Maid Service

I have been jetlagged and sick these first few days in India but I have had a chance to experience maid service to the nth degree. After spending 13 years in USA where daily maid service is only for the uber rich and weekly maid service is expensive and difficult to find, I spent the last week wallowing in luxury. I did have a cleaner who came once in three weeks and a maid who helped with the laundry and kitchen once a week and that felt like luxury back in Dallas!

DH and In-Laws have hired a nanny/housekeeper, a maid who comes daily and cleans the house and a cook. So, I have had to do NOTHING. The cook comes early in the morning and makes breakfast, lunch and dinner. The housekeeper takes care of packing lunches/snacks, getting my son's uniform and backpack ready, setting the table for breakfast which includes tea for DH, milk for the kids and different breakfast for the adults and kids. The maid comes during the day and cleans the house from top to bottom including making the beds! Can you believe that? I don’t even have to make the beds!!!

I got lucky with the maid and housekeeper. They are very good at what they do and they have a lot of energy and enthusiasm. In fact my second day here, they offered to open up the rest of the boxes, clean up the kitchen, offering suggestions, following directions and even after I was tired, they kept going on! They cleaned up the mess from the boxes, cleaned the counters, the maid did extra dishes, the housekeeper kept up the pace. The cynic in me is waiting for the bomb to drop. I was expecting the maid to take the day off the next day but she showed up! Wanting to open more boxes! She did drop a small bomb on me today though, she asked for half a day off on Sundays J. Well, considering most domestic helpers get all day off on Sunday it wasn’t too much to ask so I granted it to her J. Do I feel powerful or what!

The housekeeper works pretty hard. My in laws trained her well so she has a list of duties lined up each day. She is also pretty god at remembering and following directions so no complaints there either. This happens to be her first job so I guess she hasn’t learnt the ways of the world yet. She will probably get there eventually but for now I am enjoying having good help. The only catch with her is the whole I am possessed to being haunted deal. Frankly I think she has a deficiency of some sort which is making her hallucinate. I have a mystery on my hands and I will get to the bottom of it.

I am sure all of them are trying to impress the “lady” of the house. (I couldn’t resist calling myself that :P) but it’s working! I don’t think I will need all three in the long run (Hey, I need to do something to keep myself busy!) but right now I am enjoying all of it J

First Day in India

So, today was my first official day of life in India. I arrived yesterday but was so jetlagged, I slept the entire day. After 5 years of thinking about it, 2 years of trying to do it and months of planning and tying up loose ends I am finally in India now. How does it feel? A lot of people are curious to know how it feels to be back in India. The mother land! Do I feel all patriotic being back in the country? Especially since my first day is the 26^th of January?

Well, honestly, I don’t feel any different than when I am here on vacation. Right now my in laws are managing my house and even though the rented house has all my familiar furniture from Dallas, it still feels very alien.

First impression of Bangalore is very good though. The people seem very nice; traffic was not too bad although I didn’t venture out during rush hour. Kishen tells me it is a very late city so rush hour doesn’t start until 9:00! That would take some getting used to. I don’t know what my schedule is yet so I am not worried about the rush hour J.Well, after moving a family of four across the world you can hardly blame me for not knowing what I am doing!

There is a long list of housekeeping waiting for me. Boxes to be unpacked, cupboards (translated to wardrobes for my uninitiated Americans friends who are reading this) to be organized, kids’ activities to be researched, Nakul’s school to be figured out, vehicles to be bought, maid service to be taken care of and an innumerable other things that were pushed to the list of things to be done when “mommy” gets hereJ.

Talking about the maids, the maid service in India is a double edged sword. To the casual observer, it might appear to be a lifestyle fit for royalty - having a maid who cleans your house every day, a cook who cooks your food and a nanny who takes care of the kids. Especially if you have lived in a part of the world where household help is a luxury not the norm and after handling all that and a full time job in the USA, it did seem that way.

Well, it is all good but you have to take it with a grain of salt. The catch is that you need to have the will power to deal with the madness that goes with it. You become so dependent on the help that the first thing you think about in the morning is ‘I hope the maid doesn’t take the day off today!’ I know it is sad but that is the ground reality here.

