Blue Moon NIght

Tomorrow night is a special one if one can rely on the authenticity of the news that floods on the facebook walls. It is supposed to be a BlueMoon night. Isn’t that cool! I’ve heard the cliché,”Once in a blue moon” but never actually thought that there indeed would exist a night such as this in reality.

Well, if not a blue moon, it would still be a full moon night. The full moon with all its shimmering beauty often makes me step out and just sit on the verandah, watching it but the fifteenth day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar has never been deemed beautiful since 2012. How can I bask in its beauty when it was on this day that my Ama chose to leave us? This year on this day, it would be my third year as an Orphan. I know I should not dare to call myself an orphan when I still have the blessings of my father who does more than his share of parenting even though I’ve become a parent myself. But no matter how many years I catch on, I’ll remain my mother’s baby.

Since I lost her on 2nd Aug, 2012 (which was the fifteenth day of the sixth month of the Lunar Calendar), I have known the black hole in my life that has been created by her physical absence from my life. The more I missed her each day; I found a change taking place in me.

Mothers are amazing miracles of life. They not just make you; they build you too!

What do I mean by this? Well the explanation is as simple as the line. Firstly, they make you by giving birth and physically bringing you into this world.

But They not just make you……

From the first word, the first step to the first instance of love, she has been the witness of the molding of you into the human being that you become.

So they build you……

You become the love she has sown into your infant heart. You become the faith that she has put you on your toddler feet. You become the hope she has yielded in your adolescent eyes. You become the dream she has harvested in your adult life. You become what she has made of you.

I don’t know how many of you would agree with me on this. I know we all have different kind of hearts although it is the same organ with the same functions implanted in our body. Coming back to what I was saying, I’m what I’m owing to what my mother has made me.

She gave birth to me: she is the mother.
She taught me love, hope and dreams: she is my mother.

But before she left me to go to the other realm, she made me believe in myself and planted the wings of dreams to put me to flight. I still remember that twinkle in her eyes as she read a piece of article I had concocted about our journey to Vellore from Chennai. I still hear the jingle of her laughter and I miss a heartbeat! If only she could have been here with me to read my maiden novel, “La Ama” she would know what she means to me! But I know, from where she is, she has read my feelings.I now fly with the wings of Dreams my mother has sewn on my heart before she left me. Along with the wings, she left a whisper, “I’m always here, right in your heart! My blessings are with you, right in your heart!”

So, on this Blue Moon night, I would dare to sit outside, unlike the past years I’ve shied away from the moon of this particular night, and maybe look for her in this special celestial body. People believe stars to be the ones they have lost in life, I’ll try my luck with the extraordinary Moon and fetch her there.

Questions! More Questions!

Questions, questions, questions….these days I’m bombarded with questions by my kids. “Mama, why…Mama what…mama where…mama how?” and it goes on from the moment they open their eyes till they finally close their eyes and surrender themselves to Goddess of sleep.

My two-year-old son is the first one to wake up. Well, the moment I slide out of the bed, he knows and he is up. He is the one with whom I spend the most time with and even in his limited vocabulary, he has learnt to tag “Ong? Ong?” becoming a "question master."

I tell him to sit and he will ask me, “Sit, ong?” then only sit.

I ask him to eat and he is like,” eat, ong?”

“No, ong?” “Yes,ong?” so many ‘ongs’ fill our busy day.

And if it is something he wants badly, in his cute tone, he adds,” Drikpay?”

The two of us land up going to the shop right across the road, everytime we walk in, he is like,” Juice, ong? Ong?” While I stand staring at me without any affirmations, he will add, “Drikpay?”with a hint of a pout and I land up buying whatever he asks for.

But the most interesting questions comes from my little daughter. She is different from the other two. Most of the time, you will see her with a pencil and a book, asking me spellings of stuff that she writes about. She makes these cute drawings of the family members and friends and he writes stuff explaining those drawings.

