Tell me something girl, are you happy in this modern world?

 As I boarded the 13 hour flight from Dubai back home, I thought I might catch up on sleep or watch a movie or two. I was returning home after a two week visit to India. However when I sat on the window seat and looked out through the window,  the flight took off and so did my thoughts!! Back to the distant past!! 

I’m 47 now and I moved to my current home country when I was 23! I had completed my Engineering course in one of the top academic institutions in India and was later recruited to a prestigious IT company where I worked for a year. I could have continued working there but 23 is when passion is at its peak and I wanted to climb the academic/career ladder. When some of my friends went abroad to do their Master’s degree, I followed track which brought me to where I currently live. A beautiful country which has warmly received its newcomers and provided them with equal opportunities as its own natives. When I was doing my Master’s degree, I met my husband who also happened to hail from a neighboring city in India. We fell in love, and after we completed our education and got our jobs, we were married. Two children, both sons followed. The subsequent years involved moving to a new home and trying to juggle work, children and social life with friends simultaneously. When I reached about 35, I almost felt a sense of contentment at what I had achieved in life thus far!! Or did I really?

A few years ago, when I was 40, I had returned back to India for vacation after a hiatus of 3 years. Busy work and kids’ schedule prevented me from going back in the interim years. This trip was accompanied by my family as well. I was shocked to see how my parents had aged. They were suffering from health issues and had to rely on a caregiver as I, their only child was thousands of miles away. Aunts, uncles and cousins were all busy with their lives and I realized how without intending to, how distant I had become from all their lives as well. These were the closely knit families that I used to spend every vacation with in childhood years. Every one had become a stranger unknowingly over the years. Even though social media seemingly connected us, it was still a zillion miles away from spending actual time with these folks! When I  visited my alma mater, tears flowed from my eyes. This was the place that nurtured me with all the knowledge I have gained today. Why was I not in a position to give back to who or what that brought me up? What was I doing in a place far far away from everything that had once mattered to me? The answer has continued to elude me. And it has also questioned the purpose of my life and what I seemingly think my small accomplishments in it!! I hope to know and understand some day. With that thought, I realized that my flight had landed. I wiped a dry tear on my cheek as I told myself that independent of whether my question would be answered or if the answer would remain elusive,  life is all about moving on. I stood up to get my carry on luggage. I knew my husband and teenage sons would be waiting for me at the airport and escorting me home! This brought me a smile to my previously wistful face. I walked slowly towards the exit!

The pleasant flight attendant who was standing at the exit and bidding farewell to every passenger noticed an elegant middle-aged Asian woman with good looking clothes and a designer handbag she immediately recognized walking toward her. Here is probably a woman who had it all, she thought!! The passenger’s heart knew otherwise!!

Jasmine, my dear!

Jasmine..how I miss her!!!

 It's hard to believe she's gone...gone from my life for ever..gone from the ends of the earth to a land I never know..wish I was in a bad dream and wake up to find her cuddled in my bed, just like always!

 Where do I start to talk about her?

 Our first meeting was six years ago. It was love at first sight. And then, there was no looking back! Our time together was always filled with joy and laughter. Until that fine day six months ago. Jasmine had unexplained fever for a week and we went to her physician. That was when he palpated the lumps in her neck. "I'm concerned" , was what he said. What he was talking about made little sense to me. Though I'm a software engineer, I had some knowledge of medicine (or so I thought) enough to know that amoxicillin did not work any more for anything. "Doctor, give her the strongest antibiotic you have. Cost does not matter". The doctor gave me a gentle smile and said , "I'm not concerned about an infection. But we do need to get this lump biopsied". "And we need to schedule it as soon as possible". I did not question the doctor's instruction. He was the smartest one in town, and I did not dare to question his decision. The next day, the biopsy was scheduled. Jasmine tolerated the anesthesia well. A resilient one she was, and never a complainer. Two days later, the doctor called. He wanted to talk in person. My wife and I went with absolutely no idea as to what state of mind we would be in when we were returning back.

 The doctor did not beat around the bush. "Lymphoma", he called it. "It is a cancer of the lymph nodes". "It is what I suspected". And then helplessly, "I'm sorry". The doctor did not mean it, did he? What was he talking about? My wife and I had a mask-like stare on her faces. "Doctor, it must be a false diagnosis. Or the results must have got mixed up with another patient". The doctor gave me a smile that was similar to one gives to an ignorant eight year old. "No, that's extremely unlikely. The clinical features of the lymph nodes are very much concerning for cancer. It is without doubt, lymphoma. Fortunately, we have an oncologist, that is, a cancer specialist who is also a part of our hospital. And I have scheduled for you to see him right away". The oncologist examined Jasmine. He did not seem to have any empathy and seemed to be "matter-of-fact" about confirming her diagnosis and treatment plan. I later realized he must have developed the attitude after interacting with cancer patients almost every day of his life.

