On Being Mommy

I love being mommy. I loved carrying them and giving birth to them. I love to nurse them.
Their eyes light up when they see me. I cannot even begin to describe how that feels - every single time. The girls will not remember all this as they are so young right now; and so all the cuddling and hugging and kisses are just for me to enjoy now and to cherish forever. What a fantastic, absolutely mindboggingly beautiful gift!



Latest Read: Chasing a Mirage by Tarek Fateh

Read Tarek Fateh's Chasing a Mirage recently. Loved it. Islam seems to be offering more than just a reprieve from being buried alive. Enough with the buried alive! It was horrific but when one is offered equality and is also not in danger of being buried alive then choosing the teachings of the latter philosophy seems madness.
The thing I liked most was the Islamic history lesson the book provided. Full of blood and slaves and harems and general drama - as all history is. Fateh shatters the image of the golden period of Islam as he goes through the centuries and searches for the Utopian Islamic state that everyone yearns for. Never existed. It is true that Muslims (we?) conquered and governed and built. They (we?) had huge advances in science and arts and music and architecture. However, those had nothing to do with their being Muslims or even living in an Islamic State. That happened because they started to think about science and arts and music. A natural consequence in this world of action and reaction we live in.



Our House

The house sits on a beautiful piece of land. A stream winds through the tall trees and flower bushes. There is a kitchen garden and many fruit trees. A swing set with a wooden slide is in the back. A grey stone fountain is in the front. Many generations have lived and loved in this grand old house.
But now, the winding stream is sluggish and putrid. There are no fish in it. The trees have been stripped of their bark. The flower bushes grow only thorns. The kitchen garden is buried under years of garbage and the swing set is broken.
The family has many children. Barefoot and malnourished, they play on the grounds. No one oversees their play. No one sends them to school. They do not have chores to do. They hit and bully each other. Birds and squirrels keep away.
The woman is always angry. She hits her children. Some have left. One went to live with the family down the road and is studying to be a musician. Another one lives in the house with the green fence and is a famous doctor. The woman is pregnant again.
One little girl tries to grow radishes in a corner. The neighbors gave her seeds. She has managed to grow a few. Most of the plants were destroyed by the other children. Two of the littlest children are sent to work for the big house next door cleaning bathrooms.
The man does not work. Sometimes he wears his best clothes and goes to the neighbors to ask for money. Often he brings back shiny new toys for himself. He plays with them till they break. He does not know how to fix them and tosses them outside in the broken stone fountain.
Everyone is sick. Every year children die. The woman and the man do nothing and none of the children complain.
There is fear in the house. The smaller children are afraid of the bigger ones. All are afraid of the woman. She is afraid of the man. He is afraid of his neighbors; thinking they want his house and his land. No one wants the broken down house with the dirty sick children.
Some days the man takes a couple of his children and goes to the police station to protest about far away houses where he has heard that the bigger children hit the smaller children. The police officers look at the man. They can see the bruises and marks on the children that the man brings with him.
One night a neighbor’s son came into the house and hit a little boy.
The man went to the police station and complained. He said that all his children were furious that someone had hit that little boy. He said that it was wrong and he will not allow it to happen again.
It did happen again. This time the little boy’s arm broke.
The man went back to the police station. The officer said that the man should keep his windows and doors locked at night. The officer knows that they are broken. He also knows that the man comes only to save face. He knows that the little boy died of gangrene because no one took him to the hospital. He has seen his dead body. His arm was broken but there were many older bruises and cuts. He knows that everyone in the house does far worse to each other than what the neighbor’s son did to the little boy.
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The drone attacks are not justifiable. They are wrong. But we live in this house. We are the children who hit each other. We have no moral ground to stand on when we complain of the drone attacks. If our house was in order, if we took care of each other, if we worked to make ourselves better then it would have been a different matter.  Right now, when we complain, when we protest, when we demand that the drone attacks be stopped, we offer further proof to everyone that we are selfish phony brutes.

Making me - 1

My grandfather was an avid golfer. All the thirty three years I knew him, he was retired and played golf every day. When I visited in the summers he would take me with him.  He would play his daily eighteen and I would run around making footprints on the dewy grass. I discovered the newness of morning at the gymkhana golf-course. We would be back by ten and I would have a big breakfast of fresh creme and soft white bread.

I  followed him when the gardener came. Listened to him while he told him how to trim the roses that year and where to plant the annuals. I watched cricket with him and played chess. And I read and read and read. He read on his bed and I read on mine. My bed was set up in his room; he often got up at night to go to the bathroom, and I was the only one in the house who could sleep through the noise.

I miss him. And I am so thankful to him for letting me tag along with him. He went about his day, doing what he was passionate about. And I responded to that passion and fell in love with so much of what he loved. Because of him I find continuous joy in my garden and in dewdrops and in books.

Getting the rust off

Fatigue is a state of mind. I get the kids ready for bed, feeling that I am ready to drop down dead. They go to sleep; I get a surge of energy. I am here.
History books give me a sense of peace. The world has always been crazy, always on the verge of catastrophe. The times I live in are turbulent - but it has always been that way. My first twenty years or so I was either too young or too self-absorbed to realize what was going on. Listening to my parents' and my grandparents' stories of their childhoods which seemed perfect and imagining my childhood world to be at peace - the world in fact was and always had been perfect.
It went crazy in my twenties. No. I had just grown up and noticed the mess.
I would like to live a life of consequence. Would like to make a difference somewhere. It rushes you though - life does. You start working, get married, have a couple of kids and wham - half of it is gone. Not complaining. Just expressing my wonder at it all.
Well this feels good. Writing makes me grounded and intensifies each moment. They don't rush by but are felt one after another, separately. Its a good feeling. I hope to continue writing here.