Bye bye 2012

A year gone and gone with the wind…

Just thinking about the worries of mine at the beginning of the year…no…. those things do not scare me anymore; do not make me awake at night. The worries for future are there, but they have lost the intensity. The vulnerability of life is so pronounced that I do not worry for position, status or power fight any more. Two incidents of 2012 had shaken me from the core. One was Sandy Hook Elementary School incident and the other was the rape and unimaginable torture on a 23^rd year old girl. My faith on humanity is hanging on a thread. Yes, I know about war and death of children in war. But this is like the sudden full stop of the beautiful lives of 20 little children, their laughs and their dreams. After my mother’s death, I have not been shaken so much. The second incident was so brutal that I could not even think about that anymore. Even the word “animal behavior” is nothing to describe that crime. At one point of time, I thought,” let it be. Let the Mayans be true. The world is no longer a place to live anymore.”

   I am a mother and I play a very critical role in a person’s life. Now instead of raising a successful man, I want to raise a human being who should be compassionate and caring and who will value humanity more than anything else. That is the only think I hope for and breath to live for.

  Bye bye 2012. 

Learning With You....to Adi.

I thought I knew everything about ABCDs... and I can teach you in my finger touch. Little did I know that its as tough as solving a scientific problem ?

Ode to food-bloggers

  I like to cook and do not like to be disturbed during cooking. Cooking is a kind of meditation I choose. But when you have a pre-schooler sneaking in your kitchen all the time, its very hard to concentrate. Usually, I get up quite early in most days of week ( I hated that when I was kid). Early morning time is the best time for me to cook aka meditate. I enjoy and relish it. If I had to do the same thing after coming from office, I feel crazy and angry. So mind it, time and moment are crucial things for my tasty food.

    I never thought I would turn out to be a foodie,much to my parents' surprise. My love for food begun when I left home for higher studies. The difficulties to get home-made (aka home-taste) food were my driving point to get tasty food. Then after eight years of hostel-mess food, I really love any kind of home-made food from any part of the world. Still I did not get my hands-on experiments on food and solely dependent upon my cook, my mom and mom-in-law. But the real journey begun after coming to USA.
    When I crossed Atlantic and reached Boston, my culinary expertise was limited within rice(!), daal(lentil soup) and begun bhaja (fried egg-plant). Oh Oh I forgot the boiled egg. I fed plenty of bottled and ready made baby food to my son in his first few months staying in USA. But I was not happy eating the same recipe again and again. I started cooking some things else, long-distanced calls to India gave me the recipe of fish and chicken, but we know our moms. They will never able to tell you size and proportionality of ingredients. And the search for wonderful world of food-blogging left open to me. I really appreciate them. The amazing food-bloggers all over the world keep posted about their cooking and photographs. I learnt almost everything from them. And then something happened to me.
   I fell in love with cooking. The everyday chicken biriyani from Bongmom or coconut-steamed prawn from my friend's blog make me a cook, at least my husband and kid like it. Somewhere, I started believing that cooking is not only about food, recipe or eating. Especially displaying a well cooked food, the appeal of vision is very important. I feel I should give an example here. I never knew about the green, leafy chard in India. On first look, I thought its beet-root leaf, yes, though they belong to beet family but they are not same. And I avoided them for quite sometime. Then this post from ecurry made me to go to store and buy some chard. By now you might be doubting about my sanity. I admit i did not add pine nuts and recreated the same except I added poppy seeds( aka posto) end of that chard recipe, but it tasted awesome and fell in love with the chard.So the whole thing started from a particular blog-post.
   Here are my most favorite food blogs from where I read recipes and cook :
             1. Bongcookbook
             2. Bongcook
             3. ecurry
             4. Cooking and recipes 
             5. Peppermill
             6. Bakerella
             7. TheIndianSimmer
            8. veggiebelly
           
There are many more awesome blogs where I read recipes but these are my regular ones. I respect the time and efforts they put on their blogs. The whole point of creativity is to get mental satisfaction is very true. So I cook and so I think everybody cooks for.
Before I finish just want to quote this single word poem from Bob Raczka,
              "Creative i crave art".
Cooking is indeed a special kind of art.
    So happy blogging and cooking. Chao..
  

