Worry Worry Worry

Mama Says So
by, Rohini Haldea

OK I admit it. I was always a bit of a control freak. I like a clean and orderly life and lack of the same can seriously put my nose out of joint. However, this in no way prepared me for the wave upon wave of worry and paranoia that comes along with being a mother.

It started the day Ayaan was born. Most mothers I know talk about an instant outpouring of maternal love as soon as they hold their baby for the first time. Not for me. I felt scared. Was I holding him right? Was his head supported well enough? What if I slipped and dropped him? Am I holding him too tight? Am I feeding him correctly? Is he getting enough milk? Is the room too cold for him? Is the room too hot for him? Why is he crying? Is he hungry? Is he wet? Is he in pain? And all this was just the first week at the hospital!Since then, the list of worries has changed but the fear persists.

My top five fears at the moment:

1. What if he hurts himself really badly? No matter how much you childproof your home, there is no 100% safe environment for a curious baby who has just started to crawl and is also trying to pull himself up on the furniture. We discover and fix new hazards every day. Last week, I worried that the bookshelf might topple over so we bolted it to the wall. This week I am worried about Ayaan pulling the tablecloth and everything on it down onto himself ... so its goodbye to tablecloths for a while. And the list never ends. Almost everything can be a hazard if you really think about it. Ayaan can either fall on it, he can fall from it, it can fall on him, he can swallow it, he can break it into harmful pieces, and so on...

2. Germs. Germs. Germs. They are everywhere. They always have been but I have never been this aware of their existence. Now entire chain of events can be built around everything. Here's an example: Ayaan is putting his hand into his mouth. Earlier, we came up in the elevator and he touched the buttons. There's a cold epidemic going on. So there's a good chance someone with a cold was in the elevator sometime earlier. And he would have also touched the very same buttons. And what if he wiped his nose before that ... you see where this going?

3. What if I die? My own mortality has suddenly taken on a new significance for me. Earlier, I never thought about it. But now another human being depends on me for his very existence. And this strikes me every time I get an urge to dash across the road - I now wait till there is a substantial gap in the traffic before attempting such a thing. I am even thinking about writing a will.

4. Is he eating enough? Is he gaining enough weight? Every visit to the paediatrician is like going for an exam and every time we get a pass or a fail grade depending on whether Ayaan's weight gain is adequate.

5.What if my nanny quits/ falls sick/ behaves so badly that I have to sack her? The last search made me realise finding a good maid for the baby is not easy, in fact it is bloody tough. How will I go to work if that happens? What if I can't find a replacement and I have to quit? How will we repay our home loan?

The lists of worries keeps changing but I pretty much signed up for worry when I decided to become someone's mother. A lifetime of worry is pretty much part of the job description.

As someone once wrote, "Don't tell me that worry doesn't do any good. I know better. The things I worry about don't happen". The chances are pretty good that this was written by a mother!

Fairy Tale Phobia

Now that I am a father, who is regularly called upon to read stories to his daughter, I have developed a very healthy dislike for fairy tales. I am okay with bears that talk and discuss the matters of the day, such as how the porridge is so much hotter nowadays than when they were little bear cubs, thinking nary a thought but those of porridge at just the right temperature, not cold and congealed, not so hot that it would burn the roofs of their mouths, just right. I can imitate barnyard animals till the cows come home -- mooing and snorting and clucking come to me like fluorescent lamps to the energy conscious. Zoo animals -- oh yeah, bring those on.

But fairy tales I hate. I can't stand the message I'm sending to my kid. Everytime I read 'Sleeping Beauty' I think of how vacuous and shallow the whole thing is. The fairies give her gifts of beauty and a singsong voice and, presumably, more gifts of a similar nature (maybe an hourglass figure, two well-defined eyebrows, and the like). No one gives her gifts of intelligence, the ability to do math, solve quantum mechanical problems, solve analytical mechanics problems, to see beauty in biology, the ability to tell fact from fiction, science from religion, not to mention the ability to kick the freaking prince who will later come up and kiss her without so much as a how-do-you-do.

If my daughter is to marry a prince, or an heir to a vast fortune, so be it, but I hope she will at least google the guy, pay some agency to do a background check on him, and spend enough time with him to figure out if it's really worth the trouble.

All the stories about evil stepmothers? How about some stories about kind stepmothers? Let's balance things a little, shall we? My daughter might have to be a stepmother some day -- I don't want her to feel like a failure if she doesn't have a hooked nose with a wart on the end, a cackly laugh, and a propensity to do evil. So I just avoid those. Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and Snow White will have to wait. Other stories I find myself changing on the fly.

