K is for Kids...

"Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

Yes, having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. Your life, your identity, your outlook, the person you are, everything changes from that point. You are not you anymore. You are a mother. And the children consume your life, eating into your time, energy, money, health, sanity and even the calcium in your bones.

But, strange as it sounds, these children become the light of your life. Because even though they are depleting you of your reserves, they give back much much more than they take away. Here are some reasons why I think having kids is a good idea:

• Their laugh. Have you ever heard the sound of a baby laughing? It is the most beautiful sound in the world. When my baby laughs, it’s a piece of celestial music right here in my home. My son, Zaid, is so adorably ticklish that he giggles and gurgles when I bathe him, change his clothes and sometimes when I pick him up. He also bursts into gleeful laughter when he sees his impish sister dancing and jumping in front of him. I wish I could hold on to those moments and capture them within me. They seem to slip away too soon.



• Their innocence. It is humbling to see how we all started out as a clean slate. Unaware of the wickedness or cruelty lying just beyond our layer of perception. Oblivious to the hurdles life is going to soon throw across our pathways. Ignorant of the losses and failures we are going to face. Babies are pure, unadulterated goodness. A fragment of heaven. Revel in their innocence while it lasts.



• Their wide-eyed wonder. Zainab loves stories. And I love telling her stories. Because when I’m telling her a story, which could be just an event that happened at the dining table or the mall, or anything, I have her complete attention. And she opens her eyes and mouth wide with surprise at all the right places. She giggles at the funny parts and makes a sad face at all the sad parts. This eggs me on and I earnestly plunge into more animated story telling, with a lot of hand gesturing, facial expressions and voice modulations. After a while we are ‘in’ the story and she pipes in with her variations to it. We do this every day. Try it with your child. Trust me- it is a very enriching experience.



• Sometimes when I tell Zainab, “Sweetheart, you look so lovely,” she does the movie star act and says, “Oh thank you, my little mamma.” She then pats my check, twirls around to look in the mirror, smiles at her reflection and cat-walks out of the room, stopping at the door to flash me a smile from over her shoulder. While I gape with my mouth open like a 3-year-old.



• Sometimes when Zaid is busy playing with someone else at home and he hear my voice, he immediately sticks his lower lip out, ready to cry, his eyes scanning the room to locate me. Once he spots me, he extends his arms and whimpers. He has even started saying mam-mam-ma. I think his sister is giving him acting lessons. Because he does the sad-lil-boy act perfectly. And it melts my heart. I rush towards him and scoop him into my arms, cooing and rocking my beautiful little boy. Only your babies can make you feel like a super hero, super star, rock star, angel, saint and the most beautiful woman alive, all rolled into one.



This is Zainab drawing of her and her brother. Don't ask me why Zaid is sitting on top of her head. It was such a funny drawing that I just had to take a picture and put it up. :D

I is for Ink...

Zainab’s new toy is a MS Word document. Whenever she sees me typing away, she asks me to open a new page for her.

“Mamma, I want to write my name.”

She then gets comfy and locates Z on the keyboard and presses it. Her forehead creases when she sees the tiny z.

“Mamma, make it big.” So I increase the font size from 11 to 36.

She tries again... “z.. a...”

The creased forehead returns. “Big A please, Mamma.”

I turn caps lock on.

She then proceeds to type the rest of her name. Then she types randomly, hitting some Ls and Xs and Gs, and tells me she is writing a story.

Yesterday, as I watched her perform this daily ritual, I felt depressed. I should be teaching her to hold a pencil and write the alphabet. And here she is aping her parent’s version of writing. Whatever happened to good old ink and paper?

My trusty journals, the ones I kept under lock and key, and lovingly wrote on every night had magically transformed into a web log. A blog. This blog. My thoughts and hopes and dreams spilled, for the whole world to read (I wish). Yikes.

When I started this blog in 2009, I just wanted a platform where my work could be viewed easily. Read my first few posts and you will see how painfully journalistic I thought my posts were going to be. Slowly, I learnt to be a blogger and just went with the flow, pouring my heart into my posts.

