Dialogue – Noyonika with her Tatha

Tatha: Noyonika, will you give me a lollipop?

Nika: Tatha, give me money!!

<context> We taught N how to buy a lollipop. “Nika give shopkeeper money, Shopkeeper give Nika lollipop.” </context>

Lullaby – Go to sleep my baby

Go to sleep my baby, baby
Close your pretty eyes
Angels are above you
Peeping through the skies

The great big moon is shining, shining
The stars begin to peep,
It’s time to go to sleep my baby
Go to sleep, my baby.

Deuta & the Devil

Noyonika calls me Deuta – at least that’s what K has been trying to teach her.

Deuta means Dad in Assamese; I’m sure Di-dhi, Te-tah and Thi-thi don’t mean anything in any language, but those are approximations of what Noyonika actually says!

(OK, I admit it - maybe she’s just making noises and not actually calling me!).

Now, I just call her the Devil. She’s become really bratty & mischievous – she points at things & screams at the top of her voice to indicate she wants it (mostly at food!), she switches on the music player and dances to the music (yes – really!) and she beats K & me if she doesn’t get what she wants (I’m scared of her punches!).

So, here are two pics of Deuta & the Devil – thanks to Bodhi for excellent photos, taken during our recent Phoenix trip.

Walking

Imagine if the small things, the things we take for granted each day, were magical once more!

Take walking, for instance. Something so natural that it doesn’t even cross my mind – but each time she walks, it is a joyous jaunt for Noyonika (who has just started walking about more).

Stepping, swaying, walking, weaving, bobbing, bouncing - step after step, each one its own little adventure, filled with mystery for the walker (does the left leg alternate with the right, or can I do this just with my left leg alone?!) and the walkee (there she falls, no, just a sway, ah now, she going to bump her head, wow, escaped, she’ll surely trip over her head now, nope, got lucky, there she comes for the final stretch, it should be easy, ohhh!).

And when she does make the entire 10 foot hike, the smile of accomplishment on her face & the squeal of joy – simply the most precious thing in the world.

Work hard & have fun!

I haven’t posted anything in 3 months now & haven’t really posted anything regularly since November ‘07.

Mostly, I think it’s because of being pre-occupied & in gloom over how I’m not having a good year at work (at least in my mind!).

I was talking to K about this the other day – about how things get into a virtuous cycle when you put in the effort (you work hard, you learn more, people come to you as the expert, your pride in work grows, your role increases, you work hard and so on…).

However, since Noyonika was born, spending time with her & Kanchuki was more important to me than working hard, and that virtuous cycle didn’t get set up at work. Now, dont imagine for a moment that I would have rather worked hard than spend time with family. Absolutely NOT – every moment with Noyonika & K is precious to me.

However, things sometime dont play out the way you’d like them to. What I found was that by not working hard, while I had more time to spend with Noyonika & K, I wasnt able to spend the time with a carefree mind – unresolved & unattended items from work stayed on my mind, and I just wasnt myself. I was just cranky & sullen! It turned out that the days I worked hard, I spent less time with Noyonika & K, but I was happy & was fun to be around… what a paradox!

Anyway, for now I’ve decided to going back to working really hard… it may mean less time at home, but at least I wont be a wet blanket when I’m around the people I love the most! And you never know – I may just end up blogging more as well (who knows what 2nd order effects working hard may have?!)

 

 

How to raise a baby…

From Aswin, really funny: http://www.makememinimal.com/2008/instrucciones-para-cuidar-un-bebe/

A mirror

Well-fed and warm. Sipping on coffee.
Decades have passed since I felt any pain,
Or seen the sunken cheeks of penury in my mirror.
Stirred by no emotion, no woe weighs my mind.

Well-loved and cared for. Contented.
I sit in happy chair, scratching pen on paper,
Coaxing tales of passion and courage, or even a poorer harsh reality
to flow in words of Indigo, like a gushing stream from a broken dam.

The words, pearls! The language, exquisite!
The pace is a-trot, the description, a picture.
Prose and dialog intertwined, married to be one.
But story, sorry story. Nothing wrong, nothing right. A mirror.