The maid is a fickle being with a list of at least 10 reasons up her sleeve of why she needs to take the day off. It ranges from being sick to an unexpected death in the family. It’s funny how they never seem to take a day off for a happy occasion. You would think the entire population of maid servants in India was wallowing in misery!

If you have spent any amount of extended time in India, you have seen it all and heard it all. But I bet nobody has ever heard the one I heard this time! My nanny claims to being either possessed or haunted by the ghost of her aunt and claims she needs to go through an ‘exorcism’ to purge herself of this spirit.

Since December of this year, she has been visiting an exorcist every so often (I don’t know the frequency yet) to go through a “treatment” which consists of lashings with a broom and a lot of ritualistic singing and who knows what else for a couple of hours after which the poor creature is bedridden for two days recovering from it! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about this!

I feel bad for the girl because she needs to go through this but I am also worried about leaving my children in the care of a person who claims to see ghosts! Who knows what psychiatric problem she has and how it will affect my children in my absence! I think we will end up replacing her but the entire situation is so bizarre I couldn’t help writing about it.

I would be lying if I said I am not a little spooked by it myself. With all my high and mighty so called educated views I do get scared watching horror movies and when I listen to “true” stories about people seeing ghosts so yes, I am a little spooked but at the end of it, my children’s safety is at risk and regardless of how good the girl is with the kids, I don’t think I am willing to risk it.

I was expecting life to be very different in India but NEVER in my wildest imagination had I thought I would come across a real life example of a person who claims to be haunted and a group of people subjecting her to so called “treatment” to cure her. All I can say is Welcome home! Expect the unexpected J

 

Stress is a function of the quality of life.

So the new job started this week and along with that the daily madness of waking up, getting everything from breakfast, lunch and dinner ready before I leave so I can have a few moments of peace when I come back, drop off and pick up duties etc.

But amazingly, I am actually enjoying all of this. I spent the last two or so years in a miserable job and my first break from the misery came last summer when I went to work with a group of people from my past who helped me regain my faith in people. I will take this moment to send a shout out to my manager- no names but he is one of the best people I have worked for in a while. I cannot thank him enough for being the kind of manager he is.

I will not go into the details of the nightmare I lived through for two years before I was able to break out of it, it will suffice to say that I wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy and another day there would have driven me nuts.

My two years of hell along with pregnancy and postnatal hormones had all but drained me of my last drop of hope but the hopeless optimist that I am, even through all of that, I still held on to the last sliver of hope. I had a lot to be happy about during that time though. We had a new baby, Kishen got his MBA, Vivek was growing up to be a really smart kid, my sisters had kids around the same time, but although I enjoyed the moments, I could never truly feel the happiness of the moments and events. I felt like I was in a dark box, experiencing the happiness through a small window in the box. The stress of dealing with hell 8 hours a day took up my last ounce of energy and I didn’t seem to have any left to enjoy the more important things in life. I was more than obsessed with doing better, I was consumed by it. Then I realized, I was not the problem, and that was when I decided; it was time to get out of the situation.

I was struggling to find work life balance but until I got out of there I didn’t realize that there is no need to look for that balance. Work and Life are like two sides of the same coin. One does not have any validity without the other. Work is a part of your life and if stop chasing balance, life will find it for you.

So, I was elated when I got an opportunity to get out of there. I would have jumped at the first opportunity that came my way and thankfully it turned out to be at a place I loved with people I knew. I took it and that was the end of my nightmare.

It took a while for the horror to go away though. For the first few weeks, I kept feeling I was living in a dream and any moment I would wake up and realize it was all a dream. Then slowly but surely, like a tiny ray of sunshine breaking through a dark cloud cover to bring light and warmth, the realization that it was over and this was reality started to sink in.

The quality of my life was at an all time low for two years and no matter how many positive experiences I had, I stressed about everything. I wasn’t happy during a major part of the day and it messed up everything. I stressed about sleeping at night, waking up in the morning, getting ready for work, getting the kids ready, eating food, not eating food, you name it, I stressed about it.

