A new Beginning :)

Starting 2011 (with an awesome start), I left many things behind me, too many memories, some to cherish, some to dread. But I learned several things in the past year. I went through hell of things and hopefully I did learn things from them (hopefully!)
I know its way too late! but its still 1st month of January and I came up with my resolution!

Resolution for 2011: Dont Fall in LOVE! :)

Inside a writer’s mind

I am a writer. Well, not a professional one but I love writing. It came up to me as a hobby. A lame hobby; inclusive of write-ups of the sky, river, mommy, daddy, poop and what not. I had a habit of writing journals and yeah, that helped a LOT! I read books a lot of them. I loved romantic novels and it was fun replacing the girl in the novel with you while the handsome man swipes her off his feet.

SIGH! That never happens in real does it?

Well, so inside a writer’s mind; a confession. I see story in everything. From small tea cups to fingernails to clouds. If you are a non writer, you might be thinking I am crazy but trust me that do happen for real. And when you meet young people, like really small kids, they ask you if you write about princesses and wars. You do have to lie sometimes and make up stories! 

I don't know what made me start this write up but, I am running late for work and, yeah! gotta head to work, that is writing! 

Happy day folks!

Dashain Tales of a Carnivore

 I might sound like a carnivorous monster, but blame it on the genes that I inherited right down from my carnivorous grandpa!

Dashain! Ever since I was a small girl I have always loved this festival. Be it for the new clothes my mommy bought me, the money I received from my elders or the goat my daddy bought to sacrifice to Goddess Durga. As I grew up, clothes and money came by as usual, but my heartiest anticipations were for the goat, or to be more specific, meat. I might sound like a carnivorous monster, but blame it on the genes that I inherited right down from my carnivorous grandpa!

It might sound hideous but during Dashain, I go on the so called ‘goat hunt’ with my daddy and accompany him while they slaughter the goat mercilessly and collect all the blood in a bucket to make a dish out of it. It sounds awful, but it tastes like heaven when eaten with beaten rice. You may ask where we go for the ‘goat hunt’ and where it is slaughtered. That isn’t much of a problem. We don’t quite worry about that and neither do others who follow the custom. People here are not that hygiene conscious. They shop for the animal a day before and slaughter it in a place where hundreds of other animals are slaughtered on the same day. There might be so many germs in the area and the chief problem, the animals we so lovingly slaughter, might have some serious disease!

Meat, meat and more meat
On Asthami, the day we slaughter the goat, my mother cooks awesome dishes out of the same meat! She cooks the goat’s brain, tongue, ears, ribs, intestine and what not. In other words, she cooks the whole goat and I eat all the various resulting dishes. For a few days, meat is all I eat. Be it for breakfast, lunch, in-betweens and dinner. You must be thinking, “Does this girl’s family just eat meat?” Well no, we eat other items such as samaybaji which is made of smoked fish, black soybeans, diced ginger and chiura. They are served on tiny leaf plates, which make the meal even more delightful. Everywhere we go to put tika and get blessings, I end up eating all that they have to serve as I am just like my father. We tend to compare the kebab prepared in all the different households and savor it. But, in spite of eating all these meals, it’s amazing how I never get sick. And it’s not just me but almost all of the carnivorous people celebrating Dashain!

Even after consuming so much of meat, not being sick made me do an extensive research on it. Yes, I am a health conscious person too and I found that due to unawareness and due to absence of laws, people buy meat which cannot ensure consumers’ protection because of quality that is low grade. High sanitation standards in the slaughter houses, processing plants and handling of meat at various stages of marketing are of great importance to obtain high quality meat because the meat is an ideal medium for the growth of unwanted microorganisms. Bacteria reduce the life of meat and cause many health hazards. I’m sure you will agree that all we care about is the meat we get to eat and not so much about the hygiene!