Step-by-logical-step. I try again. And again.
Colorful, beautifully parceled sawdust, each time.
No muse nor magic helps. I look to the mirror and she says,
“A gelded mind fills but not even a gilded pen.”

Hawai’i photos

Kanchuki, Noyonika & I went to Hawai’i for 9 days… photos at: http://flickr.com/photos/appapappa/sets/72157603495042365/

My library

I really like LibraryThing.com – here’s my library of books at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/appa

3 small posts about Noyonika

Its been a while since I posted about how Noyonika is doing – she’s grown a lot in the last few months, started to babble multi-syllable nonsense (graduating from single syllable nonsense) and grins foolishly a lot. For the last couple of days she’s been having a terrible cough, which the Dr.’s say is Brochitis – Kanchuki & I are feeling down in the dumps since she’s been coughing for a while, but we didn’t take her to the Dr., as she seemed so happy & was eating normally and was behaving like her usual self every other way. 

Anyway, here’s 3 different small posts about her -

Appa taking care of X

Kanchuki was on a business trip last week for 3 days to San Diego, and so I got to take care of X by myself for 3 days – it was a lot of fun, since my baby daughter is really easy to take care of.

The first day went perfect – dropped her off at her daycare, picked her up in the evening, fed her cereal/milk and put her to bed. But then she woke up at 5:15 in the morning and kept looking for her Ma with a puzzled expression on her face – she played till 9:00 in the morning with me happily, I guess assuming that her mom was just out somewhere.

On day two, I picked her up early from daycare and we went out together – there’s nothing like a baby to draw women to talk to you & so me and my accessory went out to Redmond Town Center and hung about in a coffee shop. Now, my daughter clearly loves attention (just like her mom! ) – she gives the most winning smiles to complete strangers, and laughs and giggles at them too! So, the two of us ended up getting a fair share of coo’s & smiles and “Oh, she’s beautiful, how old is she?!”’s. She went to bed late on day 2 and woke up early too – I guess she was missing K by now.

Day 3 was quiet – dropped her at daycare, picked her up and she went to bed early since she hadn’t slept much the night before. Kanchuki returned at 10:00pm that night and later when X woke up she was all grins to see her Ma by her side again!

All in all, it was easy – Kongkona (Kanchuki’s sister) was the most worried, followed by the grandparents, but then they don’t know what a fabulous dad I really am

X’s report card!

X got her first report card from the daycare – it was so amusing. I’ve always been telling K that when she goes to real school, the thing I want most is for her is for her to flunk every subject and be the terror of the school. Now, back to her report card – it’s divided into different sections & she gets a grade for each section, followed by overall comments from the teacher – this is how she did:

• Social/Emotional:
  • Evident/Demonstrates consistently – smiles frequently, resists toy pull
  • Needs more development – works for toy out of reach, plays peek-a-boo, plays pat-a-cake, drinks from cup
•  Physical:
  • Evident/Demonstrates consistently – Follows objects with eyes, has head control, grasps rattle, reaches, turns over, sits on her own, has thumb-finger grasp
  • Needs more development – feeds self finger foods, pulls up and stands on her own
•  Intellectual:
  • Evident/Demonstrates consistently: Discovers hands, laughs, coos, babbles, responds to voices
  • Needs more development: Responds to different noises, shows interest in different sounds/music
•  Comments from teacher: Noyonika has grown so much! She moves herself on the floor and is learning everyday…

Well, from how she’s doing – she doesnt look like she’s on track to become the terror of the school & flunking her grades !

Baby names

Of course all babies get their share of names they get called by. Kanchuki is especially notorious at coming up with different names for X, and I’m not much better – so our daughter is always confused since she’s never called by the same names twice. Also, the mood determines what name is used – is she playful, sleepy, naughty, being bad or just wanting some attention determines the name she is called by… here’s a smattering of baby names X is a.k.a – Tatumi, Tatuma, Dhanuma, Dhanoosh, Putuki, Katuma, Majaan, Jaanjoni, Putuka, Munuka, Kuttu, Kuttuka – these are her “normal” names. Her obscure names include – PV Narasimha Rao (when she finishes her dinner and pouts in satisfaction!), Mr. Jiggy (origin unknown), and the secret GGRKB (she’d die of shame if the name were ever made public!)