Fauna, Flora, and Merriweather give gifts of being good at math, feeling relaxed during examinations, and an independent streak, but not one that leads Sleeping Beauty (how about calling her Aurora, her given name, for chrissakes) to do drugs or tobacco. Aurora gets into an accident on her way home from the art academy (she was straying from the path of science). Because she wasn't wearing a seatbelt, she goes into a coma, but a very intelligent surgeon saves her, and when she finally wakes up, he mentors her and she becomes a neurosurgeon herself. Then they get married and have kids, because let's face it, I want to make sure that message is conveyed so that my genes should get passed on -- that's my evolutionary right.

The miller who had a beautiful daughter who couldn't really spin straw into gold? How come the king gets to decide if he wants to marry her -- doesn't the girl get any sat? There are many versions of that one. The simples? It was a foolish miller, who's daughter packed an AK-47, and when the evil ruler tried to make her do stuff she didn't want to, RATATATATATATATATAT. That story ends rather fast. Then there's the one where she does the spinning of straw, but turns him down and goes to law school and proves that the monarchy is not right and introduces democracy to the country and becomes the first president (She shoots Rumpelstiltskin when he tries to kidnap her first-born kid).

The three little pigs -- actually, I like that one. But after having read it out loud a few hundred times, complete with the song about the big bad wolf, you want to end it sooner, so sometimes the wolf wins and has ham sandwiches for breakfast the next few months.

You get the picture.

I also hate tabloids and celebrity news magazines. I hate Aishwarya Rai, Lindsay Lohan, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Britney Spears. I want someone to publish a magazine with, say, glamor shots of Madame Curie's experimental apparatus (maybe Madame Curie also, but in opaque, sensible clothing). But that's another rant.

By,
Speck 42
((speckfortytwo)(at)(gmail)(dot)(com))

Review of 'Monster-in-Law'

Review of 'Monster-in-law'

Everyone has a genre of movies which they love watching for ‘timepass’, and which can be characterised by the non-enthusiast as 'trash'. Some watch Shah Rukh Khan movies and some watch Van Damme. My category can largely be classified as chick flicks. But even within chick flicks, I have my standards. The thing about a chick flick is that it must follow certain rules - (a) heroines must be lovable, (b) jokes cannot be stale, (c) in the last scene when evildoers miraculously reform, I should feel a warm glow and (d) it must not star J Lo.

Against my better judgement, I broke rule (d). I have nothing against J Lo movies, except probably, an instinct of self-preservation. I had seen snippets of 'The Wedding Planner' and 'Maid in Manhattan', both of which reinforced this instinct. But Chennai is a small city and if you have not been watching movies in theatres for a long time, you tend to rationalise along the lines of 'Any movie is better than no movie. So let us go for a JLo movie'.

‘Monster-in-law’ is a movie that is as cliched as they come. The heroine's male friend is predictably gay. As they said in the Bollywood classic, ‘Maine Pyar Kiya’, “Ek ladka aur ladki kabhi dost nahi ban sakte unless the guy is gay” The Indian censor board of course edited the part after 'sakte' depriving generations of Indians this pearl of wisdom till they watched Hollywood flicks. The plot is simple - JLo hitches with rich guy. The guy's mom decides to prevent the marriage by giving hell. This plot line itself seemed a bit incredible to me given that I am used to Indian mothers who spend entire movies convincing their progeny to get married - that they give hell later is a different issue. Anyway, back to J Lo and Mother-in-law (a decent Jane Fonda) who spar it out in a series of bitchy events. Till the ending when an 'unforeseen, unexpected surprise factor' (No she does not have cancer. This is not Bollywood guys !) makes Jane Fonda undergo a complete change of heart and give her blessings to the union.

The cast does what is expected of it - roll eyes, smirk, be over-the-top et al; unfortunately in a very ‘hey look at me. I am acting’ manner. The hero is there purely for a support role; though that is something I approve of since 95% of all movies usually place a heroine for arm candy purposes and chick flicks is where this is reversed.

There is not a single scene where you want to laugh (Yes. There are laugh-out-aloud parts in chick flicks - remember ‘Bridget Jones's Diary’). There are very few scenes that can even crank a smile out of you. J Lo turning the tables on her ma-in-law when she hands her a peach matron-of-honour gown should have been funny. But it was not. The movie clearly tries to follow the rules of a good chick-flick as defined by me, but mediocrity in everything keeps getting in the way.

