oh sweetheart, you just made my day, my week & my month!!! *melting in mush*

This is why I would not give up what I do for anything! 😊

Kids!

Having kids is like this unimaginable ocean of emotions, responsibilities and discipline! There are days when I see N's toothy smile or S's warm hugs that it all seems worth that tiny little moment and then there are days when the loudness of it all is terrifying and the responsibility feels insurmountable! And then there's the keepin yourself straight part. How do I think I'll be able to manage a child, when there are days I'm still struggling to manage a house & a husband & studying & school. To add a child in this equation, will I be stretching myself too thin??

Will the constant fears ever end??

Montessori Madness!

One of my fav Montessori vdos out there! A small summary of what I hope to achieve every single day!!

Month Long Travels!

Phew! Its been a full month since we left for vacation! 5 cities & 3 different temperatures! Countless new experiences and new places seen! It has been amazing - sort of hard to even chronicle but I will attempt to as much as I can! :)

Dubai - oh the pleasure of being in a country closer to Asia! Even tho Dubai is so different culture wise from Indo or India...its probably similar in terms of lifestyle to what I grew up with. The convenience of drivers & the stark difference between the working class n service class. It really reminded me of home and made me realize how different US is. Traveling to one of these places & seeing it anew through my US-tinted glasses def made an impact. The city is modern beauty - with its gorgeous high rise buildings & city-like malls! Squashed amidst this modernity is also old Dubai with its gold souks, spice souks & local streets which are not so sophisticated & where the men just stare that much longer at a girl in shorts! lol. somethings will never change in some parts of the world i guess? *shrug*

The awesome part of Dubai was the extreme relaxation me & Bumblebee got to do! We would step out during the day, see a few things, come back exhausted n pass out for a few hours only to wake up starving, close to midnight n try to scrounge some dinner place! it was amazing! Ohhh and i looooove hotels in the Asian part of the world! Somehow any hotel I've been to in the US, isn't able to match the opulence & sheer comfort in that part of the world! Such bliss! :)

India - India was a mixed bag of emotions. The sister-in-laws wedding was sooo much fun! Just catching up with the whole family & getting to see a wedding from this side of the family. The days were long & the nights even longer with conversations stretching late into the night...only to wake up the next morning for more! It was really a wonderful time to be in India. The mixed bag was with dad's health complications. Even tho everything went off wonderfully well, there is now this fear planted (locked deep inside a chest in my heart coz i don't think I could survive & function everyday without) in my heart and just this slap-in-your-face realization that the parents are growing old. Missed V a lot. Wish he would have been there. Having Bumblebee was a godsend - i don't think i would have the courage to deal with everything otherwise!

But there were precious moments spent with my parents n with my in-laws which i will always treasure! And the best gift, having the sis in law a few house away in this part of the world! All which ended the trip on a happy note! :)

New York - was a trip of friends!! Meeting K after forever was sooooo good! I cannot believe its been 2 years since we met! Time really does fly when you are super involved in your own lives!! This time Bumblebee n her husband also bonded which was nice for us to both see! :) I am looking forward to such trips being planned for the rest of our lives with 1 n then 2 kinds in tow! ;) lol! *touchwood* And i also got to meet V! I met him at our wedding last & that really does not count! He is still the same boy i remember from col altho he professes to have grown up! i do miss him n it was amazing to hang out with him!

Of course the weather in NY was the warmest when I was there - I have like the worst luck when it comes to seeing snow!! :( There were teeny tiny flurries one of the evenings when we were at Rockefeller center & I was just left thinking how awesome it would be if it actually snowed!! Ohh and we finally did the walk to Central Park! I finally saw all the awesome places in the park where they keep shooting films! It was very pretty but I bet is even prettier in the summer/ fall! It was overall a really fun trip!! :)

Phew - it was an amazing trip! Leaving you with a pic of how I felt throughout the month!! :D

Only in Seattle!

A homeless person on the sidewalk at a traffic signal holds up a board saying,

"Why lie? Need $10 for weed!"

LOL!

Duplicate Me!!

I need a duplicate me, with a little more brain. And all the answers. Because the original me is a little lost. And has no answers and is so so confused. There are so many sides to this. And I don't know who is right and who isn't. And I especially don't know if I'm being 'influenced' by one or another to make the moves and the decisions that I have made so far. Everything is a question right now. And I need answers. Who do I ask? The ones I can, they each have their own axe to grind so to say. And no one on the outside could even begin to understand and sort through the myriad of emotions that I'm feeling on a daily basis. 