 And so began Jasmine's journey with chemotherapy.

 Days of nausea, vomiting and fatigue were interspersed with chemotherapy free days when she would feel slightly more energetic. Three months into treatment, I realized even before hearing from the doctor that things were not working the way my wife and I wanted it. Jasmine was losing more weight and appeared more fatigued. The visit with the oncologist confirmed our fear. He palpated newer lumps in her body. A special kind of scan (PET scan, the doctor called it) was done which to our misery revealed that the cancer was aggressive and fast growing, and not responding to treatment . My wife and I could not discuss any further with the doctor and returned home in silence. It is still vivid in my memory how my wife and I hugged and cried the moment we reached home. Sometimes, oh how you wish you had a hand to work on your destiny! Huh, if only!! Days of denial and bargaining were followed by acceptance.

 During this time, Jasmine became thin and debilitated and it was not hard to guess that her clock was ticking, and ticking fast!!

 "Palliative care" was the next new term we had to learn about. The doctor explained that it was a field of medicine that aimed at focusing on comfort care for terminally ill patients. By this time, we sadly but truly accepted the fact that Jasmine was indeed terminally ill. The doctor prescribed heavy narcotics to keep her pain free and comfortable. It pained me to see Jasmine sometimes drowsy from the effect of the medications that she could hardly keep her eyes open.

 One warm evening a few days later, Jasmine was lying on my lap when her breathing slowed down and moments later, she passed away.

 I lay there staring for minutes, or it may have been hours! I cannot recall. Those moments are vivid in some ways, and in other ways , blurred.

 There ended my journey with Jasmine.

 Jasmine, my dear!

 Jasmine, my dear Golden Retriever dog!

 Yes, my first and only pet! She was gifted to me by my wife, Vandhana, for our first wedding anniversary. Since then, Vandhana and I had brought up Jasmine as our child. Only to lose her unfortunately to cancer! Yet, the years we had with Jasmine are precious! She has left a huge imprint in our minds and a bigger hole in our hearts..Now all we have of Jasmine are the memories, pictures, and now this story.....!!!

Travel Memoirs - Kerala

Well, it was not "Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya" that inspired me to visit "God's own country". The real reason was that, after being in the US for a couple of years and watching fellow native friends visiting different parts of the country for vacation , it struck me that having grown up in a beautiful country like India, I had literally pretty much never stepped out of the borders of Tamil Nadu. And that's only because of the cultural reasons when you either travelled to your grandparents' or cousin's home for the holidays (but I don't regret that, since those were one of the most enjoyable times of my life).
And so, I decided to start to explore India better, and the first place we chose to visit was Kerala. We travelled to Allepey by car. Our driver was the most knowledgeable person when it came to driving (Or so he thought because he never listened to us asking him to drive slower). We reached the city late at night, stayed at an inn and the next morning, drove to the back-waters where our REAL journey was to begin. As a kid, I dreamt about living on a house-boat, and lo, how many beautiful house-boats I saw! We rented a house-boat and then took a tour of it. The exterior had a lot of bamboo work on it which added to its beauty. The HOUSE had an open drawing room with a coffee-table and television, a bedroom with a nice window looking out to the backwaters with an attached bathroom, a wash area, and a kitchen. And we had two people travelling with us who were going to cook for us!
The boat started to move and as we travelled along, the beauty of Allepey with its backwaters and the majestic tall coconut trees was breath-taking! I couldn't decide if I wanted to catch the beautiful sight on camera or with my naked eye! Ashvath enjoyed what he was best at doing-sitting at the edge of the house-boat(it was safe with small walls) and playing with the water. We crossed the back-waters and then merged into what seemed like a large lake. We seemed to keep enjoying the scenery, and it was a couple of hours, before we stopped at the shore and saw a line of shops which seemed to sell all kinds of sea-food. My husband being a sea-food lover, selected the shrimp/fish that he liked the best , and the two people who were helping us, started to cook the dishes for us. Also, they were already cooking some yummy vegetarian dishes too. After they had done cooking, the boat was tied to a nice shady place, and we sat around at the coffee-table, and all the scrumptious dishes were brought to us, including but not limited to rice, shrimp, fried fish, sambar, rasam, beans, cabbage and papad. Began the feast , also simultaneously enjoying the scenic view with the boat dancing gently in the waters.
After we emptied the plates, we resumed our journey, and I retired to the bedroom to enjoy a small nap before I joined my husband and son again. We then slowly got back to the backwaters of Kumarakom where our boat finally stopped and our boat journey ended.
We then went to stay at this resort at Kumarakom. From our check-in point, we were taken by a small boat to this resort as the resort was mostly surrounded by water. Need I say what it looked like? Indeed the view was amazing, that it almost felt tranquilent. The building with its rooms was built in an L-shape looking out to the large lake, and the land in the front was structured like a park, with green lawns, haddocks, a swimming pool in the centre, and a small shelter meant to be a restaurant. Most of our day was spent in the lawn area, lying in the haddock and viewing the sea, taking a small walk. We had dinner in that out-door restaurant. We retired to bed that night, and the next morning, we left the place.
I was sad that we had to return, but also happy that I got to enjoy this visual treat of Allepey and Kumarakom!
I hope India is explored better by its natives. Not only would we get to know the beauty that the country has to offer, but it will be a great token to help improve tourism and hence the overall economy.