The one thing that came out of it is that my bias about JLo has changed. If any of you, like me, thinks she looks like a slutty tramp ready to pack a powerful punch, then the movie reinforces that notion. But her acting is no better or no worse than what you would expect to see in a chick flick. Next time I shall drop rule (d). As for Monster-in-law, it should be Monster-outlawed(Aha. Isn’t it great when titles of bad movies lend themselves to such easy comic criticism?)

By,
Anita B.

Reaction to '15,Park Avenue'

Why did ‘15, Park Avenue’ disturb me so much that I cannot fall asleep, even three hours after the movie ended ? Partly it is to do with the fact that it is not a happy movie – it’s about a schizophrenic girl and her family. I think that any movie on such a theme would leave one a bit disturbed. But a large part of my distress is due to a rape scene – which though handled sensitively – shocks one out of one’s illusions.

In the scene, the heroine is gang-raped in a room in a small hotel in some small town on the Bihar-Bengal border. The location is irrelevant. Why they do it is also irrelevant, so I will not go into further detail here. Throughout the scene, the camera is with the audience outside the room, gazing down a long corridor outside. There are people (both men and women) coming and going along the corridor, coming out of rooms, entering other rooms, all the while the heroine’s muffled cries of pain are clearly audible, yet no one so much as blinks. Only one man stops in mid-stride and thinks for a second or two before shrugging and continuing on his way.

I think the scene disturbed me so deeply because I have always assumed that I am safe so long as there are lots of people around, and this belied that assumption. A scary reality check for one who manages to relax at night on the assumption that if she screams loudly, people will rush to her rescue.

Though such illusions get shattered every time a ghastly incident occurs - like the rape in the train in Bombay some time ago – one’s peace and sanity are so dependent on belief that after some time the incident is wiped off one’s memory and one lapses into the illusion of safety again. I suppose it is in some ways an opiate, a bit like religion, some believe in God, some believe in their fellow men; and are able to live non-dysfunctional lives on the basis of this belief.

Renaming Rules

All of a sudden, many cities in Karnataka have been bitten by the renaming bug – Bangalore (Bengaluru), Belgaum (Belagavi), Hubli (Hubballi) etc. In order to make things easier for the beleagured administration, especially in namma / aamchi (depending on how the state borders are delineated) Belagavi, here are a set of easy rules for renaming cities.

1. In order to conserve both time and energy while speaking, the new name must possess the same number of syllables as the old name; e.g Bombay to Mumbai, Madras to Chennai.
2. Oops ! Not Madras to Chennai. This rule would allow the renaming of Bombay to Mumbai, but not allow the change from Madras to Chennai.
In order to minimize unnecessary expenditure on buying new signboards, the new name must possess the same number of letters as the old name, so that the old signboards can be easily painted over. Yes, one could use a smaller font on the old signboard and fit in a longer name, but if common sense ruled, would there be this renaming drive at all?
3. Rule 3 also vetoes the Madras to Chennai change. On account of public convenience, there must be at least some similarity in the way the names sound - except in the case of godforsaken places that no outsider could conceivably ever visit. (On second thoughts, maybe this rule does allow for the Madras to Chennai change.)
4. Rule no. 4 – KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid. No tongue-twisters – Cochin to Kozhikode not allowed. If people from at least five other Indian states cannot pronounce it, it is vetoed. (p.s. Cochin to Kozhikode also violates each of rules 1, 2 and 3.)
5. Restrict the craze. Nothing less than a few hectares across and having a population of over a lakh can be renamed. No renaming roads/ crossings/flyovers/gardens/staircases/garages etc. If the person is not important enough to have a large area named after him/her, he /she does not deserve to inflict on our already chaotic lives any further confusion.
6. No new name of more than two words and/or ten syllables – thus ruling out the Hazrat Makhdoom Faquih Ali Mahimi flyover (erstwhile JJ flyover).
7. No more than ten different entities in the country can have the same name. No more ‘Chhatrapati Shivaji’ Terminus / Airport / Kila / Sangrahalaya/ Paathshala etc etc etc.
8. All inhabitants living within the renamed area have to follow the renaming rules for their names too.
So Banaglore to Bengaluru would be endorsed by Dharam Singhu, Deve Gowdu and U R Ananthamurthu.
Bombay to Mumbai would be endorsed by Mal Thackerai (hmmm has anyone in Bollywood thought of him this way yet ?) and supported by Marad Pawai ( the surname suits him – bet his morals are as polluted as the lake by the same name).

By ,
Zenobu from Bengaluru.
With contributions from,
Anitai of Chennai.