Her question aren’t limited to the spellings she needs to fill in her page. It crosses all boundaries and subjects. The other day, two of us were seated across each other. She was, as usual, writing and drawing while I was flipping through an old album. I took out an old photograph of my husband and me and looked at it, not realizing that my little girls’s eyes were on me. She takes me by surprise by asking me, “Mama why did you marry papa?”

I smile and tell her, “because I fell in love with him.”

“But you won’t fall in love with him anymore, right?” she asks solemnly. I ask her why she thinks so and pat comes her reply, “Look at his fat belly, do you think you love that?”

Seriously!

I laugh and she returns to her drawing before I can draw her attention to my own chubby and aged body. I let it pass (lol).

The same night, as we say our good nights after the bed time reading is over, she asks me, “Mama is it only girls who give birth?”

“Yes!” I answer sleepily.

“and a boy marries and girl and girls give birth?” she continues. I nod, wishing she would just put her wild questions to rest and allow me to sleep.

“Mama, if a boy marries a boy, will that boy have baby?” she asks with her voice deep with concern.

“No!” I respond wondering where did that idea come from.

“What if a girl marries a girl?” “Nope!”

“I don’t think I want to have a baby!” she exclaims in the dark as I put off the reading lamp.

“Sleep. It’s way past your bed time!” I scold and kiss her good night.

I hardly get a chance to wonder why she said that as my eyelids come crashing down, heavy with sleep.

These are just few instances, there are many such ‘unfathomable for her age’ questions she can conjure up and leave you totally bemused.

Asking what about my elder daughter? Well, she has a lot of questions and it depends on a season of something she goes through. Currently she is in the “quiz season”. She would quiz you on thousand and one things.

All in all, I’m bracing myself for the wonders of these little ones and enjoying every moment God grants me to be with them.

Interruptive Ninda

It’s way past his bed-time. My little boy, who has to go to his bed at 9:30 exactly each night is bubbly and all awake.

Reason?

Well, the monsoon is here and with the bounty of showers from heaven, the water from the taps becomes a scarcity with the ‘pipes being washed away at the source’ (as my house owner claims). It’s been three days without water, so my family had the full audacity to barge uninvited to my sister’s place for dinner. And well, dinners are always a noisy affair, with lots of talk that runs way into the usual bed-time hour.

So, on our drive back home, my son had a few winks of sleep which eroded as we noisily got out of the car to back in the bed.

Let me not deviate; so, my boy is all wide-awake and I know it will take more than our normal nursery rhymes to put him to bed. So, I ask him, “Story?”

“So-ri?” (That’s his way of saying story) he grins in the dark. My eyes are drooping with sleep. But I put all my energy to tell him a story.

I begin telling him the story of “The Enormous Turnip”. As soon as I mention the Old man planting turnip seeds, he starts throwing the comforter and screaming, “Book….Book!”

Grudgingly, I get up to get that book from the pile we keep in our room. It isn’t there!

Reluctantly, I slip out of the room, knowing that I have to find that book if I’m to put him to sleep.

Luckily, I find it on Tatu’s study table. I happily dash back into the covers with the book.

“Nana (That’s what he likes calling himself) Porni!” (Nana will read) He snatches the book from me. I glare at him. He knows I’m not in a mood to play so sheepishly he returns the book to me.

“OlMan,ong? Ong?” he nudges me, kissing me, knowing that he has vexed me.

So, I begin from the Old Man planting the seeds. While I’m reading, he sees the mouse nibbling in the garden. “Mouse, Mama, Mouse!” he points in the page.

“Ong mouse,” I respond and continue with the story.

“Abhi ong?” he asks as I flip the page. His tongue cannot pronounce ‘Old Woman’, Poor Nana!

My sleep is totally gone as I try to show him how the old couple labored to get the enormous turnip out. He likes going , “Uggh!!!!Uggghhhhhh” pretending to help root out the turnip.