X in Brobdingnag

X in Brobdingnag

Originally uploaded by appapappa

Sleepy babies

Sleepy babies

Originally uploaded by appapappa

A bath in the sink

A bath in the sink

Originally uploaded by appapappa

Look at this little monkey having a bath in the sink!

X in Red Mill Burgers

X in Red Mill Burgers

Originally uploaded by appapappa

Red Mill Burgers has the best veggie burger in Seattle!

Two beautiful women

Two beautiful women

Originally uploaded by appapappa

Kanchuki & Noyonika at Phinney Ridge on a beautiful sunny day

Back & Defn.: mid-life crisis

I’ve been really busy working on this project for the last few months – it’s been keeping me away from K&X too long, working on…. well, work.

But the project is now coming to an end, and I’m looking forward to the next few months: with things slowing down I can get back to the things I find easier & more enjoyable at work – working closer with people & working on research & planning. Also, vacation time is coming up with Thanksgiving & Christmas – and I’m looking forward to the break, when I can spend time with X, read and perhaps blog more regularly!

X is growing up – she’s almost 7 months old now, can sit on her own (once sat up) & plays peek-a-boo. Will post pictures soon.

OK, now for the 2nd part of the post title (and this is in no way a reflection of where I am) – I came up with this definition of mid-life crisis that I thought you’d enjoy – “A mid-life crisis is when you stop looking for the life and start looking for a life”.

Johnson’s baby shampoo

This is a photo of me with Akka, my grandma. She passed away last year, at the grandold age of 90-something. She was one of my favorite people – kind, mischievous and full of laughter.

Now, nostalgia is a funny thing - Akka always used Johnson’s baby shampoo to wash her hair; now, when I give X a bath and I smell her hair, it brings back to me my fondest memories of Akka (silly stories, tomato rasam & her famous “healthy wealthy” blessing whenever anyone would leave home ).

Noyonika 001

Noyonika 001

Originally uploaded by appapappa

My lil tennis star. K & I have been going for tennis lessons & playing a lot of tennis – we try and take her along, so she can learn & better us in a few years .

OK, I know that sounds just like a pushy parent, and that’s not me, so I’m going to stop!

My birthday

My birthday

Originally uploaded by appapappa

Happy birthday – X was looking very sweet in her yellow hat!

At Ballard locks

At Ballard locks

Originally uploaded by appapappa

K, X, me at Ballard locks

Dinner time

Dinner time

Originally uploaded by appapappa

So, what should I have for dinner? (near Mt. St. Helens, 9/1)

Sitting X

Sitting X

Originally uploaded by appapappa

When made to sit, she wobbles like jelly and then falls over in about 30 seconds!

Photo shoot!

Photos from the photo shoot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/appapappa/sets/72157601658473203/

Better link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/appapappa/show/

K gets her birthday gift – finally!

Kanchuki opening her Bday gift #2

Originally uploaded by appapappa

Only 9 weeks after the event, K finally got her birthday gift from me.

As usual, the gift was a technology thing (that I can use) – last year it was the iPod, this year its a Fujifilm Finepix S700 camera for her to take photos of X with.

Now that I’ve swiftly addressed the small pending issue of the birthday gift, I can move on to looking for the 10 week delayed anniversary gift

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty

Originally uploaded by appapappa

Xunjoni is 4 months old today. She is able to sit up with a little bit of help, she has started eating rice powder with milk & makes about 25 different distinct sounds from pig to cow to wailing baby.

Now, I’m not a gusher, a “OhmyGodshesbeautiful”‘er – a balanced, deliberate, reasonable engineer am I.

But then, I didn’t know what it meant to be a father.