Getting away from there was like getting CPR after being under water for a really long time. I thought I would never be able to breathe again. Thankfully I was wrong. I started breathing again. The new place worked wonders. I was able to enjoy the small things in life one more time. It took me about three months to realize that the nightmare was over but when I did, I looked at life from a new perspective.

My positive experiences resulted in a better quality of life for me and voila, the stress was gone. It’s like it was never there. It seems like a distant memory now. Its funny how our brain always brings positive experiences to the forefront and stashes away the negative ones to a far corner of memory. It was a life lesson for me. I never thought I would become skeptical but now I believe skepticism is the brain’s defense mechanism. I am not skeptical (yet) but I have learnt to take a deeper look at things.

The last few months have taken me back to the positive experiences of my past and I have arrived at a junction of the past where the future looks really good. I know it sounds crazy but it’s the truth of my life. Positive experiences of the past + super future outlook make for the best quality of life and a good quality life makes for low stress no matter how hard you are working ☺

Here’s to the positive experiences in life- may we have more of them with a sprinkling of not so good to remind us how good we have it ☺

Staying at Home

So 2010 December saw my contracting career come to an end. It wasn’t entirely unexpected but still I was faced with looking for a job yet again so I decided to take a break while I looked for a job. My defense was: I haven’t taken a break since my older son was born and I need a break right now. I also wanted to spend some “quality” time with the baby so here I was, in the middle of December, looking forward to some time off in early 2011.

Well, the first thing we talked about was- you guessed it: finances. After long deliberation (by dear husband (DH)- I don’t like to be bothered by frivolities like money) it was decided that I could take some time off. So now the question was how long. DH suggested 6 months. It sounded too good to be true- do I dare dream about spending lazy afternoons watching movies, playing with the baby, going for walks, taking the kids to the park or the mall (hey, I am allowed to be selfish). And then I thought about what would really happen- cooking every day, pickup and drop off duty for the older kid, no more housekeeping services etc. You get the picture so I decided I would sacrifice my 6 months of laziness and settle for about a month or so while I looked for a job. I planned on continuing the nanny service for the baby so I could (ahem) look for a job. After all, how could I look for a job without help at home? I didn’t want to lose the nanny I had either so we decided to continue with her. The best part was I found a before my contract ended and I could still get my 3-4 weeks off. I was ecstatic and was dreaming about my days spent at a spa or browsing books at Barnes and Noble, catching up on technical skills, playing with my new laptops, coming home to play with the baby, try new recipes and not worry about housework.

As luck would have it, our nanny found a better position and decided to leave!!!!!!!! Sudden crash to reality but no worries, I could do this. How difficult could it be to take care of the house and the kids? I had done it in the past and I could do it again for as long as it took. So, I put on my housewife hat for three weeks and planned out lots of things to do- clean out closets, try recipes, read to the kids every day, workout etc. etc. The first week was really good mostly because I still had the nanny so I was free to do what I wanted. I got a lot of things in order- inside and outside the house and I couldn’t stop wondering why I hadn’t taken time off sooner. I had some cousins visiting, it was the end of the year so I had parties to look forward to- it was just perfect. The year ended on a really good note and 2011 started on a great note. I was looking forward to my new job and I had 3 weeks to spend at home before I started working again.

The first Monday in January was good. The nanny came for one last day while I coped with dropping Vivek off and taking care of some last minute stuff and just generally getting used to the idea of not having any help around the house. It was good. I thought I would be freaking out by the end of Monday but I was calm and actually looking forward to the rest of my “vacation”. The next couple of days were tiring to say the least. I had to wake up in the morning, get Vivek ready for school, make sure he ate some breakfast and deal with Nakul trying to trip me up while I ran around like a one of those harried moms on TV. Then came the part where I put them both in the car, drive to Vivek’s school, drop him off with Nakul screaming to get out of his car seat and follow his brother. Back at home, it was breakfast time for Nakul, followed by bath time and then cook lunch for him while he tried to make me play with him. Needless to say I was TIRED by lunch time. Thankfully Nakul took a loooooooong nap after lunch which gave me a chance to take a shower and relax for 5 minutes before getting started on dinner for both kids. To add to all of this drama, Nakul developed a really bad cold and gave it to me too. So, the first couple of days of ‘blissfully’ staying at home were not so blissful. I had pictured being able to watch a movie, work on my new MAC, brush up on some technical knowledge, write more blogs, take Nakul out for walks, try out some new recipes but my vision was shattered with a loud crack!