No meat for Brahmins? No way!
In spite of coming from a Brahmin family, my ancestors were smart not to follow the ‘no meat for Brahmins’ taboo. I always wondered what went inside the Newari kitchen because Brahmins and Chettris more or less had the same rituals. It might sound stupid but I always wondered if the Newar people cut buffaloes during Dashain and I imagined all the mess it created. When I told my friend Avas Shrestha about this, he told me, “I don’t let anyone cut anything at my place. We substitute eggs in place of sacrificial animals, forget about the buffalo!” and he even called me a monster for what I did. He told me his mother’s secret recipe to avoid toilet troubles - they ate curd and pau, a drink made of lapsi or amala. Also, cucumber and radish pickle which spice up our taste buds and also help in digesting food, are famous during Dashain and are found in almost every household.

After Dashain, looking down at the weighing machine as I stand on it, I know what to expect and I stay calm. As a fellow lover of delectable Dashain feasts, I know how hard it can be to resist asking for second helpings of that delicious meat full of fatty goodness, so I’m not one to ask you to eat little and be weight conscious. Let’s just remember that we are after all eating traditional healthy food and as long as we don’t follow our heavy Dashain meal with more junk food, we can enjoy Dashain to the fullest – totally guilt free!

What's in a dream?

The sunlight streaming through the window made soft warm circles on my face and I yawned lazily and turned to see Ayush snoring peacefully to himself. As I was thinking just how lucky I was to have him, I heard Skanda and Rakshya fighting over breakfast in the kitchen and grunted. I dragged myself out of the bed lazily and squinted at my reflection in the mirror. After swirling my hair around my hand deftly and winding it into a smooth knot, I headed towards the kitchen. A cursory glance at the family photo on the antique table-stand (a wedding gift from my mom) stirred a deep-seated question, “Is this the kind of life I always wanted?” I never really had a solid answer to that, often feeling guilty as I look at my wonderful husband and two wonderful kids. But where am I?

As I make pancakes for breakfast I just can’t keep my mind off the Things I wanted to do as a child, and a young girl. My two adolescent kids break into an argument and I can’t help but feel a tinge of jealousy. As a little girl I often saw myself wearing stilettos and walking down the ramp. Well, I do wear stilettos, the ones my daughter owns and she just can’t stand me wearing them. I have had to suffocate the little pleasures of life and find fruition in fulfilling my daughter’s wishes. My life today is just limited to household chores, laundry, TV soaps and occasional dinner with my husband. I suddenly realized that with every passing day I was growing older. I thought of my first crush from school. I never had the guts to tell him about my feelings. How different my life would be if I were married to him? Sinful thoughts! I find solace thinking of him as pot bellied, and aged and unattractive. My mother was cool, but not cool enough to let me have my navel pierced. As a teen, I remember doing the pretty typical rolling of my eyes at half of the things my mother said to me. I try to be cool in the mother’s role. Hope that is how my kids see me because I have never caught them rolling their eyes at what I have to say. I let my daughter go bungee last month which was again one of my childhood dreams. Listening to her thrilling experience made me feel a part of it. I always wanted to work for a media house. My parents coaxed me into taking up science and I had to snuff out that dream as well.

It is almost evening and I am browsing through the p album from my younger days. I spot a picture of me, in my teens, dressed in my mother’s saree, tika, chura and bright red lipstick. It was then that I remembered the most important dream I had, being a good wife and a good mother. Just then my son opens the door. He races to me and holds me in a bear hug and plants a kiss on my cheek. He rushes on about his day at school and friends. He doesn’t forget to complement me on the fried rice I packed him for lunch. I realize how lucky I was to be where I was at this point of my life. My inner self tells me that the greatest joys in life lie not only in realizing your own dreams but nurturing the future to realize theirs. I was living my dream and don’t think I can ever live any other dream as wholly as this.

The Hair Story!

 And you thought you have bad hair days while I have had hair issues all my life! I am a girl in my early 20’s and I have had drastic change in hairstyles. From being bald to having long hair to short bob.

