I think

IPL

I watched a cricket match for the first time in life. Live. At a stadium. 

In high school, there was tremendious peer pressure to watch cricket.  My friends sneaked a pocket transister to school during World Cup (the one that we won before we did last month) and many test matches. Tall girls in the last row would listen to the match and pass notes to the rest of the class on the current score.  I felt distantly removed from this crowd, being the kind who is not interested in games that she is not actively playing.   But then we were in early teens, and most girls in my class had a specific cricket celebrity. Sharmila had a thing for Gavaskar, Shobs and Sou carried the torch for Ravi Shastri and so on, and by a process of elimination, it was decided that I would be a Vengsarkar fan.  I knew nothing more about Vengsarkar than that he was then the captain of the Indian team.  Cricket fever ran high in school, and thankfully passed by me with not as much as a sniffle.

My dude is into cricket..as most dudes in India.  And the kid wanted to watch a match live.  What better opportunity than to watch the IPL in Chennai, between the home team, Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and arch rival Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB)?  So after much maneuvering to get tickets, an effort that should rightfully belong in some political strategy course in MBA, we got the minimum cost tickets to see the IPL live today.  The added incentives of going included - the match being not more than three hours long, unlike one-days (a full day) and test cricket (five full days), the availability of an easy mode of transport from our door step to a hop skip and jump of the stadium, and being on a Saturday at a conventinent time (4-7 pm) that would make it best suited to come back home for dinner.  Until I left I was skeptical if I would enjoy the match, being naturally disinclined to sit and watch other people play for hours.

I was mistaken.

The cricket fever was palpable right at the train station.  Young and old uniformly enthusiastic about the match, wearing CSK t-shirts (as were dude and his cousin, the kid wearing a t-shirt with Dhoni, the captain of CSK in it). As we got off at the Chepauk station, we didn't have to move...the crowd just carried us towards the sacred sanctum.

Our minimum cost tickets were in seats that faced West.  Facing West on an April evening -  We currently look like we were barbequed using rocket fuel, but what's a few layers of tan for the endorphin release ?  By the end of the match,  not one person was not bathed in sweat, but no one, not even my otherwise finicky seven-year-old minded - ofcourse, I was secretly happy that I had doused myself with body spray when I left, anticipating a sweaty evening.

The crowd was most enthuisastic.  The match was, if not spectacular, interesting. My high point was that a group of cheerleaders (a blond and two brunnettes from some Western country - most likely USA - we import cheerleaders I gather) were in front of our seats and at every four, six, wicket fall and change of over, did their little thingummy to desi rythm.  I couldn't take my eyes off them whenever they came up- what pretty nubile things, how graceful their moves and what sweet smiles.

CSK won.  We returned home in one piece. Tired but vaguely exhilerated.  And no sign of the headache I was sure I'd get.

Did I have fun? Yes. Will I do it again? Not sure.

The train station near home:

At the stadium

Random picture of the field

 

 

CSA Awareness Month

During idle blog hopping that I seem to be doing a lot lately, I stumbled upon this site. A group of bloggers created this site to spread awareness on child sexual abuse.

Two years ago, I had written about my brush with sexual harrassment.  Thankfully, I have never faced sexual abuse, which is no consolation, but not as serious as the many horror stories that I read in that site.  I know that each and every single friend of mine has faced sexual harrassment or abuse - a suggestive remark, a sly look, bottom pinching, eve teasing and so on. 

Agreed, I am not emotionally maimed for life by the incidents in the past.  I lead a healthy family life and am not trapped in the hell of past horrors.  In fact, apart from the temporary feeling of "something is not right" at that time, it has not caused debilitating disturbances.

Or has it ?

I refuse to leave my seven year old daughter with anyone alone.  The only three men I trust my daughter with are her father and two grandfathers. I do not send her to school by the school van or an auto by herself.  Everytime the cell phone shows an unidentified caller when the kid is at school, I panic.  When I give the kid her weekly oil bath, I involuntarily check her body for tell-tale signs. I wonder if she would be traumatized when I give her an oil massage - even if I AM her mother, am I allowed to touch her body ? 

I get paranoid when strangers smile at my daughter or even pass an innocent comment  and mad at my daughter when she responds to innocent comments. When the kid wants to play outside when I am working, I peep out of the window every minute to see if she is alright.  On the rare occasion that I take the public bus somewhere with her, I place her in front of me, and stand so close to her so that not even air touches her. Every week I talk to her about good-touch-bad-touch.

Everytime I read or hear of some form of CSA, my stomach churns and I check up on my daughter, and don't leave her out of my sight for many days after that. When her father and I are walking around the stadium, and she is playing, if I can't see her for one second, I am swept by a wave of desparation.   As I see signs of impending tweens in her, and promise of a beautiful teen, one part of me is proud, but the other worried.  Would I rather she be a plane jane than the beautiful woman she promises to grow into?