By the time Wednesday rolled around, I had a better handle on the situation or so I thought. I was able to get Vivek ready and off to school in a decent time. I optimized cooking time by combining lunch and dinner preparations together. I had the kids ready and cooking duties done by the time I dropped Vivek and got back home. I was tired by 9:00 am but that is beside the point . When I picked up Kishen on Wednesday night, I was hoping for some relief but he was jetlagged and sick as a dog so the entire week saw me working harder than I had in the past year!
I had a renewed respect for Moms/Dads who stay at home and take care of the kids and housework. I don’t know how they manage to keep their sanity with so much to do all the time. By the end of my first week off, I was ready to go back to work and hire a housekeeper to do all of the housework for me. I guess I have been spoilt by the availability of a Nanny at all time for the last year or so. It isn’t cheap but compared to the mountain of work that needs to be done, I will take it any day.

It hasn’t been all bad really. I did get to spend more time with Nakul and Vivek and even with all the housework, I am still relaxed. I know a lot of women who have two kids, full time jobs and no help at home and they are doing great. Call me lazy or anything else you want but I need a housekeeper and I need her fast!!!

The Everyday Celebrities

Have you ever wondered about the everyday celebrities in our life? The checkout clerk at the corner grocery store, the owner of the Indian superstore, the owner of the new India restaurant in town.

All these people and many more like them have one thing in common, they are the local "celebrities". Sure they don't have celebrity status and people don't queue up for their autographs but they are celebrities in a different sense of the term.Before we go there, lets define who a celebrity is. Loosely speaking, a celebrity is a person a lot of the “commoners” recognize. We vie for their attention and feel a sense of satisfaction at being acknowledged by celebrities: Imagine being on first name terms with George Clooney.

Although our everyday celebrities do not share the same status as George Clooney but they are celebrities in their own way. They are easily recognized: think about how troubled an Indian grocery store owner looks if you spot him/her at Walmart or Sams Club. They almost give you the cold shoulder like any other celebrity. They are worried about being recognized (probably because they don’t want to be spotted buying garbanzo beans in bulk from Sams Club to resell at their store :) ). Ever run into the grocery store owner during your early morning walk? He/She will not meet your eye, act like they have never seen you and pay extra attention to the MP3 player they are listening to (in case you have the audacity to stop them and say hello, they will claim that they were worried about the MP3 player and weren’t paying attention to the rest of the world)

Those of us who have bragging rights to “knowing” some of these local celebrities, feel a sense of pride: yes, I am talking about those of us who have the perpetual need to brag about “knowing” the owner of the new Indian restaurant, or the grocery store owner giving them an ever increasing celebrity status.

And last but not least, whether we like it or not, we love being acknowledged by these people. How many of us would love to walk into a restaurant and have the owner greet us personally (it usually gets you extra attention from the wait staff and maybe even a free glass of something every time you go there). Or being on first name terms with the grocery store owner (he will push you to the front of the line on a crowded day). I think it is this need for these small favors by the rest of us that turn these people into small time celebrities and if they bask in the glory of it, then so be it. Who am I to deny them their pleasure?

So to all the small time celebrities in my life, I hope you enjoy your celebrity status and I will be an admirer as long as I can get my free glass of mango lassi next time I come to your restaurant and my free DVD rental at the grocery store ;)

Dance and me

Recently I was fortunate enough to witness one of the best dance ballets in Kuchipudi that I have ever seen. I am not saying this because I am biased toward the director who by the way is my very own dance teacher Padma Sonti but I am saying this because the entire composition was brilliant. The music, costumes, dancers and of course the choreography was excellent.