Dreamz Unlimited

I've always wanted to write a book..
I don't know when exactly the budding desire started to develop within me,
but the saddest part is that it still remains a desire and nothing fruitful has flown down from my thoughts to paper
There is a problem here..just a small one though..
What shall i write about?

Should i write a murder mystery like the ones by Christie, the queen of crimes? My detective would be a Portuguese called Shercule Hoirot and would have a square-shaped head very unlike Poirot's classic egg-shaped one.

What about a fast paced thriller on the likes of Sidney Sheldon? Something about how a woman rises from poverty to being the President of a powerful country? Would it make a racy thriller? Who knows, it might be made into a hollywood movie too..

No, let me try my hands on Romance, the favourite subject of any woman. A moving romantic tale that would even surpass the beautiful love story of Ayn Rand's "We the Living". Who can ever forget the unrequited and passionate love of Kira for Leo?

Come on, now..the latest hottie is Dan Brown. His meticulous research work on da Vinci and the Vatican was the secret of his success. Maybe I should choose a similar subject to work upon too. Would Van Gogh make an interesting topic? What about Michael Angelo?

As these crazy thoughts run through my head, I receive a sudden spark of enlightenment.

I realize that I could never become a writer (a good one at that) if I only wanted to imitate the works of great authors. In fact, that would be plagiarism if I was ethical enough to consider it.
All the above mentioned authors were deemed great not because of the way that words formed from their thoughts but because those thoughts occurred to them in the first place.
I also console myself that this is probably a commonplace problem of any amateur writer. And if i tried hard, my creativity would take over and my pen would start flowing.

I wait patiently for the day to happen

I've always wanted to write a book..
There's just this small problem..
What shall i write about?

Happy Dayz

When I turn to look back at my life, I'm amazed at the panoramic view that it's got to offer, the ups and downs, the twists and turns more thrilling than a novel of the same genre. Amongst all, what appears to me to be the days I cherish the most were my days at school, those childhood days.

As a child, I was always my parents' little princess, and I very well remember the few minutes before I would rush off to school every morning. My mother would be hurriedly feeding me breakfast, my father simultaneously helping me with my shoes, and me,in the midst of all the chaos,would be seriously engrossed in a text-book, without a care in the world. I remember this scene vividly like it happened not so long ago.

School was fun with a capital F. The most interesting period was inevitably the lunch-break(hee,hee). Juicy conversation would flow amongst a gang of five or six of us, and it always took the bell to remind us that in the midst of all this, lunch was mostly forgotten. We would gulp big mouthfuls to quickly complete it, but not too soon to escape the teacher who would enter the class and stare at us sternly. On top of this, the entire class would be giggling at us. We would red-facedly rush off to our seats, but were too thick-skinned not to mind repeating the same events the next day, and every other day to come.

We also did'nt mind some harmless teasing on teachers. There was one teacher who used the phrase "for example" very frequently. For example, if one had to say, "King Ashoka was a ruler of the Kalinga dynasty", she would say, "King ashoka,for example, was a ruler,for example,of the Kalinga dynasty". At a time when it was boring to listen to her lecture, we decided to count the number of times she used the phrase "for example". But we soon realized that it was a herculean task as it crossed fifty times in just five minutes. Hence, the idea was sadly given up.

There was this other teacher who had the stange habit of ending every sentence with the word "the". For example, if she had to ask "what are you doing?", she would instead ask,"what are you doing the?". At an age when the nuances of diplomacy were not understood, it was decided that one of us would ask her why she had this habit. Like oliver twist, it fell to me. I stood up proudly and daringly asked her, "Ma'm, why do you use the word 'the' at the end of every sentence?", but i can't detail here the chiding that followed and the advice that was given on good behaviour and discipline.

But, on a serious note, I simply loved my teachers who brought history alive, made mathematics fun and helped us conquer the english and tamil languages. This blog article is in fact an ode to my beloved teachers who not only instilled in me the quest for knowledge, but also moulded my personality and have made me into the person I am today. Kudos to Mrs.Mildred John, Sr.Annette, Ms.Sreeja, Mrs.Leela, Mrs.Padma ,Mrs.Jeeva, Ms.Padmini and others - I don't know if I will be able to meet them in person again (Mrs.Mildred John is no more with us in the physical sense), but these are the people who will always hold a special place in my heart, for eternity.