Do I miss the actual writing process, with ink and paper? Hell no! I have no idea how to spell check, hyperlink and google for information with a pen and paper.

G is for God...

Dear God,

Today, when I went to pick Zainab from school, her teacher asked me how her speech therapy session was. I told her about it and how, miraculously, Zainab had reverted back to almost perfect speech. Almost as if the stammer was a figment of our imagination. Though the problem still needs to be worked on, I never imagined that the results would be seen so soon. She said, “I guess it was just God’s way of teaching you some parenting.”

It is true. I always knew that when my second child would be born that we would continue showering Zainab with love and attention, the way she has always received it. Nothing would change. She would never feel neglected. And I believed that that was what I was doing. Until she started stammering.

Suddenly, we stopped telling her off when she was being naughty, began patiently explaining things to her, bending over backwards to keep her happy and humouring her demands. My husband started coming home early from work to spend time with her. Sundays and holidays are now mostly about her- story telling time, playing games and taking her out.

And we’ve seen the change. The crankiness has reduced. The trantrums are fewer. We had never noticed before how delightfully polite and well mannered she can be – thanking me when I say she looks pretty today, apologising for whacking her brother while playing with him...

But she’s a nifty little child. She’s caught on that we have been behaving extra nice recently and she is milking the situation for all its worth. Yesterday, she was back to her tricks, naughtiness and hourly demands for chocolate. Thankfully, we now know how to deal with it better.

So we are tenderly trudging the middle path, learning everyday how best to treat our kids. How to display our all-consuming love for them and how to stop short of over pampering them. How to teach them and how to learn from them. It’s an exhausting and pain-staking process. But it is the only way forward.

So thank you, Allah, for this lesson. We have only gained from the experience. I know we crib and cry and blame and complain whenever our supposedly well laid out plans go hay wire and we encounter a hurdle in life. We don’t realise that there is a reason for everything. We refuse to believe that there is a grand scheme being playing out in the background. We might not recognise the lesson or the reason, at that moment, or ever maybe. Thank you again, for this speck of realisation from your infinite wisdom.

Sincere apologies for the cribbing,

A Humbled Mother

F is for Fluency...

I thought long and hard about whether I want to write this post. I decided it was not something I wanted to shut out or hide from others. I believe such experiences must be shared. You never know who will benefit from the knowledge. If this post helps even one disfluent child, writing it will be completely worth it.

Wikipedia tells me that Fluency is a speech language pathology term that means the smoothness or flow with which sounds, syllables, words and phrases are joined together when speaking quickly. Fluency disorders is used as a collective term for cluttering and stuttering. Both disorders have breaks in the fluidity of speech, and both have the fluency breakdown of repetition of parts of speech.

Over three weeks ago I didn’t think much about the word fluency. But over these past three weeks I have been living, eating, sleeping and sweating the word fluency. Or rather disfluency.

Three weeks ago I noticed that my perfectly fluent daughter had occasionally begun saying ma-ma-mamma. “Why are you saying ma-ma-mamma?” I asked her. She would then repeat her sentence without the stutter. And my frown would disappear. But then after a while she’d do it again. She started saying da-da-dadi a few days later. Was I the only one noticing it? Why wasn’t anyone else at home saying anything about it? Maybe I was just being paranoid. But it stayed at the back of my mind. I mentioned it to hubby and he brushed it aside saying she was doing it on purpose.

Okay, so I was only being paranoid. A part of me told me I shouldn’t be ignoring it. But I turned a deaf ear to this voice. I blocked it out because I didn’t want to hear what it was saying. I realise now that I was in denial.

Then one Sunday he noticed it too. It was appearing in every fifth sentence or so that she spoke. And my daughter talks All.Day.Long. His confirmation of my fear was a terrible realisation. Our limited and false knowledge told us that we had done something to cause this. We had emotionally hurt or scared or neglected our daughter which had turned her into a stutterer.

I remembered a book I had read ages ago, when I was in school, about a woman whose son stuttered only around her, but never did when she wasn’t around. I think it was a Sidney Sheldon novel. I don’t remember anything else about the story except that the woman was a manipulating b*@#& who had instilled so much fear in her own child’s heart that he had begun to stutter. But I wasn’t that woman. Then why did this happen to Zainab?