Oh my God, she’s beautiful.

Ma, K & a wailing X!

Ma, K & a wailing X!

Originally uploaded by appapappa

Photo of ma, K & a wailing X at Juanita Bay park. It was getting to be evening & X was getting sleepy and cranky

Appapappa & X

Appapappa & X

Originally uploaded by appapappa

There is nothing more happily delightful than to hold a warm, cuddly and sleepy baby and take a nap….

Magnets

My 4-month old girl is fascinated with magnets – the kind that you stick on the fridge. It’s quite amazing – you pick her up and show her these magnets, and she’ll immediately start to smile an extremely foolish smile and start to go “ga-ga-agoo-ga”. How can I know its magnets in general and not a particular magnet? And how do I know its not the fridge?

Well, I’ve checked - She liked the magnets at Charu’s house too & smiled even when I got the magnets off the fridge and showed them to her. The last thing to do in these experiments is to check whether other 4-month old babies like magnets too – but then, why would I want to find that out?

Here is a photo of X sitting in my chair quite contentedly:

Thumb-sucking in 5 easy steps

The Drool & the Dribble

If I ever were to open a pub, I’d name it “The Drool & the Dribble”, after my sweet little baby girl:

Hush hush and on the Q.T

The mom & baby are back in Seattle. Being superstitious, it was all hush hush and on the Q.T this time – I decided not to tell anyone till they actually made it all the way back home this time around!

They’re back now – X has grown a lot, she’s become twice as tall (long?) as when I saw her last. Pictures & more posts coming…

3 [different] things

First: Yuki sent me a link to this absolutely hilarious Japanese TV show at: http://www.glumbert.com/media/japtetris  (Dipta will especially enjoy this)

Second: I’m reading this (travel?) book called ‘A. A. Gill is away‘, which is turning out to be quite a fun read. Anyway, he starts the book with this this paragraph:

“You know that science fiction isn’t really about the future, it’s all about the week it was written. Nothing dates like science fiction. And history isn’t in the past, it’s the prophecy and geography of tomorrow, and parables, they aren’t about Arabs. Well, travel writing isn’t really an exploration of where you’ve been, so much as an explanation of where you’ve come from. All journeys end up at the same address. Back home. Travelers don’t write for the people they visit, but for the people they’ve left behind.”

(italics are mine). That caught my eye. Because all the blogging I do is really for the people I’ve left behind, and not really for the people I’m visiting.

Third: Rahul (with his wife & their daughter, Tia)  had gone home to meet Kanchuki a few days ago at my home in Mumbai & sent me this email, which I’m re-producing here without his permission! Watch out people, I’m the kind of person who may copy your email on to your blog… . Anyway, here’s what Rahul said, something in it that told me that others would like to read this too… (xunjoni of course is our pet name for noyonika )

“met k and x yday.. and your mom and mom-in-law. your dad was asleep by the time we reached, took us two hours to drive! x was funny.. she was quiet and staring over her mom’s shoulder for a bit.. and then was being rocked.. really rocked.. to silence and sleep in the cloth (some old sari of your mom’s) tied to the chain hanging from the ceiling. your mom was doing the rocking really expertly, said you and your bro also got the same treatment. but it was thrilling to watch.. the swinging was equivalent to us being flung from one end of a room to another really violently, it’s funny how babies sleep to that kind of heavy duty stuff. rocked tia more violently tonight.

first official monsoon rains happened last night as well. kanchuki and xunjoni must be at the airport now. kanchuki was looking cool and stoic as always.. said as much to jayati, i’m always surprised by the kind of extreme adventures she talks about (every nite colic, visa in cal, looking for medicine late nite in cal etc.) and how calmly she talks about them.”

Go west [more fun with circles]

I realized that I had a lot of fun in my previous post with circles – it really captured what I wanted to say well, without requiring me to draw (AKB of course knows how good I am at drawing!).

Now, one thing that I’ve been wrestling with internally is the whole thing about working in the US. I had a long post about a year ago (it’s a private post now – that should pique your curiousity) about what it means to live in the US (this was 6 months after we moved).