Those care-free, worry-free days at school were, without a doubt, in my life, the most happy days!!

i(my) Phone

When I received an iPhone as a birthday gift a few months ago, my joy knew no bounds. It became my favourite plaything for the next few days. But as with the shockingly predictable feature that's characteristic of any mobile phone user, I soon grew bored with my new toy. Yet, I thought I should list down the pros and cons of this gadget that initially inspired me loads.

THE TURN-ONS: (Later, I will tell you why I'm using this description for a phone)

1. The easy-to-use touch screen
2. I can access you tube,my e-mails and other favourite sites in a jiffy
3. It's got an amazing application store with hitherto unknown features(well,at least to me) like Urban spoon (where you shake your phone and it randomly selects a nearby restaurant for you to dine), mini piano, Shazam(the phone identifies music you hear on TV) & Hangman(a word game), to name a few from an ocean of applications.
4. I get to play sudoku without frantically searching for fresh newspapers all the time
5. the voice recorder provides excellent audibility


THE TURN-OFFS:

1. The phone is bulky
2. The appearance is nothing much to write about, and I have admired the sleeker nokia models a lot more
3. The pictures taken from the camera have poor clarity and resolution
4. There is no video recorder

Now, coming to why I used the terms turn-ons and turn-offs. That's because I always think that a mobile phone is like a woman(Or a man too, considering myself a feminist), something , that after a few months, you get bored with and invariably want to change. Now,that reminds me , "CHANGE" has become my latest favourite word, considering my latest fascination for this guy, Obama. I'm not an expert on his administrative policies, but the man undenyingly has loads of charisma and magnetism that is sure to bring him laurels in the future.

I'm always good at deviating from the main topic. But as I said, I'm bored with my phone and my eyes have already started roving to some of the funkier models that I see at the stores.

Now, I heard the latest blackberry storm is good. What say you?

Crossroads

I was admitted into the hospital for a few hours for some reason and it not being one of my best days, I just planned to spend it quietly in my cubicle. But I quickly learnt that it was not to be like that. My nurse barged in, vibrant and exuding positive energy. "Hi honey, I'm Sandra. How are you this morning? Shall i order some breakfast for you?" . Though she appeared middle aged, with her heavy framed glasses, braces and constant smile, I couldn't help being reminded of "Ugly Betty". I said stiffly "No thanks"(In other words, I meant "Please don't disturb me. I'm fine. And please don't honey me.) She seemed impervious to my attitude as she left saying "Call me if you need anything honey".

I thanked God and closed my eyes to go to blissful slumber. But it wasn't much time before she came back and enquired if everything was fine. I cursed the day being sometime in the thanksgiving weekend as the hospital looked almost uninhabited and I was one of the only two patients she had that day.I tried best to close the conversation only to lose poorly to someone who was impossible to quieten down. So I finally conceded that I would give in to her chatter but I would only be a passive listener. She enquired about the Mumbai terror attacks and this time, there was nothing that could stop me from detailing the events happening there.The conversation soon moved on to other topics without me being much aware of it. I don't know the exact moment when reluctance gave way to eagerness, but soon, I found myself discussing medicine, nursing, shopping , family and children with her. When she was called to attend the other patient for a short time, this time, to my surprise, I was reluctant to let her go. Our conversation still continued and when she commented, "You are a quiet young lady, aren't you?", I couldn't help telling her that I had talked a lot more that day than I usually do, to which she laughed mirthfully. Soon, it was time for me to check out and it was incredible to see how quickly the time had passed. It struck me that Sandra had not only succeeded to converse comfortably with me, but probably unknowingly even to her, she had erased the hostility and irritation that was present with me earlier that day.I realized that I had made a good friend in Sandra.

When it was time for me to leave, the introvert in me stood standing not knowing what to do, when Sandra took over and did the thing i too wanted to but could not bring myself to do it. She simply hugged me . I knew that for both of us, it had proved to be something more than the ordinary day.

I then turned around and walked without looking back , at the same time realizing that my heart was doing a little squeeze as I did so.

In the journey of life, sometimes, someone walks into our lives from nowhere, creates a special bond with us, but may have to leave soon to continue his or her own journey, just like two intersecting roads that have to invariably diverge after a course of time. In that case, instead of repenting their loss, it is best to thank God not only for creating such beautiful moments in our lives but also because he has created many synapses in our brain, called memories, so that we can preserve, recollect and cherish those special moments for eternity.(well, at least until one gets afflicted with Alzheimer's disease).

Yes, I knew I would miss Sandra but I was also happy that I had met her for she had definitely made a difference to my life. I know I will always cherish our bond of friendship. As I said, memories are enough.