I began to blame myself. My mind went over every single time that I had scolded her, told her off, snapped at her, smacked her, spoke to her angrily, told her she was being naughty, told her to apologise for being naughty... I went over it all over and over in my head, hating myself more with each memory. Was she feeling neglected after my son was born? Was she jealous or angry? Was she scared of something? I convinced myself that I was a terrible, terrible mother and my bad deeds had finally come back to haunt me. Except my innocent little baby had to pay the price.

I got over that stage too. I decided to look at things rationally. We had a problem. Now we had to fix it. If it could be fixed, that is. I spent hours and hours reading all that I could on the internet about stuttering or stammering. Searching the web for information on the subject was a highly frustrating experience. There were so many theories and contrasting views on dealing with stuttering in children. There were also numerous cases mentioned on the discussion boards of parenting sites about children aged between 2.5 and 3 years who suddenly started stuttering. But they were fine in 3 to 6 months. Apparently, it is a developmental stage, where the child’s brain is absorbing so much information that it tends to get taxed, but learns to overcome the pressure in a few months. This information was so reassuring. I breathed a sigh of relief. She was going to be okay.

But then I tried to find out how to deal with it or react to it as parents. Unfortunately, nothing was helpful. While some sites mentioned ignoring the problem, some said that we must ask the child to speak slowly. Some sites said NEVER ask the child to speak slowly. Some sites said therapy is not needed for such a young child, while some insisted that the sooner the child receives therapy, the better. All this while, Zainab’s stammer worsened. She was stammering at every sentence and every morning I realised with a growing sense of panic, it was getting much, much worse.

My chirpy talkative baby girl was struggling to speak. She couldn’t understand what was happening to her. She asked me once, “What’s happened to my voice, mamma?” And I had no answer to that. It was heart breaking. I mentally winced and cried for her everytime I heard her struggling to express herself. But I kept up the smile on my face, determined to never let her get any inkling of our worry.

We spoke to her teacher at her playgroup, to other parents, we met doctors and therapists. To a cut a long story short, we decided to go to a speech therapist because we needed an expert to tell us what to do. I’m so thankful to God that we didn’t delay any further. We learnt that there are so many theories about why disfluencies occurs in children but no concrete proof. That means science has no idea why some people stutter. The therapist said that a popular reasoning is that children in this age group are learning and absorbing so much information and their language is in the crucial developmental stage, that their brain gets overworked, manifesting itself as a stutter.

Obviously, there was no point in beating ourselves up about it and instead we had to focus on solving the problem. We were told that we were to bring Zainab for weekly sessions but mostly it was important for the parents to continue this model at home and have similar daily sessions with the child. Miraculously, after just 2 sessions, Zainab underwent a major change overnight. Today, all of the sudden, she was almost her old fluent self again. Nobody will say she has any problem with her speech. But rather than get complacent, we know we have to patiently work with her to remove the problem completely and stop it from recurring.

It is mind numbing to realise you child has a problem. Especially one that is difficult to comprehend. For a while I could feel my world shattering around me. Because of Zainab’s charm, intelligence, quick witty speech and her confidence we had dreamed big dreams for her. I had even pictured her as an active participant in the school debate team one day. These weeks have strained our nerves and I wondered where Zainab’s life would lead her.

But today was a promise of a better tomorrow. It was a reminder that nothing is constant. That there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Zainab is a fighter. She is not ready to let something like this get in the way of what she loves to do. TALK!

C is for Cat...

When I was telling my husband that I did an A is for Ache post and B is for Blah Blah post, and asked him what C should be, my daughter looked at me perturbed. She said, ‘Mamma, B is for ball, not bleh bleh.’ :) I said ‘Okay, B is for ball. And what is C for?’ She said ‘Cat!’ I was going to do a C is for Cricket post, but now, I’m going to do a post on cats.