I’ve continued to think about that post & what it means to me when I say I want to return to India after a few years – I’m definitely having fun & doing great work here, but I do miss family & friends there. Also, I often meet people who have been in the US for 10 years, have done well by the conventional metrics of success and really, really want to return now – but they have kids in school now, and thats a problem.

Thought I’d try and capture all of this in another ‘circles’ post, see below. Named the post ‘Go west’ after that (!) awesome Pet Shop Boys number

Tanhayee

Tempting fate: a bad turn :(

Down. Kanchuki called from the airport a few hours ago. Her, her mothers & the babies passports were stolen in Mumbai airport. Confused, and sad: don’t know how long it’ll take to get things sorted out and for them to come home, it may be a month?

I’d like to be there with them when they’re confused too, with my & her parents worried.

Maybe I should go home for a week to help sort things out…

Guess who’s coming home tomorrow?

Yep, it is Kanchuki & Noyonika!

 Excitement is so funny - it takes me back to being  a little boy in shorts, running around confused but happy, unable to contain what I feel inside a body that’s too small for the feeling

I’ve cleaned the house & changed a lot inside to make it feel more happy. Golu & Charu plan to do up one of the rooms as a welcome… they initially were threatening to paint a room pink, but I think I’ve convinced them to do something more palatable to my taste – maybe balloons.

The last of the waiting has begun… I’ll probably be a more active writer from tomorrow, because I’ll have more content!

Interesting links / things

This one of those posts which is just many intersting links / things, so lets get started:

1. I saw this tag-line for a vehicle towing company which made me laugh out loud: “We don’t want an arm & a leg, only your tows”
2. Rahul sent me this link on “How not to use powerpoint” which I really enjoyed: http://www.davidairey.com/how-not-to-use-powerpoint/
3. My previous manager, who is into comics loaned me Akira which was great – I’ve never really read much manga before, and I enjoyed it so much – its like a movie.
4. Space Bar mentioned me for perspective in her post here: http://spaniardintheworks.blogspot.com/: that’s it, now I’ve got to find something to say that’s really dumb & shallow
5. I got invited to the private Beta of Spock (www.spock.com) and am looking to check it out, its supposed to be a very neat personal search engine… I really like their logo too!

The two lives hypothesis

You know the story of the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Well, I have two lives too – (what I like to believe are) my mercurial, creative India self and my steady, hard-working America self.

Having two lives that are so opposing each other is a problem, because whenever you get a compliment you cringe. “What, me, hard-working? No way – that’s how I used to sarcastically compliment the dull managers I used to have in my earlier job!”.

Now all this is still bearable if indeed my two lives hypothesis is true. But what could be worse is that this is tied to age – what horror! If at the age of 60 I am 98% planning and 2% creative, what a loss it will be to humanity! [see that wink, that's my mercurial self talking - writing this in brackets of course is me, Mr. Steady]

The ironic curse that most of us seem to carry is that as we grow older, we grow more like our parents. One day, you look in your reflection and see that for all the struggling to be your own person, an individual with his own interesting and different character, you mostly have just retraced your parents well-trodden paths. This only causes me to think about all those skeletons in my closet, and wonder about all the mischief my parents must have been  upto! (So here’s a tip for the kids reading this – now you know why its important to like your girlfriends parents. Because that’s whom you’re going to be living with 30 years from now )

Living this contradiction is a very strange experience. For me (and the only place I’ll freely admit it is here), the greatest compliment (the one that makes me happy inside and makes me feel pride) is to tell me that I’m a really good engineer. But ouch, that hurts – its everything that I never wanted to be. I’d much rather be a writer, a poet, a mathematian, someone applauded purely for their ideas (and who doesn’t have to do a shred of real work!). A good engineer is what my father is, what my uncles are. That cant be me now – please!

Related, I was reading “Complications” by Atul Gawande - it’s a great book & you must read it if you haven’t, check out the essays on his site. The interesting comment he made there (to paraphrase loosely) was that surgeons are recruited much more for their patience / hard-working nature than for their skill or talent. He says “the ability to practice and learn may be the greatest skill in itself”.