And its not just with my daughter.  When I see young tweens standing somewhere by themselves, I want to go and stand with them and deliver them to safety.  When I see my daughter's friends S or J riding their bikes by themselves in an otherwise empty alley, I feel very uncomfortable.

Life should not have to be like this.  I should not have to be so mistrustful of co-human beings. 

But it seems that I am justified.  CSA is rampant.  FSA (Female sexual abuse) is equally rampant.  I recently heard of cases where in our peaceful and apparently safe campus, a friend got flashed by a random stranger, outside her own house. Another friend was pulled into the woods and may have been violated but for passersby.  I don't even want to browse the newspaper any more having yet not recovered from the news of the kids in Coimbatore being assaulted and killed by their own school van drivers a few months back. When I hear news like this, I wish I could send my daughter back into my womb where she would be safer.  I wonder if I should just lock her up inside the house, home school her and generally release her into the world when she is fifty years old.  But then, there would still be GSA - geriatric sexual abuse. Will it ever end? 

If I met God, I'd ask Her to redesign the human sex apparatus (including the one in people's head) such that it operates only when both parties willingly consent.  It's not too much to ask, is it?

 

Reply to my rant

Just after my rant, I get a forwarded email.  I usually junk forwarded emails but you may understand the level of my self-infliced boredom by the fact that I opened this one.  And the first two points slapped me on my face with a scaly wet fish.

What follows is the cut-paste of the email.  Apparently quotes of Bill Gates at a school on eleven things school won't teach you.  The first two shall henceforth be my mantra. The rest aren't bad either.

Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2 : The world doesn't care about your self-esteem.
The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school.
You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss

Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity.
Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: They called it opportunity.

Rule 6 : If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7 : Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were.

So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer.

*This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters.
You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF.
*Do that on your own time.

Rule 10 : Television is NOT real life.
In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11 : Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Block and Rant

This blog site has not been active in a while. Meaning, there have been lots of entries, none of them of the verbal onslaught type.   Too many reasons, in fact.

First of all, much as I like to claim that I write for my own satisfaction and that words turn me on and all that crap, it does feel a bit let down to not get any kind of response.  It seems even friends and family have clearly moved on to more ephemeral sources of verbiage such as facebook and twitter (heck, I don't even get emails any more).  I am not looking at platitudes of ego massaging here, or so I want to believe. Still, it does give a teeny bit of inspiration when someone actually takes the effort to write back.

That of course, is more superficial.

As I mentioned somewhere before, this year was frought with uncertainties and decisions on the home front, which just about got solved.  Not entirely favourably, but I suppose any decision, even if adverse, is better than the state of limbo that sucks up your energy to do anything other than obsess over it. 

Perhaps now my mind will be freed from anxiety (at least some of it) and I can turn back to more creative pursuits.  Perhaps dust the cobwebs from my fabric paint and glass (as with the rest of the house - there are clothes lying everywhere), and fill this blog with more than random pictures and pointers from other blogs. Right now, it looks like a hypothetical situation. Everytime I sit at the computer, I end up browsing and blog hopping for hours and end up  disgusted with myself at the total lack of mental and creative activity, not to mention a splitting headache.  Perhaps what I need is a work deadline. I am lucky- there's one around the corner and I hope that will jolt my brain from its current state of stupour to its usual state of frenzy.

As you may be aware by now, I also contribute now and then at my friends' food blog.  Of course, I don't add any quality content there, just  fluff.  Once again, I don't know if it is even read, but I'll continue to delude myself that I write for my own satisfaction.

 

Cookalogue: Puthandu special- Mango Pachadi

While the ongoing Chithirai Vs. Thai tussle remains a political issue, the Tamil public is happy to celebrate New Year at all given occasions - after all in the circle of life, each day is a start of the next year.   As actor Trisha says, if it means an extra holiday, hey,join the party ! Let the debate continue to rage, the more conventional of us will celebrate Tamil New Year as the sun moves into Aries, which was, today.  The Tamil New Year is close behind the vernal equinox, where the tilt of the earth causes the sun to cross the equator into the Northern hemisphere, thus heralding a few months of summer up North.  The Tamil New Year thus formally announces the blaze of the sun to us - as if we needed an announcement.

via cookalogue.blogspot.com

Duty performed

Which will it be this time?  The devil or the deep blue sea? Lets wait and watch.

Spring in the farmhouse

The unmistakable gene

Cookalogue: Shri Ramanavami recipes

With reference to Lakshmi's previous post on "Food on mythology", I am inspired to post these Ramanavami recipes.  Sri Ramanavami, for the uninitiated, is the birthday of Lord Rama, the hero of one of the two great Hindu epics - Ramayana.

via cookalogue.blogspot.com

Call me

"Why do people have phone if they cannot pick it up when it is ringing?"

- 7 year old complaining to her friend's father about mom not answering her phone call to request for extra play time.