At various points in the first 20 years of my life, I have had a cat as a pet. I adore cats. I have pictures of me as a fat little toddler with a beautiful golden cat sprawled beside me, as a 7 year old with a tooth missing, and a tiny white and grey kitten in my lap, and as a 12 year old playing with a feisty black and white cat.

This black and white cat is the one that has stayed in my memory. Though I’ve had cats after it too, they weren’t as special to me as Tabby was. My best friend Roohi and her brother came home one day with a tiny kitten in their arms. Their cat had had kittens and they were giving them away. I remember Tabby scrambling under the cupboard with the fear of being in a new environment, away from her mother. She refused to come out for a long time and only when hunger struck did she come out to drink some milk from the bowl we had placed for her.

She soon got used to her new home and her new family. My older brother, Faheem and I cuddled and played with her, showering her with love, hugs and lots of goodies from the kitchen. My parents did not display their love for Tabby as physically as we did, but it was apparent by the way they spoke to her. She was like a new little child in the family.

Tabby’s favourite place to sit in the whole house was my mother’s lap. I always wondered why this was, especially since mom never went out her way to pet and cuddle her. How come she didn’t prefer my lap? I figured she truly saw herself as a child of the home and mom as her mother. My younger brother Akbar was around two or three years old at the time. Tabby saw him as a rival because he often sat in my mother’s lap. She went up to him and tapped him with her paw, needling him to get up from what she considered her place. It looked like she was gently spanking him. At first we were concerned that she would hurt him. But we realised that she was always careful around Akbar, never once displaying her claws anywhere near him.

We would never let her out for fear that she would pick a fight with the neighbourhood cats. But when a stray tom cat came serenading her through the grill door, one particular mating season, she slipped out a couple of times when the door was ajar.

We didn’t really notice at first when she was pregnant. We just assumed that her big appetite made her fat. It dawned on us when we realised that her belly was abnormally big compared to the rest of her. She had become moody and jumpy. She started getting exhausted easily and wouldn’t play rough and tumble about when I prodded her to. Then one day she crept under my bed and didn’t come out for a few hours. We heard tiny baby meows and rejoiced the day Tabby became a mother.

She gave birth to six kittens but one of them died a few hours after birth. She mourned her dead child but soon got her wits together to tend to her other kittens. We buried the tiny kitten outside our house. Life went on and we had kitten running amok in our home.

It was hilarious and touching at the same time. I saw that Tabby had undergone a change in her demeanour overnight. Gone was the feisty little kitten who jumped and played silly tricks with us. She was suddenly serene and majestic, guarding her brood and humouring them as they played and tumbled about her.

It was obvious that we couldn’t continue having so many cats in our home. We thought about giving them away but couldn’t muster the heart to separate the feline family while the kittens were so young. So my dad suggested that we relocate them all to his office yard, till they are a little older. I was sad to see them go but I got to visit them a few times before each of the kittens found new homes. One day dad gave us the sad news that Tabby had died in an accident. I was devastated and cried for hours into my pillow.

It’s funny I hadn’t thought about her for a long time. But as I wrote this post, the warm fuzzy feeling of hugging a cuddly cat came rushing back. I got transported to those days when I would come home from school and Tabby would jump on my bed waiting for me to cuddle her in my arms. She is one of the many ‘persons’ who have touched my life fleetingly and left lasting pleasant memories.

Thank you Zainab, for saying C is for Cat.

B is for Blah Blah...

I have never been big on talking. My mother says I started talking very early and just wouldn’t stop. I would talk and talk and talk but only in the comfort of my family circle. In front of guests or outsiders, I would be one of those children who would speak only when spoken to.

The years rolled by and even though I would talk a lot among my friends and on the phone with them, I was not a confident talker. I was bad at telling stories and I usually didn’t know how to come to the point. More often than not, when I tried to debate with someone on a topic, the reasoning came out all wrong. Not the way it was in my mind.

Ironically, I loved participating in speech competitions. I used to work hard at preparing for them, practicing for hours in front of a mirror till I got every line and expression perfect. I have won a couple too, not because I’m a good speaker, but because I practiced so hard. It gave me a thrill to stand in front of a listening crowd and deliver my speech. I would be extremely nervous and feel faint even, thinking of what I’m going to do, but ultimately it was like getting a high. And I loved that.