Unfortunately (Mr. Mercury speaking), I’m finding this to be true – I used to be purely an ‘ideas man’, someone who could come up with 10 ideas for any problem. Now I’m more and more a planner – “Lets make a schedule and get all the work-items on it”, yow!

Now – that’s enough time spent blogging, I’ve got to go and clean the car, it’s the next thing on my to-do list ;-)

Long time, no post

Long time, no post – why? Well, the mom & the baby aren’t here yet… so there isn’t much fodder for the postman to deliver (that’s called mixing metaphors ). 

They’re getting back on the 16th and I’m dying to see them both! I just have to live for now with the whines, whimpers and bawling I get to hear over the phone (the babies, not the moms ).

 Anyway, it was Kanchuki’s birthday today – so Happy Birthday, Kanchuki mom!

Having the baby in India, part II (collage)

Next person who asks the question – “Yeah, sure – so you were going fly all these folks down to Seattle, right? (and I’m talking especially about the 20 women in the centerpiece )”

Tech: 13-year old CEO :)

Check it out at http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/19/elementeos-13-year-old-ceo-highlight-of-tiecon/. Definitely check out the video, very cool.

Twins

We have twins. I didn’t know this – and its been over a month! I started suspecting this only when I repeatedly heard Kanchuki make these contradictory statements:

• “Your baby cries all the time! She is cranky always and doesn’t sleep!”
• “My baby is such a sweetheart, she is so lovable!”

My brain worked through this puzzle and arrived at the conclusion – we have twins!!

Here they are, getting a massage:

Angel baby

 

Evil baby

Having the baby in India & foolishness

People have broadly fallen into two camps when we said that we’re having the baby in India.

There were those who expressed incredulity at our stupidity and our lack of love for our child – how could we throw away the option of a US citizenship for the baby? (not to mention the superior postnatal care in the US).

Then there were those who expressed happiness at our patriotism and our love for all things Indian – how could we even contemplate having our baby in that morally decrepit country? (not to mention the superior postnatal care in India).

Now, Kanchuki & I view both of these opinions as slander – they make us sound like intelligent planners. In all ways, it was a foolish decision – in my opinion, the best kind of decision-making:

<conversation begin>

K: I’d like to be at home when the baby is born.

A: OK, sound good! I’ll get to eat luchi & roshogullas!!

<conversation end>

Amongst other definitions, Answers.com defines a fool as:

1. One who acts unwisely on a given occasion.
2. A member of a royal or noble household who provided entertainment, as with jokes or antics; a jester.
3. One who subverts convention or orthodoxy or varies from social conformity in order to reveal spiritual or moral truth.

That sounds a lot like what I think of myself!

In my mind, there is too much time and energy spent on analysis and optimizations in planning for an (unknown) future. Sure, many people who do this are successful by the conventional metrics of money in the bank and a 4-bed/4-bath town-home in suburbia.

While I may never have either of these, I am not tied down to any place, any politics or any purpose, and am not a slave to anyone but my fancy. I work because I enjoy what I do. I dont have a loan. I spend endless hours sleeping, eating and talking nonsense with my beautiful wife.

In Walden, a particular example that Thoreau gives struck me as being apt. To paraphrase badly, he asks: “Who traveled faster? The man who took a hour long bus ride to town or a man who walked 6 hours into town?” The answer of course, is the man who walked 6 hours into town – the man who took the bus-ride had to work 8 hours to earn the money to pay for the bus ticket, and so the total time spent in getting to town was less for the man who walked.

So, to return to why we had the baby in India – it is because we’re foolish parents who love our beautiful baby with our baby with our big foolish hearts.

Happy mothers day, and other notes

First, Happy Mothers Day to my wife (who sweetly called up to remind me that it was her first mothers day ) & to all the mom bloggers out there.