    

Uncertainties in Life

Life is full of uncertainties and  I think repeating this line again will not make it more cliche.
   I often think my life is really full of uncertainties and for last couple of years really it was. I keep my finger-crossed in daily basis and think that tomorrow gone be all-right and then tomorrow I will wait for another tomorrow.
   But when I listen about the mother waiting patiently for the miracle to be happened for her dear child or the son who is waiting eagerly near his father's ICU to be awaken for months, then I pray for them.
   God gives me lot of uncertainties but He knows he has given me the strength to fight also.
                      Hope everything is alright for all of us.

My New Year Resolution

Let see whether I can be a good girl for at least ten days. The schedule of good girl includes
    # exercise aka walking atleast 15 minutes per day for  next 10 days
    # making Adi to study everyday for 15 minutes ( its tougher than the previous one)
    # have a little time atleast 15 minutes exclusive family time
    # no playing any online games
    # study at least 15 minutes per day
# drinking atleast 6 glass of water (it never happened)
                GOOD LUCK TO ME

First few days

Being a new parent is really challenging and of course one of the high pressure job. And trust me I have plenty of defenders of my previous statement.  The first two-three years of a child life requires a huge attentions and definitely lots of care. A new parent will be tired like a hell all through the day and night. Then the awesome moment will come when the tiny face will first time realize who you are. I still remember those days when Adi was just a month old and stared at my face for quite sometimes. Its like he wanted to know me well and wished to understand me better. 

    My first few days with Adi were very strenuous and tired. The proper latching did not happen first and he was always on demand and every two hours he used to get up for milk. But those were not  the moments I dreaded for. The change in relationship of mine with others and evaluation of myself in others’ eyes I hated most. Its like I was only and only meant for the baby. Its true I became mother and he needed my attention most but there was other me who existed even before his birth.  The most reason in post-delivery blue which is known as postpartum depression is the adjustment in the new role as mother. I had the same thing. The sense of loss of freedom and question about my ability as mother haunted me maximum. 

      My mother came to stay with me after delivery and her assurance was really a lot helpful for me.  After all she was the one who grew me. I think earlier days girls used to go their mothers’ home for delivery was a right thing to do. But all of us are not the fortunate and often stay quite away from the motherland itself.  Another person played a very important role was my husband. He was also a new father and  he also used to get freaked out in small things like me, but he kept the faith on me (sometimes against a lot of pressure). We used to stay in research institute’s apartment and sometimes he would go out to put baby’s cloth in the yard. And he was a kind of hero because he being a man taking care of baby’s clothes. I think the territory of father was so long confined in to just roam around with a pretty baby and take him to park. But as a parent, sleepless nights were spent by father was quite new at that time. And I think more fathers do that, the postpartum blue of mother will decrease in sharp rate. Early parenthood is not only for mother, its for father too. We stumbled a lot and hey , we enjoyed to lot. In my opinion, believe the parental bonding intensifies with the early postpartum problems.

Reading

I like to read and I can read anything....good book,scrap...anything printed on the paper or uploaded in the world wide web. Reading something soothes me alot, especially when I am distressed, sad or do not know what to do.
   I think reading a trash also help someone to judge their own decision. Reading enriches our mind but there are certainly some drawbacks of reading though. For me sometimes I get too much into the book, in fact I start living in the world of imagination, aka "lost in characters". Sometimes too much involvement in a book, influence my decision making and somehow the character becomes a part of me. Still I read.
   Nowadays reading blogs have become an addiction to me. I do read some blogs with lots of eagerness and sometimes I do wait for their latest post.