Food, Glorious Food

Please sir, I want some ‘ore.

Produce here is half the size with twice the taste. I become a vegetable and fruit enthusiast in India. I can eat anything raw mostly because they taste like what they’re meant to taste like. Banana-ey bananas, carrot-y carrots, apple-y apples…yum! India is food heaven! It makes Canadian produce seem like styrofoam.

Besides that, they’re just so darn cute.

Half Empty

Here I am in happenin’ downtown Chennai (no, I lie, it’s not happening, even if I were downtown). the flight was surpriisingly good, I didn’t even get frisked at the airpot and the only major problem I had with my co-passengers was the tremendously smelly man that sat in front of me. As happy as I am to be able to smell the raw sewage and diesel of my homeland and dodge autos, cars, people, and errant animals (and I mean that in a good way), it’s not complete. Till I’m whole, I am half empty in India.

Queen of the Road

I’m no longer a slave to the DMV. You’re looking at a fully licensed driver. No more tests till I’m 80…YAAAAYYY!

But It Looks So Sad!

Recently there have been a spate of cartoon-like movies that are intended for the whole family. Funny for the kids, and fun for the parents because there are nuances thrown in that the kids don’t get anyway. I love these movies, I really do. My only problem with them is this: they make me feel sad for inanimate objects. Granted this is coming from the person who as a child would never eat mini oranges, mini grapes and baby carrots or corn because I felt they deserved to grown up and live a fruitful (pun intended…HAH!) life, but still!

I was considering getting myself Wall-e, but the thought of having to watch  Wall-e fall apart and not remember Eve was too much. I cried THREE TIMES in that movie…do I really want to go through that again?!  I know there’s a happy ending and all…but it’s SO depressing before it gets to the happy ending!

A couple of months ago we had a tiny little baby mouse living in our garage. My brother wanted to get rid of it using some sort of trap but all I could think of was Ratatouille, Fivel Goes West and Despereaux, so I begged for its life despite the not so great consequences of keeping a mouse alive. (My brother/mom won…they caught it.)

Don’t even get me started about that Ikea commercial. Okay…I’m crazy…but it really does make me sad.

Grown Up Sentiments

Is it just me or do kids just not feel the cold like us old folk do? I’m getting ready for yard duty at my mom’s school and my body is physically rejecting the idea of an hour outside in this weather. Maybe I can do some hard cardio…apparently I need to lose the weight anyway.

Confusation?

I was born in India, lived in Africa for the first two and a half years of my life, moved back to India while my dad worked in Gibraltar and ended up in Gibraltar for a year attending Loretto Convent. After that stint, we moved back to India while my dad shifted to the UK. I attended a year and a half of school spanning the second half of UKG (Senior Kindergarten) and first standard (grade one). There I went from a kid who spoke in a royal British accent who couldn’t put two words of Tamil together to one who had the most awful South Indian accent and spoke Tamil perfectly. After that, we moved to England, where I spent the next four years of my life till I moved here.

Given my highly nomadic life, I saw more Christmases than Diwalis. I even understood it better than I understood Diwali. Sure, I knew bhajans and I could sing all those seasonal songs and enjoyed getting new clothes for Diwali, but I didn’t get to take candy canes and greeting cards in to school to give my friends on Diwali. I loved singing Christmas carols (still do!) and I still get that shiny happy feeling for Christmas in a way I don’t get at other times of year. I guess it’s the product of being away from the homeland. Regardless, I’m thoroughly enjoying hanging up the Christmas lights and listening to the Christmas music and don’t take this as one of the perils of singing Christmas carols in public schools (as many parents these days argue). Suck it up! It’s the time of the season!

Ode to Snow

I’m not the most eloquent of people. It seems I can find the words to yell about my porridge like brain but I can’t describe what it’s like when things take my breath away, and if I tried I would just be embarrassed. Is it really sad that I can’t even take myself seriously?