Around this time I came across a prayer in the Holy Quran - Chapter 20 (Surah Taha), verses 25 to 28. The Almighty God commands the Prophet Moses to go the Pharoah to call him to the right path. It is believed that the Prophet had a problem with his speech, and hence before going to the Pharoah he prayed to God.

"O my Lord! Expand my breast; Ease my task for me; And remove the impediment from my speech, So they may understand what I say.”

This prayer touched a chord with me the moment I read it. Since that day I have recited this prayer every single day of my life, randomly and particularly, when I have something important to say, either to a crowd or to an individual.

I’m a listener. I love listening. I would remember my friends talking about how they get so bored in those boring dinner parties where their moms and the other aunties would just talk and talk. But I remember enjoying those times. I would happily sit at the periphery of such groups and hope that no one asks me anything. I would be content in just listening to them talk. It was fascinating to study the different people and the various personalities that society holds. I rarely took note of what they wore or how pretty they looked. I’m not a very good observer like that. But I would take note of the way they spoke and how they spoke it. I could make out honesty and the lack of it. I would notice subtle hints in their talk about what their lives were about. It was fascinating.

Today, I don’t attend such dinner parties because the social life I have after marriage is vastly different from that of my younger days. My best friends, the ones I would speak to for hours in my school days, now live far away. We’ve all gotten so busy with our lives that those long conversations have become few and far between, but thankfully are still alive. I’ve come to realise that I have no patience for chit chat anymore. I can manage a few minutes of polite conversation but mindless banter annoys me. I also have no patience for people who repeat things – again and again. It is such a huge waste of time. There are just too many people out there who painstakingly spell things out, things that are understood and don’t need to be put into words. I get so annoyed when that happens, I wish I could hurry the person up. The only people who are allowed to get away with spelling things out are kids.

When my daughter Zainab started to talk, I realised she was going to be very different from me. She also began early and started talking and talking. Her vocabulary grew in leaps and bounds and she spoke clear grammatically correct sentences in Hindi when other kids her age were still learning to say Mama. More than her vocabulary, her thought process amazed us. She was a keen observer and would use new words in her speech all the time. Even if she doesn’t know what some word means, I have found her trying to use the new word in almost every sentence, till it became a part of her speech. Sometimes she will be busy playing with her toys or watching television while her father and I will be having a conversation, and a little later she will mention something that we spoke about, even though we had no idea she was paying attention to us.

Zainab is turning 3 in May. Someone told me recently that Zainab has the vocabulary of a 10 year old. That might be an exaggeration but is it very close to the truth. Just a few weeks ago her playgroup teacher said the same thing about her though process and how bright she was. She also said that Zainab is quite a composed child because she often sees her ‘explaining’ things to the other children or helping them with their games. She is composed at home, at least not most of the time. She is like a regular boisterous little toddler who needs constant attention and entertaining. When she paints, she paints her face and hands more than she paints on the paper. When she’s making ‘towers’ with her building blocks, she is also throwing the blocks right across the room in order to make a big mess, just the way she likes it. When the ads appear on television she watches awe struck, and has now learnt to sing/speak along with almost all the ad jingles and brand tag lines. I’ve often heard her say which she is deep in play, “Dil jo chahe paas laye.” Or “I’m lovin it!”

She started speaking English a few months ago. We consciously chose for her to learn English as a second language because we wanted her to be fluent in her mother tongue first. That achieved, we began speaking to her in English. My husband and I speak to each other in English, so Zainab already understood the language. She loves speaking English. She tries to speak in English all the time. Even if she can’t find the right words she will say something to get her point across. It’s wonderful to see how she is learning the language, almost on her own.

Out of the blue, a few days ago, we found that she suddenly developed a speech problem. We are not sure if it is something to worry about or something that will solve on its own. We are going to speak to an expert about it and see how we can help her overcome it as soon as possible. It breaks my heart but I know we have to be strong about whatever it is. Until then, I find myself constantly reciting my favourite prayer.