Padma had worked really hard on getting the ballet written up, designing the costumes and jewellery, props etc. She had a lot of help from her new found partners in dance, the brothers Raghava and Venkat from Kuchipudi, India but here I will be biased and say that she worked very hard and pushed everybody to get things in order and on time for the ballet. To top it all, she kept a cool head the entire time. She really was the driving force who brought everything together and I admire that quality in her.

I was disappointed that I had to be in the sidelines this time but the energy of the entire thing still caught up with me and I had fun just watching and helping out with the peripheral things. I didn’t dance but went to rehearsals to help with lighting for the show. Even being in the sidelines energized me. In my 6th month of pregnancy, I get tired very easily but it was the sheer magic of the music and the energy of dance that I didn’t feel tired even after being there for 5 hours two days in a row. I did get a little stressed on the actual day of the show because the lighting didn’t go as planned but the program was so good that it was all worth it. It made me start to think about what it is about dance and music that energizes me so much.

Me and dance go back a long way. The first time I danced on stage was when I was in the first grade. I don’t really remember what the song was but it was about stars and the moon and even though I say so myself, I was the prettiest star on the stage J The next thing I remember is being on a play in the enactment of the story of the lion and the rabbit from Aesop’s fables also in the first grade at the same school. Here I really was the center of attention, you see I played the part of the Rabbit J I don’t know if I liked carrots before that day but ever since then I have loved carrots.

As a child I learnt Kathak and performed with my teacher’s troupe at a variety of venues in Delhi like the India international center, AP Bhavan, school functions etc. Me and my sisters enjoyed dancing so much, we went out of our way to attend classes and go for programs. Even after I discontinued taking formal lessons in kathak, I continued to do folk and ‘filmy’ dances at community functions and in school. We had a lot of fun choreographing and presenting dance numbers at all of those places.

When I was dancing as part of my teacher’s troupe in Delhi, I enjoyed the practices, the extra classes, giggling at the back of he room with friends, getting mad about the teacher getting mad at us for giggling and then the final day when we would have our hair done at home by mom and go to a common place to get dressed and get our make up for the stage. I never remember feeling scared to get on stage or even being worried that I would forget (until recently at least). The entire experience gave me a high that no intoxicants in the world can match J

When doing our own little ‘programs’ with friends, I loved the anticipation, practicing, getting together with friends and ‘choreographing’ dances, the chaos on the day of the program and finally the relief that it was all over (until next time). The tempers running high during practice, the wounded and mended egos, and promises to self never to get involved again (only to forget everything the moment the program was over). It all makes for a heady mix which I for one enjoyed immensely.

When I left college, I thought I had done my last dance on stage but boy was I wrong. When Kishen met me 6 months later, he mentioned that one of things I could do in the US was go to dance classes. I was excited at the prospect but in my ‘box’ of post marriage life, learning to dance just didn’t fit. Well, I came here in 2000 march and less than a year later, I was learning Kuchipudi with Padma.

I never thought I would ever learn or dance on stage again but thanks to Kishen and a dear friend who has more enthusiasm in life than anybody I have seen so far, I started learning dance. And here I am 9 years later, still learning. I took a break for a year when Vivek was born and it was a little difficult to get back to the routine after that but I stuck with it and today I can’t imagine life without Kuchipudi. Now I am waiting for my second kid to get here so I can get back into the fray. I was so used to dance being part of my routine that even though I couldn’t dance this time around, I helped out with the preparations and some stage management.

It was with Padma that I got involved with charities related to promotion of art. The first one being Padma’s own MUDRA. The second one is Venkat’s (who incidentally I met through Padma) Kuchipudi Bhagavatha Melam. I believe if there is anything I can do to help promote the art, it is more than I could have hoped to do in a lifetime.

People have asked me how I expect to be able to dance after the second kid and I just say that I am crazy enough to figure out a way. I am surrounded by my crazy group of friends at dance class who also have kids and are still mental enough to come to class every week and even do programs. They are my inspiration and motivation so I hope to go on. There have also been people who have indicated that I am neglecting my duties as a mother and wife by spending time for my classes but I don’t really care about these people. In fact I have something special to say to them that I cannot post on my blog but you get the picture. It is my life and if dancing makes me happy, I will do it regardless of what people think (good or bad).

