The coats are off

...No really, they are! Spring is peeking through the blue-greyish skies and it's going to be here any day now

First of all my apologies to all my readers...yes, all 5 of you (one of them is my wife) for not writing all these days. I was dormant for the winters - in a state of minimal metabolic activity

I was sleeping in 'til 11 in the morning and going to work without brushing my hair. And yes, I am talking about weekdays. Weekends were even worse - I wouldn't even get up all day, or even if I did, that would be for short intervals of heavy Indian meals which would put me back to sleep

Sometimes I wonder, what if sleep was the 'normal' way of life. Who knows, may be we are supposed to keep our eyes shut for the most part and dream all day. And opening the eye is actually the resting cycle - just to glance at the world around...as if it were a dream...But that only I wonder..haven't proved yet

So, let this post be the ice-breaker of my lull, and like I was saying throw the dang-on coats off, and show the bright (In the case of guys, read 'white') clothes off and bring the shapely bodies out (again for guys, read 'lipid tires around waist line')

Speaking of clothes, I was in the common laundry in our aparment building, trying to find an empty dryer for the clothes. But all the dryers were full - churning heavily and smoking the clothes within..So I did what you do when you see all the dryers full

I went home to come back in about 15 minutes. When I came back, there were 2 empty! And they seemed like having stopped for 5 minutes now. But no one to claim the clothes..So I did what you do when you see dried laundry and no one to claim

I went home to come back in about 15 minutes. When I came back, there was still no one to claim the laundry! So I did what you'd do...you know..the throw-out. I opened the dryers one by one, and emptied them flat on a side-table

Now, here's a moment when you're most vulnerable in whole life - well, apart from the one when you are a kid peeing on the side of a highway and you fear someone will jump out of the bushes

So, in this throw-out moment, you really want to be as quick as possible, as you don't want to be seen doing this. You don't mind explaining to someone later, that you took their laundry out because they didn't show up. But you don't want to be caught doing that! So, you're quick. But you also don't want to haste it so much that the landry falls on the floor while you're throwing it out

And even if something falls down, you scan the floor quickly to see what actually fell off - coz you don't want someone entring the scene when you're picking their red polka-dot underwear from the floor!

But in my case nothing happened that would make anyone doubt my integrity and I managed to load my clothes in and start the dryers

And since I would not need my woolens for at least 9 months now, I smoked them dry and packed them tight in my suitcases - also hoping that that will give my hands some free air between my fingers and my head some new thoughts to keep this blog running

And give my readers, yes all 4 of you (my wife just read what I was typing and balied out of the group) more reasons to love yours truly...

Dad's Home Alone - part 1

Do you remember when you were younger, and mom used to say 'your dad was once on a 6 months trip from work, and I managed it single-handedly' you thought - 'Oh! poor thing! Six months is a long time. How did she manage?'

Yeah...and you never asked dad about his story, did you? Tell you what, I am living dad's side of the story these days. I am living alone for some time - my wife and daughter are off to India for an extended vacation

Naturally, the worst part of living alone starts when you come home. There's always that smell of emptyness in the apartment. You know the one I am talking about? The kind that you get when you first moved in the apartment

Another change you notice is the voice messages. Since your wife and kid are gone, your voice message reduce to only one-third of what they used to be. And we all used to get about 2 message per day. That leaves me with only (do the math) 0.66 message per day

Next comes the laundry! Ish!! Its amazing how soon you run out of clean clothes when you're alone. I mean if anything you should be able to hold out your clean clothes for longer, since there are less people around you now. Especially the ones that like to hug you and drool all over you. Ahem! I meant the baby, of course

One thing that surprisingly doesn't change is the amount of dishes you have to do. No matter how many people live in a house, the dishes are bound to get dirty at the same rate. You look at them and ask yourself: "Are there ghosts cooking at home when I am not home?". Because there's actually not that much food around - so, there's got to be a parallel party going on when you are not home

Another thing about living alone is that your life is no longer consistent. Things come as some sort of spurts to you. A lot of ups and downs:

For instance, there would be days or weeks straight when you'd not clean your bathroom, or leave your shoes on the dining table or just walk out of your clothes when you come home and (thankfully) get into them right before leaving

But there will be these occasional 'cleaning-spurts' when you want to clean everything in the house. You'll even notice the slightest stain on the coffee-table or dust on the TV screen. I even find myself wiping the the cushions on the sofa and turning them upside down. Even the thinnest piece of hair in the bathroom catches my eye and I suck it up (in the vacuum cleaner that is)

Or, 'cooking-spurts' when you'd suddenly feel like renouncing the regular-crust pizza and breakfast buffet in the neigborhood place, and feel a strong urge to cook a full 3 course meal for lunch and that too from scratch. 'Scratch' by the way is the most disturbing used word in this context. I mean, think of the first humanly act that comes to your mind when you think 'scratch' and then people brag about how they made meals from it!

Nevertheless, I have had incidents when I made tomato-soup, pakoda-curry with rice and chilled rice-pudding all from scratch! These by the way, are things I didn't even know how to spell before!

The funniest was the 'ironing spurt' when I caught up in the idea that I haven't ironed my clothes in a long time and I actually steam-pressed all cottons and silks from my wardrobe. 'Silk' here refers to the finest underwear, of course - a topic that's worth another post - more on which later

So, here I go on with my single-husband-single-dad oddyssey these days and I'll keep you posted with my findings, my friends

as always, Yours Truly

बहुरि करैगा कब?

Buzz, Buzz...

Today, I woke up to a reminder ring on my cell phone that read this line.

A line from a famous verse (doha) from Kabir. It means when will you do Bahuri - 'the work'. The 'work' here of course doesn't refer to daily chores that we do day-in and day-out.

I added this reminder for daily (5:30 am) to remind me of meditation. But alas! Ever since I added this, I've not been able to meditate.

But I think, is that a matter of worry? Not meditating? Worry, no! Then I'll be defeating the whole purpose of meditation - the middle path. I will be deviating from the equanimous condition of the mind. Not that I am always in an equanimous condition (I am mostly very far from that). But to add up to the deviation due to not being able to meditate, is no good either.

I read in some question/answer forum the other day, a gentleman was asking whether being able to 'successfully' meditate should be our goal. And the replier (one great meditator himself, I believe) replied that attaching success or failure to meditation is overloading it with impurities. Then you're again falling into the result-oriented 'karma'. Not that result-orientation is bad, its required in our daily-chores. But not for 'Bahuri'. He also suggested that by doing so, the meditation will be nothing more than an egotrip - another 'accomplishment' in our life. And we'll be judging our results by success/failure in that accomplishment.

I liked that argument. Of course it favors my morning sleep. Or does it? Well there's a subtle difference between worrying about not meditating and being aware of not meditating. The former as I said, leads you away from the middle path of meditation. The latter, however leads you to think, 'well, I just deviated from my meditation, let me do it now' - just a reminder call...

..But the key here, my friends is, when we will listen to this reminder call. Or shall we just click that 'snooze' button on the cellphone, and pull that blanket a little higher?