A is for Ache...

When I became a mom for the first time, it was like opening the doors wide open for all types of aches and pain to set shop inside my body. I suddenly felt like I was in someone else’s body. It felt old, tired and abused. The C-section was traumatic because I never expected something of that sort. And apart from the surgery pain, which stayed for a loooooong time, my muscles were all weak and devoid of energy. And this blasted hip ache started that continues to plague me.

I went through the new-mom-depression phase for a while too. I wondered why people want to go through all this to have kids. Why do they want to kill their strong bodies by putting themselves though the crazy pregnancy-delivery process? Why do they want to completely change the lives they were leading and devote every moment to a screaming tiny newborn? Why do you want to forsake sleep and leisurely baths and other fun stuff to this human being that came out of your body? And to top it all, it is a thankless job. You are supposed to do it. Because you are a mom.

At the same time, I was horrified at myself for having these thoughts. Why didn’t I naturally love being a mom? Why didn’t my love just overflow from my heart and banish all these negative thoughts? Weren’t moms meant to be made of unconditional love? What was wrong with me??!!

Thankfully, that phase lasted for only a couple of weeks and I was converted when I finally fell in love with my baby. My beautiful baby girl Zainab. She slowly taught me what it meant to become a mom. She taught me unconditional love. She gave me all the answers to why people have children. And slowly everything became worth it. The sleepless nights, the constant crying, the fussy meal times, the physical exertion, the absence of a social life... it was all worth it. Because I was a mom.

Now apart from the physical aches that were present, I realised another ache. One that hurt much much more. The aches in my heart that I got when my darling little girl got hurt. Or when she struggled with something. Each time I would wish I could wish away her pain. Or physically remove the pain from her body and place it in mine. Her vaccination days made me weep long before and long after the pricks. Every tooth that sprouted through her gums made me instinctively place my hand on my own jaw wondering how bad it must be for her. When she was around 10 months she had a bad case of constipation. It broke my heart to see her body go rigid and her face all contorted as she cried out for me to do something to help her. It’s heart-wrenching to see your child suffer. And it’s amazing that parents suddenly become so vulnerable to aches when it comes to their child.

Every day is a test when you are a parent. Today I have another reason for my heart to get all knotted up with pain and fear. Another reason to have the tears spilling over my cheeks at the most inconvenient of times. I won’t get into the details in this post; I’ll save it for another time. But when Zainab is older, I want her to know that her mom is going to be there for her every step of the way. It’s all just part of the surprises life keeps throwing up. Like hurdles in a race. This too shall pass, sweetheart.

Terrible Tuesday

This morning has been quite a strain on my nerves. I woke up to find that the constant hip ache that has plagued me since the start of this pregnancy has decided to do some more damage. The pain is currently radiating to various connecting bones and stretching right down to my toes. Now my penguin walk (given the size of my ever growing belly) is even more pronounced and I feel like a penguin with crutches. At least that’s the pace I’m walking at.

The pregnancy has been weird for Z. As a toddler she finds it difficult to understand why her mamma is suddenly so tired all the time, why she can’t play wrestle and tickle games anymore, why she can’t sit on mamma’s tummy , why mamma won’t pick her up and carry her around (my heart breaks when she asks, so I do pick her up at times, only to be scolded by those around), among other things.

My lethargy has resulted in Z constantly running late for play school for about a week. The teachers at school usually take a few minutes of tardiness in their stride but today when we arrived a good 20 minutes late, the teacher-in-charge thought it best to bring it to my attention that being late is causing Z to miss out on the funnest part of school – nursery rhymes. I already knew this. But as I heard her gently and most politely give me a lesson on ‘Time and tide wait for no pre-schooler’, the blasted pain in my hips threatened to explode and my legs were ready to buckle. Not to be left behind, the little one growing in my womb decided to make a statement with a powerful kick. I struggled to be composed as I apologised for being late so often and assured her I would try my best to bring Z to school on time. I hope she didn’t notice the tears pricking my eyes, as she enquired about my health and commented on how weak I looked. Unable to handle the sudden concern about how I felt, I quickly ended the conversation and turned to walk back home, tears spilling over. The rain clouds gathered and decided to keep me company with their own tears and I wondered why oh why I was being so silly and full of self pity. The answer lies in this post – I hate messing up what I do and Z becoming a tardy child because of my problems is unforgivable.