So I need me. A duplicate me. A duplicate me with some answers. Any ideas on where I can go find myself?

*updated* why am I still asking questions n unsure of so many things in life?!? Isn't life supposed to get easier at some point!!!!

Girlfriends!

Saturday was one of the rare girls night outings I went out for. I had class the whole day and bumblebee had a bachelor party to attend in the evening. After dilly-dallying, finally made plans with some of my friends from class! On my drive to the restaurant, I was sooo excited! After such a long time, to be out with a bunch of girls talking about random nonsense over drinks - I've missed this! And even tho I missed bumblebee quite a bit, it was nice to have the space to be with just my friends! 

As we talked about random nonsense that only 5 drunk girls can talk! And we laughed and laughed. I was high more on the company than the drinks that we all inhaled! :P

I miss my girlfriends. I miss talking about random nonsense. I miss bitching about our respective others, whether they r husbands or boyfriends! I miss the sex jokes which can only be so much fun in a group of girls! And the TMI that at least one of us (if not more) will indulge in! Lol! 

*clink* here's to girlfriends! :)

Welcome Back Sunshine :)

Its been forever!! And I can't believe how much has changed. Its so hard to even start to pen down all that has changed in my life since I last wrote here!

I got married. And moved to a new country. And left my job. And my friends. And my life. And my family. And my comfort zone. Just about everything. To move in with a person I barely knew, a person I liked on the surface but I had no idea what he was all about. No idea what it would be life to live day in day out with this person. My head spins every time I think about the extent to which I turned my life around. It was a 360 degree, mind turning, mind spinning change for sure. But before it starts sounding all depressing, its a good change. A great change. The kind of change you constantly talk about for years to come! And wasn't our entire courtship period like that? The other night, we spent a few hours going over every detail of our 6 month long courtship with a friend (asked him multiple times if he wasn't bored and surprisingly he wasn't!) It was pure destiny that brought us together, that brought me here to this land 5 years back, I never thought I would be in. A life that surprisingly took on the face of every faceless dream I'd had in the past.

But enough about that. Its been done. I have now moved on to my third career! (im taking bets as to how many i'll get to before i finally settle down! :P) We bot a place recently and I now have a new car - I am properly and definitely rooted in this new life. And now that we have a new dining table that I absolutely love sitting and working on, Im hoping that will spark more blogging! I've been wanting to get back since so long but always struggled with how to start and where to start with all that's happened. And i think for now i've decided to start with just where I am right now. And then go from there! I miss writing and I miss sending my nonsensical thoughts out there in the world! So there world, I'm back! :)

So I know I defined being rooted in this life earlier as the materialistic house, car and job keeping me here but more than anything else, its this man keeping me here. Bumblebee. Oh where do I even start writing about him. He is wonderful and annoying and loving and hurtful and passionate and sometimes too logical all rolled up into one perfectly flawed human being. But thats what makes this work, I think. Even this close to perfection as he gets, I have my bouts of extreme insecurity about our life together and my role in his world - imagine if he was perfect?! I would be a basket case! So yes his faults are what make him reachable in my head. I know thats a little messed up but hey, i got issues man! :P it surprises me sometimes, the insecurity coz i wonder where is it coming from. From the close to problem-free life i led? From the loving parents? From the wonderful friends? God knows, maybe some people are just born with an extra dose of it. Cross fingers i don't pass them on to my kids.

So yes, I'm here. I'm back. With all my nonsense from everyday life! And some funny happenings from my class! Yes I am now a pre-school teacher! I teach kids from 2.5 - 6 yrs old and ohmigod they do say the cutest things ever! So yes they may make an appearance here soon too!

Ciao! See you around World! (soon hopefully!)

Pre-Wedding Jitters!!

A week from today I will be at the eve of my wedding. My wedding. Wow. It seems so unreal. I think of Bumblebee & there is no doubt in my mind that he is the person I want to tie myself to for the rest of my life. I think of everything else & my step falters. Leaving home, being part of a new home, new rules, new expectations, a new country & def a new life. All this is scary. Part of me is excited & wants to stop worrying & over thinking! Part of me is terrified that I'm not thinking enough. That I should know how to be, how to act, what to say by now.

There should be classes on this. How to leave your own house & enter another's & make that your own. Really, I'm sure lessons on this would have helped me far more than stupid history & geography!