 

Inherited from my maternal grandmother, I was born with adorable baby curls just like my elder sister. I really don’t remember having it since my mother, the greatest barber of the world, decided to shave it all off as she had a hard time managing my sister’s. So the story starts here; I was bald throughout my childhood.  Flipping through the photo albums I always crack up into hysterical laughter. My mommy thought I looked pretty in a cute little frock with no hair. When it started growing and was the length of an inch or two, I was surely very stylish to sport a hair band with two pleated hair extensions that reached my waist while my original hair got lost on my scalp!

Since there was no availability of parlors for small girls at my time I went along with my dad to get a haircut to the famous Hajam Dai of my community. He would place me on the tallest chair and bend down to cut my hair short. I always cursed him from within and told him I would grow my hair long and pretty like Rapunzel wore it. The biggest evidence of my childhood, the photo albums jam-packed with memories show that I had pigtails when I was in my preschool. As I think about it now, I wonder how they managed to get that long.  However, after entering teenage, I tried all the hairstyles possible: from crop short to waist long. But one of the biggest mistakes I repeated time and again was as soon as I got them long; I cut them mercilessly. While entering the parlor, I am jolly and happy but while stepping out of that horrendous place, I swear on never entering again but I end up going there again.

As years passed by, my scalp showed signs of me growing feminine with wavy reddish locks that fell on my back. By the time I was in high school, there were friends who went gaga over my hair. My friends often teased me by saying I should join the TV commercials for beautiful hair!  I’m not trying to tell you that I had the most beautiful hair imaginable, but I had good hair. But, just like any other girl, I had bad hair days that made me go crazy making me want to rip it off!

This didn’t last long. One crazy day in February, I was returning from work, I saw that my locality had opened up a new parlor. It was named “Sushmita’s Parlor”. I don’t know what tempted me to but, I went crazy that very minute and without thinking, I pushed the swinging doors of the parlor and stepped in. After examining it for a brief second, I placed my bag in the table that looked like it was freshly painted and checked myself in the mirror. The lady raised an eye questioningly and asked what I wanted to do with my hair. Without pissing her off further, with a huge grin on my face, I reciprocated immediately and said I wanted to cut it short, “Short Bob”. I don’t remember what I was feeling when she was started spraying my hair but I she snapped at me telling me not to cut my hair. I snapped back telling her to do her job. I don’t know what pissed her off but she used her scissors and cut it real short! To top it all, it was winter and we all know our country is so famous with the load shedding! Yes, the lights went off when she was cutting it down and she relied on candles! By the time it was done, I was bored to death and without checking myself, I paid and walked through the swinging doors yet again. As soon as I reached home, my mother smiled and told me I looked cute just like a small girl in the mushroom cut. I fumed and told her it was the so called “Bob cut” and locked myself in my room and went to sleep.

The next day was a disaster. Trust me, a real disaster. I got up and looked for my rubber band as I always tied my hair to sleep and by morning, it got lost in my bed.  Then I realized I got a haircut. I threw the quilt and ran to the mirror. I cried. My hair was gone. I was bald again! Well not BALD but I had short hair! Very short! They were springing in all the directions and I looked like a porcupine! This was certainly the worst hair day of my life! I cried and cried wiping my tears to see my hair clearer, wiping them again to make myself look better. But no, I looked worse by the minute.  I tried every possible way to hide my hair, mufflers, caps and on certain days, I hid myself! This lasted for some time. People complimented on my hair some called me Lady Gaga of Nepal. Well, that made me smile because I worshipped her.  

Days passed and yeah, my hair grew longer. By longer, I mean an inch longer. I still had the short bob but I got used to it with time and I no longer hid myself. I went on with my life and I survived the haircut. I tie it up on rainy days and sport hair accessories on sunny days. Though I still wish it grew overnight! And about the Hajam Dai- every time I see him checking my hair out, I try avoiding him and walk as fast as I can out of the shame.