Also it was just one of those days. The combination of physical discomfort and sleep deprivation was getting to me. Not to mention, the frustration of dealing with a tantrum-throwing toddler and the jitters of knowing that I’ll soon have to handle and be responsible for two children (not counting the hubby). Also, today is the day my feet have started to look a little swollen. I can only pray that I don’t end up with elephant feet like the last time I was pregnant. Lastly, I’ve been waiting all these months for the shiny and luscious head of hair that pregnant women can flaunt, but it just didn’t happen this time. *sigh* Okay, I’m done with wallowing in self pity.

Wedding Anniversary Special

I completed five years of marriage today.

Last night I revisited the Sumira who existed 8 or 9 years ago. Hubby and I took a trip down memory lane. We went through the numerous cards and letters we had given each other during our courtship. It was a wonderfully sweet experience to relive those first flutters, those hopes for the future, those tender, earnest and heart-breaking young promises. The words we chose in our correspondences made me smile at their innocence, laugh aloud at the lovey-doveyness and get all teary-eyed at the journey and the story behind it all.

It’s the story of two college kids who fell hopelessly in love. It’s the story of two individuals who come from starkly contrasting environments and cultures, who met in Mumbai and decided to spend the rest of their lives together... It’s the story of a boy and girl who came face to face with plenty of opposition to their union, but overcome it all and finally won everyone over. It’s a true story. A happy story. A story that came rushing back in all its beauty at 12 am, 5th September 2010 as the couple sat on their bed and tried to read the cards and keep their impish 2-year-old daughter’s hands from destroying them. You know that feeling makes you feel warm and safe and happy? The one that tells you, right now, in this moment, all is right with the world and that you are truly blessed to have what you have? That was the feeling that enveloped this small beautiful family last night.

********************************

After getting all that mush out of my system, I think I should end on a cute note. Z was feeling a little left out as we were reminiscing about our wedding day. She was wondering how she wasn’t a prominent character in the story. If you’ve met my daughter, you’ll know how much she loves being the centre of attention. She decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. She must soon say something to divert the family attention and conversation back towards herself, and fast. She picked up the nearest cell phone and pretended to make a call. This is what she said, with a dead serious and straight face.

“Hello? Ummm... mujhe aapse shaadi karni hai”

(English translation: Hello? Ummm... I want to marry you.)

She then looks at the phone with a shocked expression and says, “Arey! Ye tho band hogaya!”

(English translation: Huh? The line went dead!)

Kashmir

Yes, I'm back to blogging. What have I been up to during these 3 months of hiding? Well, mostly procrastinating, among other things. But I thought it was about time to get cracking with my blog again. Lots of things to talk about. Today, let me tell you about Kashmir.

The family and I visited Kashmir in June to attend a wedding. This was my second trip there and I was so looking forward to be steam-rolled by hugs and kisses from the family, as well as by the overwhelming beauty of the place, people and culture. The first time I visited the valley, last year, I was highly apprehensive, being completely aware of the extent to which I would be scrutinized. You see, a girl from Goa visiting her Kashmiri sasural is a big deal. Aunts, uncles, grannies, distant cousins, neighbours and probably even long lost relatives flocked to see the spectacle of a ‘South-Indian bahu’ in their midst. I do believe they were half expecting me to show up slightly intoxicated, in beach shorts, sporting tattoos and a phoren accent. But I disappointed big time by showing up as plain old me; someone who easily blended into the Kashmiri background, except for my complexion and inability to speak the local language. I like to believe I warmed up to them and vice versa. And I truly enjoyed the entire experience. I soon realised that all the descriptions I had heard of Kashmir, from hubby, in-laws, friends who had visited, travel shows, websites, and books, did not do a shred of justice to the place. Their traditional houses, their rich food, their over-the-top hospitality, their elaborate handicrafts, their immense pride in their culure and roots... everything about them is wonderful and unique. I tried my best to not let the 'daughter-in-law visiting her sasural' factor colour my obsevations. That helped me completely appreciate the depth of culture I was experiencing.