*sigh* God, give me strength. And hold my hand please? I need you right now...

And thus ends another year...

....and what a year its been!!! *phew*

K's wish for me at the beginning of this year was that 2011 brings me happiness, clarity & peace and suffice to say true to her words, by the end of 2011; I've found all three! I had one of the best NYE's in a long long time and I'm hoping that its a sign of the super awesome year that 2012 is gonna be! :D

Its been a whirlwind 2011! My resolutions last year mostly revolved around finding myself & figuring out what direction my life was taking. Its been a year of ups & downs. The year began with me very conflicted. A fight with the parents at the beginning of the year is really not the way you want to start your new year!! That was definitely super sucky. That & other things just did not bode a very well beginning. I'm very superstitious about beginnings and a conflicted new year's just makes me wary!

Offsetting all the unpleasantness was the best friend's marriage announcement! Its funny how life moves at such a fast pace sometimes..!! Her wedding pre-planning and all the looong conversations around this brought a different perspective to my life. All the stuff that I had agreed to for my parents sake last year started making practical sense as I heard her go through the same thought process. The reasons for, the reasons against, the pros, the cons, the good, the bad & the ugly...we dissected all of it in a span of a few months. And I think grew up in that process...or at least I did! (K seems to have been born mature! :P) I was now jumping off the cliff willingly, because I wanted to; and not because someone else thought it was the right thing to do or the right time to take the plunge. And that made all the difference in the world.

Enter Bumblebee and life has certainly been a roller coaster. From having no clue to what I wanted in the beginning of this year or even what direction I should be steering my life in; to being engaged to the best possible person I could have ever found for myself - life's done a complete backflip on me. And I couldn't be happier. The rightness of this decision, the positivity & happiness around everything scares me sometimes. I haven't felt this free-falling in love with my heart wide open in a long long time and this time there is no back door & no parachute to save me. Will I fall gracefully, enjoying every moment of my ride or will I have a nasty fall complete with bumps & bruises - only time will tell. For now i'm just enjoying the exhilarating feel of the open wind in my hair & his love in my heart! :)

2011, you've been a life changer of a year. 2012, I sense you will bring with it many more challenges for me as I get adjusted to this whole new landscape that I'm entering in. A new family, in-laws, so many more relationships to hold, so much room for mistake, so much love that ive gotten. I wonder if every new beginning has its share of good & not-so-good? I wonder if the not-so-good is thrown in, so you don't have any unreasonable expectations from the rest of the chapter. I'm treading carefully but steadily into a new life. God, be with me and give me the strength to not make mistakes. To be strong & to be smart. To know what the right path is always; and to never forget myself. To be loved and to give lots of love. Mostly, to be happy.

Resolutions for 2012:

- Travel, travel & travel. I never get tired of putting this on my resolution list! There i so much more in the world to see! Sweetheart, I hope you're reading this! :P

- Try something new. I've done Life Sciences & Banking - maybe its time to try something else? I'd love to just learn something new. The some bit of cooking that I did over the past month has been quite fun and I'd love to try my hand at something else creative - even though I'm pretty sure I have no creative bone in my body!

- Stay myself. Love people. Forgive people. Look for the best in them. Stop finding motives. Stop suspecting. You never did that in the past - why start now? (Try not to be too naive tho as mom would pitch in here!)

- Don't underestimate yourself. You're capable of a lot more than you think you are. Try and push the edges. Step out of your comfort zone. You made one huge change and got to where you are today. 2012 is going to be full of changes - embrace them. Learn from them!

Hello 2012, I hope you treat me well. :)

The Kind Of Love That Saves You

I started to re-read this book. It's been one of my favorites ever since I got hold of it agess back. It's the story of this woman who loses her husband while she is pregnant and how she fights the grief of losing him to learn to live again for her daughter. It's a beautiful book, written amazingly well.

I started reading the prologue;

Every persons journey is touched by loss. At some point in this life, someone will be taken away from you. The place where they were....empty. What you hoped might be....gone. Grief will reach in and wrap its roots tightly around your heart. You'll believe the pain will end you.

And I couldn't go on. Maybe now that I have someone to potentially lose, I can't read on. A shiver runs through my spine just imagining what it would be like to lose so much. I can't even imagine. It's beyond my capacity to think.

I love you bumblebee. Stay safe. I wonder if my life could possibly go on without you? And then I just pray I never ever have to find out.