Second, MadMomma & SpaceBar – K & I really liked the gifts you got for Noyonika. MadMomma, the payals were specially very pretty! Of course, its a different matter that I’m now at the bottom of the hierarchy for gifts – even K occassionally manages to get the throw-away gift on the new mother sentiment, but I’m having to reconcile myself to a life of frumpy darned clothes, endlessly re-thumbed books and scratchy CDs. Yeah OK, so the baby is a beautiful gift – but come on people, nobody gifts gifts to a gift! Send them my way instead

Third, I’m traveling back to Seattle on the 15th of May. I am currently in Mumbai, blogging from a 28.8 Kbps dial-up connection from home. I’ll be getting back and catching up with work, cleaning out the mouldy fridge and watering my wifes precious plants – so, this blog is likely to have little chatter for a week.

I loved every moment of being back home in India – its the people here that make it so great to be back.

A confession, and a riddle

Growing up as a boy with no sisters, living mostly in my own imaginary world, I didn’t realize for the longest time that girls pooped or farted.

Such biological inconveniences were neccessary for us imperfect creatures, but how could one imagine that pretty girl with the pig-tails needing to fart? Or that angelic girl with the sparkling eyes having to take a poop? Of course there were the girls bathrooms, I knew that - but surely that was where they went to powder their faces.

Of course, eventually, some girl broke my heart. I’m sure that I initially was in denial – I must have thought that it was a boy wearing a skirt, something more believable than the alternative.

Finally the unpleasant, and often noisome, truth sunk in.

Later when I watched the X-Files and saw Agent Mulder and Sculley’s shocked expressions when they repeatedly found the truth out there, I imagined thats how I looked when I started to believe (though I didnt want to).

Now, of course, my little girl pooping and farting is routine – amusing and exasperating the first 10 days, and barely causing mention now.

If it doesnt happen, it causes us worry – and when it finally does it causes us relief. What’s the ‘it’ I’m referring to? UOEAI, of course.

What’s UOEAI? I bet my good friend DKC can tell you

A free diaper for the first reply with the right answer…

Noyonika is 1 month old!

Noyonika is 1 month old today. There will be naam (prayers where one chants the various names of God, usually Krishna/Visnu) at Kanchuki’s house, with various relatives coming home for the event.

I wish I could be there – N* has doubled in age since I saw her last! I’m hoping Kanchuki will send me at least 1 picture of Noyonika to post here and will not hoard all the photos for her own blog

That wonderful mom/baby relationship…

(from www.daddytypes.com)

The passport

We need to get a passport for our 20 day old baby so she can go back with us to Seattle (”one more wail, and I’m not filing your passport papers!!”). Two things I found amusing in the experience:

First, getting a photo of a baby with both eyes open, both ears showing and a smile is impossible. Below are photos of the first attempt, and then the final shot for her passport. She’ll have to live with that grumpy expression in her passport till the age of 5.

First attempt:

 

Final shot:

 

Second, our passport application includes a letter attested by a government official that states:

“This is to certify that Kum. Noyonika Arun, daughter of Shri Arun Rajappa and Shrimati Kanchuki Sarma of Guwahati, age 20 days, whose personal particulars are given below has good moral character and reputation and that after having read provisions of Section 6(2) of the Passports Act, 1967, I can certify that these provisions are not attracted in the case of this application and I, recommend the issue of an Indian Passport to her.”

No place to call home

I come from a line of disgruntled vagabonds on my father’s side.

My grandfather moved across Tiruvannamalai, Madras, Delhi, Trichy, Madurai and Mumbai in the first half of the twentieth century.

My father (besides accompanying his parents across the country as a child) stayed in Madras, worked for a while in Guwahati, studied and worked for 9 years in USA, returned to India, got married, worked in Iran for 4 years and then moved to Bangalore. Through his work he has traveled to more than fifty countries – from Azerbaijan to Moldova to Zimbabwe.

It didn’t stop there though, and so I grew up in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai and again Delhi through school. I then worked in Bangalore and Hyderabad, before moving to the US two years ago.

As an apprentice vagabond, I’ve found it hard to answer the question “So, where are you from?”