This time round, the Goan bahu was familiar with the drill. So I was going there minus the anxiousness and without a fear of the unknown. I was merely going to visit family and get drowned in the splendour that is Kashmir. Anyone who has visited Kashmir will know that it is not just the natural scenery that makes the place special. Kashmir resides in a world of its own. It belongs to another time. It is a place that has been blessed by many many wonderful things. Except peace.

The situation in Kashmir took a turn for the worse while we were there. Due to which we didn’t get to see much of Kashmir, but we thoroughly enjoyed the elaborate and expensive Kashmiri wedding. Unfortunately, Z got a raging fever bang in the middle of the merry making. Once she was a little stronger, curfews kept us indoors. We heard of several lathi charges on the stone pelters, and even on innocent residents trying desperately to get along with their lives in the midst of a crippling situation. If we had stayed longer than we had, we probably would have been witness to full-fledged protests and clashes, for shortly after arriving in Mumbai, we heard that more and more people were braving the bullets and the beatings to protest against the way they have been treated and continue to be treated in their own land.

I am not going to discuss right and wrong here, nor am I inviting debate. All I know is what I’ve seen and heard from the Kashmiris themselves, and I pray with and for them for peace. For freedoms that we take for granted every day. For freedom of expression, for freedom from fear, for freedom that allows their children to play in the streets without fear. For development, for jobs, for opportunities, for growth. For the things that have been denied to the youth and thus forces talented, educated and bright individuals to search for opportunities elsewhere. After years of being ignored, I see subtle signs of progress. This 15th August, when my daughter was waving the tri-colour she brought home from play school, I caught myself instinctively thinking about her cousins in Kashmir, a generation that was born into turmoil. Freedom. A word that will come to mean so much to Z a few years from now, as she grapples with what it means to be a Kashmiri.

Introducing Z

I have been putting off writing about my daughter Z for a long time. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe I preferred being seen as a ‘writer’ blogger as opposed to a ‘mommy’ blogger. Yes, shallow, I know. But I think that could be a reason. Another (more justifiable) reason would be that I’m a little weary of writing about my family. I wonder if it’s fair to lay specific characteristic details about them bare for all to read just because it’s my blog.

Damn, I now wish I had an anonymous blog. Just think about it. I would never fall short of post topics. I could happily wax eloquence on the eccentricities of practically everyone I know, myself included, of course. And people would think “Wow, this is interesting stuff.” But instead (shallow person that I am) I bully my friends into reading my blog, as well as publicise new posts through my FB account. In the bargain, I chose not to be this wonderfully mysterious blogger who people stumble upon suddenly and get hooked to. Frankly, I don’t think I’m good enough for the latter to actually happen much. I know because most of my readers are my friends. Or friends of friends. Or my mom. I think I’m depressing myself.

So, as I was saying, I was worried writing about Z’s shenanigans would be like asking her to just hate me once she is old enough to read her mommy’s far-from-anonymous blog. Crappy old age home guaranteed, I thought. But what I was doing was just putting off the inevitable. I can’t continue making myself believe I currently have a life outside my home. And how can one not write about something or someone who consumes one’s thoughts, hopes, dreams, and worries so greatly?

Taking care of Z, listening to her non-stop banter, chasing her around the house with food, stopping her from finding strategically stashed away chocolates, singing songs with her, listening in awe at her rendition of ‘Give me some sunshine’ from 3 Idiots, watching her dance to every kid’s reality dance show on TV, obsessing about how she’ll fit into play school, among other things, is what my whole day is all about. As I type this, she is stripping the pants off her rag doll and applying generous amounts of Johnson’s Baby Powder to the doll’s butt. How can one ignore that, tell me?

So, it really is the easiest thing for me to write about Z. Yep, I think she’s ready for the spotlight now. I think I can manage a decent job of it too, and thus, spare myself the crappy old age home.