Then on the page where the Old Woman is asking the boy to help them, he doesn’t listen to what I’m reading. He is busy eyeing the ball in the boy’s hand. “Ball! Ong?” he asks me.

“Nana Ball khelni!” (Nana wants to play ball!) At such ghastly hour of the night! No Nana, I reason out. To get him back in the story, I ask him, “ Who is this?”

“Girl!” he answers and beams, coming back to the story mood.

We reach the page where the boy is asking the girl to help them. He points out to the shoes of the boy, which is placed on the fence. “Boy bo! Boy Bo!” (the boy is going to fall) he says. I ignore him and try to turn the page. He slips his tiny finger and returns to the page saying, “Boy…drain…bo..”

“Gewala, Boy bo ni Nana?” I agree with him. Then I finally get to the last page where the whole team is eating the turnip for tea.

“Nana, Khaneee” (Nana wants to eat too!) This boy is too much I tell you!

I quickly put down the book, switch off the reading lamp and cuddle with him, “Ssshhhhh, Nana, Sleep!” I coax him.

“Seeping?” he asks innocently.

Well, those of you who have read the post earlier than this should know what commences then! ☺

Another Night and some more Nursery Rhymes.

Sometime in 2012, I remember writing a post titled “Nights and Nursery Rhymes” and since the time I posted about the Bloggers Meet I’ve this post dancing on my mind. I better get the post out on my blog before it breaks me up with it’s break dance moves. ☺

Coming back to Nights and Nursery Rhymes, when I posted that I was a young mother of just two daughters. Much has changed in my life since that post. The biggest change- my son! Who has come in our lives bringing in the gaiety we needed much.

Before his arrival, my nightly adventure of singing nursery rhymes ( I call it adventure ‘cause for somebody with my voice quality, it is an adventure, alright?) with my daughters duo had silently progressed to nightly reading cozy up time. Thanks to all these bedtime reading, my six year old can read unaided now.

But the Nursery rhyme chanting days have returned. I do it for my sonny boy while the daughters team wait for their daily dose of reading session.

I just realized that my boy’s pick of rhymes differs from his sisters and the length is very short compared to all the night-long singing my girls made me suffer into.

My boy just needs me to tug him in his beddings and then he turns towards my side and hugs me tight. Then he says, ”Seeping?”

That’s the cue! He actually wants me to sing, “ Are you sleeping?” He waits impatiently for me to finish the “ding…ding…dong!” Excited he kisses me on the lips and sheepishly grinning at the same time asks for “Donny Donny”.

I continue, ”Johnny Johnny, Yes Papa” and smile to his act of nodding and shaking his head to the song. But the best is the last part of this song when he goes, “Ha..ka…ka..” instead of “Ha…ha…ha..” He looks so adorable with his “Ha…Ka…ka..” so I nibble on his ears and he shoves me with a nasty,”Dumpy!”

So I start the ‘Dumpy’ song. Don’t know what it is? Never heard of it? It’s Humpty Dumpty silly. Caught You!

So I sing the "Humpty Dumpty" song. When that comes to an end, he asks, "Bag su?"

Well, his infant tongue can conjure up his own connotations. " Bag su", I assume comes from "...bags full" from the "Baa..Baa...Black Sheep."

I sing that too. He is a naughty little boy, my dear boy. He climbs on me and kisses me again and again till I threaten him that I will stop singing if he doesn't stop that. He instantly drops down to his spot on the bed.

"Moo...Moo Cow!" he orders. And I sing, "Old Mac Donald had a farm....Moo..moo..here and a moo...moo..there..."

Before I complete the song, he turns to the other side and he is snoring. Isn’t that cute?

Anyway, I continue the song and sing a final round of “Are you sleeping” just before switching on the reading lamp for my eagerly waiting daughters.

A story/ Book later, they too are in their dreams and finally I pick up my book and do my share of reading for the day.

Good night!