I’ve tried saying Mumbai (where my parents have deigned to live for the last 10 years), but that doesn’t fit, for I haven’t lived there for more than a year. I’ve tried saying Tamil Nadu, but that’s a blatant lie, for I’ve never lived in any part of that state (though I can trace my roots to it). I’ve tried casually waving the question off, saying “Oh, from all over India – I’ve grown up in different parts of the country” – but that just left me feeling as though I didn’t have an answer to the question. The city I’ve stayed the longest in, Delhi, is the city where I have no family and very few friends.

My wife however is from a large family that has stayed for the longest time in the same place, in Guwahati. Similarly, my mother grew up in Coimbatore with her parents and sisters, and has nieces and nephews there now. I’m envious of how when you ask them “Where is home”, pat comes the answer.

Now, before proceeding, I’d like to disabuse you of a few notions you may have:

1. That vagabonds are cheery and happy people: the desire to wander comes from discontentment in the present circumstances. Feeling that we could have better is what prompts us to move. The most positive adjective for us is that we’re optimistic, but by no stretch of imagination are we cheery.
2. That for vagabonds, moving to a new place is a conscious decision: Vagabonds are cursed with having to move to a new place every so often. Usually, the discontentment with the current place is sudden and once the ball has been set rolling, we try to consciously justify the move. But in reality, we’re just tapping our feet to the beating of a drum from above.
3. That vagabonds like moving, and are flitty creatures always ready with packed bags: This is very untrue. Vagabonds hate packing and moving. As a group, they like spending a lot of time inside their present homes and don’t like taking holidays. When the time comes to move, the vagabond is usually the unhappiest person. So, spotting a vagabond is hard – they are well disguised, and can easily pass off as pillars of the community and champions of solidarity.
4. That you never know where a vagabond is going to be the next day: This is mostly untrue. We usually stay at one place at least for 2 to 5 years, going through the motions of setting up a home and becoming part of the community. In all outward appearances, we seem like we could stay there forever. People count on us as the dependable lighthouse in a sea of changing faces. And then, the cursed ticket comes calling, and you have to move.

So what is it I dislike about being a vagabond? That while I feel fondly towards my cousins on my mother’s side, I’m not part of their daily problems and cheers and will remain an outsider (at least in my own mind). That I can’t abuse in my mother-tongue because I’ve learnt the language from my mother, and have spoken it only at home. That I don’t feel passionately about Rajnikanth, the political rivalry between Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi, the unquestionable supremacy of Carnatic music or the health-benefits of thair sadam (curd rice). That in being secular, non-partisan, unbiased and politically correct, I am also quite uninteresting. That I have no place to call home.

The only thing that being a vagabond has going for it seems to be the professional success that my father and his father before him have gained in moving from one place to another.

While these thoughts have been with me for a while, they made me sadder as I thought about Noyonika, my beautiful baby girl. It is likely that she too will be a wanderer as I caravan through different cities and towns. While Guwahati will always be my wife’s home, it is not likely to be Noyonika’s home – she too may always feel like an outsider to the lives of her uncles and aunts and cousins (who will forever talk about her lovingly and think about her cares and worries).

She too may struggle to answer that simplest of questions, “So, where are you from?”

Autism & vaccinations

Zoho is a great web 2.0 service, and I’ve followed Sridhar’s blog over the past year. His post yesterday on his son’s autism was sobering. I’d heard from a colleague about a year ago that the large number of vaccinations prescribed can affect a baby, and can lead to autism or other disorders such as asperger syndrome.

For a harried new parent, following the guidance of the Doctor is always faster & easier than getting informed on a subject and then making a decision.

Also, it surely is very hard to measure the long-range effects of a cocktail of drugs and then isolate and remove all offending chemicals. While no Luddite, this is why I trust the neem leaf more than the antibiotic – it works, and it has been around for millenia.

How does a parent decide what to do when faced with such choices, like how many vaccinations are OK for the baby?

At times you just yearn for being able to make a simple decision in the face of difficult choices.