Growing Old(er?)

Age should not be measured by how much time you have been here; it should be measured by how much you have lived.

I read this somewhere and I thought it was pretty cool.

2008 saw me turning 30. It also saw me freaking out about turning 30J. Age had never been a point of distress for me so I didn’t see the breakdown coming. I always thought that physical age does not limit how you feel about yourself. It is your attitude that decides how you enjoy life at every stage and age J

Well, all that was thrown out the window the moment I turned 30. I enjoyed my birthday, because I was very happy with life at the time. I had a great job, a beautiful family, luxurious lifestyle, what else could I ask for? It actually took a couple of weeks before I was hit with the realization that I had turned 30. I had heard friends talk about the big 30 but it never seemed to bother me. In my naïveté I assumed that I was immune to the affects of age on myself.

About 3-4 weeks after my 30th birthday, I suddenly realized that life had changed a lot. I started thinking about how I ‘celebrated’ my birthday and just the thought was enough to give me depression. The ‘grand’ celebration included a take-out dinner (from a favorite restaurant) and a movie. I enjoyed all of that at the moment but I was depressed by the fact that I had to wait for a birthday to do something so simple as a dinner and a movie. Having a child and friends who have children has changed the social scene of life and it suddenly hit me.

I was at a point where I started thinking that life didn’t have meaning anymore. Up until now it had always been about the next thing I needed to achieve. Good grades at school, college education, career, marriage, job, higher education, children and finally settling down (or something like that) in life by buying a house, having a stable job etc. I had enjoyed the ride so far, and even had a few adventures and my little unconventional indulgences like a sports car as my first car. But finally I realized that I had come to a stop. I didn’t know where to go from here. So far there had always been some goal in life that needed to be achieved. Something out there still incomplete but finally I had achieved all that conventional wisdom advocates.

So I found myself thinking about it a lot. The constant question in my mind was ‘what next’. I mean I still had small goals so to speak: promotion at work, another child etc. but nothing seemed big enough or exciting enough to look forward to. I started setting small goals for myself and in the process, I finally finished small projects around the house, got a lot of things from the family ‘TO DO’ list taken care of and actually started an exercise regimen. It still wasn’t enough. At the end of every goal achieved, I came back to the bigger question of what next?

I may be experiencing a classic mid-life crisis but I couldn’t toss the vacant unfulfilled sense of emptiness. Yeah I know big words coming from me but you get the idea. I guess everybody goes though this in life where you come to a point beyond which life hadn’t been defined yet!!!

I moped around, threw tantrums, fought with my husband and was miserable in general. In the end, I decided to try doing something I hadn’t really done so far, at least not to the extent that I wanted to anyway. I had been thinking about social work and working for an NGO or for charity etc. So basically I wanted to do something selfless. The answer came to me through Dance.

My dance teacher in Dallas has an NGO and I started helping her with the annual festival organized by the NGO. Believe it or not, I had found my jive. I enjoyed doing something selfless. A task that gave me nothing more than the satisfaction of being able to help. There was nothing to be gained, no goals, no agenda, just plain help. I enjoyed it immensely even though I had to spend a lot of time doing things I didn’t quite know how to do but I learnt them along the way and the end result was actually good. Another person I started helping was a dance teacher from India who needed some help with outing his NGO online. Well, 6 months down the line, they now have a blog which is updated regularly. I am getting more and more involved with this NGO and I am having fun doing this.

Maybe this is my way of dealing with my mid-life crisis ( I am wondering if you have a mid-life crisis at 30, will you die at 60?) I have found a purpose in life again (at least for nowJ). I will see how ling this continues. Meanwhile, I am my happy cheery self again and I am having fun. I am once again trying out new things and have formulated new goals for the rest of my life. I realized life isn’t over yet so why mope around thinking about the time when it will be.

Have fun and take life one crisis at a time…