Unwild Rumpus

My dearest dearest baby, I can't believe you are 9 already. I love your curiosity and I want to encourage all kinds of questions from you. And I've decided to answer last night's question with a letter. Yes, I do have a "little red story" just like every woman around me. The story of my first period. But it's nothing big. Nothing dramatic. Nothing traumatic. I was 10 on that Saturday when I felt my first cramps. The cramps were followed by a dampness. The dampness that I'd already been warned about. I had a pack of sanitary pads from the presentations we'd had at school. I had also had 'the talk' with my mom. I knew what to expect. I knew what to do. Which is how I am hoping you'd be too on the day it finally happens to you. My mom walked into the house in the evening after a long day at work. I waited until she'd had her tea and then broke the news to her. "Amma, I got my first period today". She panicked for a bit, I t...

I'm sitting at my breakfast table. Multiple tabs open in my browser window. Running bioinformatics pipelines isn't the most exciting of jobs. I love the science behind the research but, for the most part, it translates to absolutely boring coding. "Just wait till you get all the results together" my boss pacified me last week. "The real fun starts then." Sure, if you say so. Until then, mind-numbed is my middle name. But, today, I have a saving grace. To my left is the window, and through the blinds, I can see rain pouring down the bare branches and trunks. Lightning flashes across my laptop screen now and then, followed by the predictable rumbling. There is an incessant pitter patter on my roof that I hear as a background to the music that's playing on loop. I haven't found a better rainy day music accompaniment than Illayaraja's soothing tunes. "Vaanam enakku oru bodhi maram... Naalum enakkadhu seithi tharum" croones SPB and I am i...

I like to proclaim that I find relationship beginnings absolutely dreamy. If I know you, I've probably asked you stories about how you met your significant other. They are always such happy little tales. Always following a predictable path of meeting, falling in love, getting together. I'll ooh and aah along with you and cheer at the appropriate junctions. I am the types to claim that rom-coms are my favorite movies. And nothing can be more perfect than Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks finally getting together (no matter the story). But deep inside, I am a sour puss. I am skeptical about relationships. I don't think they are made to last at all. I put an expiry date on my relationships. And on most relationships around me. And what really interests me more than beginning stories are the tales of how relationships ended. I am morbid like that. It's hard to come by break up tales. No ones wants to talk about it. They are either mean little 'dumpers' or sad little 'dum...

If I wake up when the first rays of the sun sneak in through the blinds and kiss me lightly on my eyelids, then I am most definitely still dreaming. If I wake up in my own bed, snuggled next to P, to the "opening" sound of the iphone alarm (snoozed thrice), then I'd call it a great morning. Because, I am a mom. Most mornings my alarm sound finds me wedged uncomfortably between two kid beds, with feet on my face. Otherwise, it finds me waking up on the couch, neck twisted awkwardly on the armrest, book open in one hand, half cup of yuck cold tea, luckily on the side table and not all over me and the couch. A pose indicating the sheer exhaustion that overtook me when I was hoping to squeeze in some tranquil reading time after the storms settled. And yet, these are my better mornings. The bad to worse ones include waking up to a wailing three year old, Kid #1 screaming that Kid #2 sneaked in to her bed at night and then peed on it, or the sound of ceramic crashing and shat...

I sometimes think I live my life constantly testing the borders of what's considered acceptable and what's not. Having spent all my formative years in a Catholic convent, I became more than just a little familiar with a lot of their practices. And the one that frazzled me the most? Confessions. Not because I had things to hide, but rather because I had nothing. I remember standing in line to confess, working up a sweat, because I didn't have anything to confess and somehow, that seemed like a bigger sin than others. The tension was real. So real that soon my life revolved around collecting little sins so I could add them to my confession arsenal. Ones that were safe enough to not get me into trouble but still significant enough to "confess": sneaking in a piece of chocolate during mass, reading a Mills and Boon under the desk during class, reading under the quilt with a flashlight after lights were turned off in the dorms.. Somewhere in the next twenty years, ...

This is a night like no other. I see the bright moon above me..casting a night rainbow in the clouds around. A fading beauty with a pockmarked face racing in the skies above to keep up with my ship below. She lights up the ocean around me.. streaks of silver in the darkness. It's past midnight and it's just me and the ocean and the skies. Stars peep through the clouds, zillions of them. Not a single man made light around me to dilute the effect of this gorgeous night sky. My senses are at war with each other. My eyes see peace but my ears hear war. The still water surface, sparking in the moonlight is a calm like none other. But the same ocean is loud around me, forever restless. The waves relentlessly hitting against the sides of the ship, wind blowing against my face. This discordance between sight and hearing is jarring. But it's easy for me to accept because I live in a similar discordance constantly - the one between my calm, serene brain and my loud, restless ...

Summer 2009. I woke up when the sun was rising, made myself some coffee and stepped out in to the balcony of the rustic mountain lodge we'd slept in the night before. There was a cool nip in the air, almost uncomfortable, but the view was breathtaking. Sun rising over the rocky mountains, mist still clinging to the plants and trees around me. We were in Leadville, Colorado - a sleepy little small town nestled comfortably in the rocky mountains. And the morning air was making me nostalgic. I grew up in the mountains. My childhood was a lonely one but one filled with idyllic images of forests of tall pine trees over blankets of brown pine straw, lush valleys with a scattering of red tiled roofs, blue mountain ranges in the distance, crystal clear waterfalls after rains, foggy mornings.. the list is endless. In my heart I'll always be "mountain person". Even now when I am asked to close my eyes and imagine something serene, my first thought is a walk through dense wo...