Anyway, it’s snowing today. Not one of those non-snowstorm snowstorms. This is an honest to goodness snowstorm, with the snow just falling out of the sky. Snow never feels like precipitation to me. It always feels like there’s someone up there raining these cold little flowers down on us. Despite the fact that I’ve lived here more than half of my life, this will never cease to amaze me…I mean, how could it? These tiny, unique miniature doilies made out of a material so delicate that they can’t withstand the gentlest touch of your hand are falling all around you, made by nature and thrown to the ground like it knows that there will be millenia of snowfall, so this particular beautiful snowflake doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. So this morning in my pajamas and my dad’s old snow boots I stood outside listening to the snow fall and for that moment I was glad to be alone…I couldn’t have spoken even if I had wanted to.

In the last year or so I’ve started to really see things when I look at them (should that be the other way around?). This means I regularly have my breath taken away. The other day as I was pulling into the parking lot at my dance studio I noticed on my left hand side there was the clearest rainbow I had seen in a long time. I got out of my car and stood there for a while just staring at it. It felt like my own private rainbow. There was no one around me, and here was this rainbow, shining away in the middle of this industrial wasteland. I didn’t want to move…but I had to, else I would have gotten into some amount of trouble for being late.

I am fortunate enough to have these beautiful moments happen around me. I am fortunate enough that I’ve been inspired to pay attention to them…I’m not going to say by who, because although I don’t think she  reads this regularly I wouldn’t want to embarrass her too much! I will say though that this wasn’t something I did by myself. I saw her loving every moment of things that aren’t particularly enjoyable and being amazed by ice cubes and fruit  and in that moment I realized that that was the way I had to live.  I hope I’ll do it as well as she does.

Blither Blither Blither

Before I say anything, let me just say congratulations to a certain someone–if I can’t brag about my wildly successful friends who will?

I’m in the final edit stages of this paper that is threatening to ASPHYXIATE MY BRAIN! I have never had a paper like this! It’s turned my brain into porridge. If the torment of birthing that 3000 word monstrosity wasn’t enough, I had to make up a title for it afterwards and that’s when it happened…I got the overwhelming urge to call it: Secularism: The Unicorn of Indian Politics. It didn’t make any sense and it was completely irreverent but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IT’S BEEN 4 DAYS SINCE I’VE BEEN OUTSIDE! Somehow I feel like I’ll be saying the same thing when I blog about naming my first born child.

Anyway, when the section of my brain that controls writing wasn’t so pulverized earlier this week I had to come up with a title of another paper about whether policy is a rational response to problems. I ended up calling it: Rational Policy and Other Fairy Tales–which is fine…but I really wanted to call it Rational Thinking Reasonable Tomorrow. Somehow I don’t think my professor would have appreciated a Simpsons joke on the front page of my paper.

Also, I’m sad to say that my protracted battle against the use of Uggs is coming to an end. I think I’m going to get myself a pair. BUT WAIT! Before you start groaning and wanting to call me a teeny bopper let me tell you my thoughts behind the move:

1. I know they’re ugly…as ugly as crocs…maybe more so. I know I would never wear them anywhere nice. This is not an aesthetic purchase!

2. As much as I love my mom for getting me a pair of beautiful leather high heeled boots for my  birthday last year, I would not wear those medieval torture devices on a regular basis if you paid me to do it.

3. Uggs are fat and comfy enough for my wide and battered feet.

4. It’s been so long since my feet have been warm in the winter…I think I deserve it.

5. I think they’re actually going OUT of style now…is it just me or are there fewer teenage girls sporting what looks like raccoon pelt on their shins? I would ask you for your opinion…but considering my readership there isn’t much of a chance that you’re a fashionista.

So those are my many and varied reasons for wanting to buy Uggs. If there is a more attractive way of making me feel as warm and fuzzy as Uggs would enlighten me please!

I’m going to go eat now…it’s just about the most I can handle at this point. If you see my brain in the floor after it leaked outta ear, send it my way.