Aishwarya Rai & Me

My previous posts have been a bit serious.......

At work we have this term called “manage expectations”. So first let me manage all your expectations:

- No I am not beautiful but I don’t think Aishwarya is beautiful either. During the Miss India days, I was in the camp of Sushmita Sen.

- No I am not a great fan of Abhishek (so this is not about jealousy) and when there were rumours going around of him getting married, I was hoping that it would be to Rani Mukherji.

- And finally, no I have not met Aishwarya Rai – ever.

Now let me get on with my story.

Ever since I landed in the UK, every Saturday or Sunday I have this ritual of dusting the stair carpet. This is the only place we have carpet. I hate to see dust and this carpet is I guess you could call bluish and shows dust really well. I clean each and every step, taking so much care to dig in to the corners, lest some dust escapes me. Who is in charge here? Me. It takes me 35 minutes to complete the job. There are 12 steps (guesstimate) in total – with a small landing in between. And every time I dust my stair I think of Aishwarya Rai. By the time I reach the sixth stair this is exactly what is going through my head:

“So you think you are a good house-wife? Yeah try dusting my stair. Bet you don’t even know what a broom is. You have a barrage of people just waiting to receive instructions from you. Hah, what do you know about house-work? How dare your father-in-law sings praises about your house work? What bull shit? I do so much of work at home and nobody sings praises of me. Why does DH not show that he is proud of my work? And by the way why isn’t DH helping me in house work? Why the hell is he with all his books? Oh my God, why the hell did I leave Dubai to come to this place to dust stairs? Why is it so cold in here? God why me, why me?....and then I cry.

The next thing you know – I have a grumpy looking face and don’t talk to DH. I tell you this -Aishwarya Rai is not good for me, not at all. She starts it all........and then I blame DH.

Can someone tell me why I think of Aishwarya Rai? Does anyone else think of any actresses while doing house work?

The “Why” for This Silence

People who know me will tell you this – I am a Daddy’s girl, I have always been and will always remain one. He was my rock, pillar of support and whatever you could say of a good Dad, not that he was in any way perfect. But Daddy was always there for me – when I was good and even when I was bad; I would never ever want to have a daughter like me. Let me put it this way – I am nobody without my Daddy. All my arrogance, my snobbery was because of the type of person that he was. Any party that we would go to Daddy was the centre of attraction, any new fashion trend and I would have the first outfit, any new Kanjeevaram design and my mom would get it, any new Mallu association and my dad would be the first one to be voted to be the President. Ok some of it sounds materialistic, but my dad had a large heart and loved to talk non-stop. And now that he is no more I feel so utterly, completely and horribly lost!

Following my Dad’s passing away (that is such a horrible way of using the language, I bet it is grammatically wrong!) Mom came to the UK and stayed with me for six months. Being the quiet person that DH is he never really joined the usual family talk by the dining table or for any outing with my mother. Have I mentioned earlier that DH is awkward socially as well, OK well he is. So it was always me giving company to my mother and being the lonely soul that DH likes to be I spent all my time with Mummy.

One fine day – long after my Mom left UK, I noticed that DH was not wearing the gold chain that my dad had given to him. Let me rephrase that – DH was not wearing the beautiful gold chain (with a rudraksha pendant and diamond crusted arc) that my loving late Daddy had presented to his daughter’s husband. My Dad literally removed this chain that he was wearing and gave it to DH. So you the gist of how important that chain is to me – IT WAS WORN BY MY DAD and the emphasis here is MY DAD.

When I checked this with DH his first response was “Oh you are not wearing your thali anymore. So I removed the chain too.” Second response was “You spent all your free time with your mom, so I got angry and took off this chain”. Let me get this straight – I used to wear the thali on a black thread tied to my waist. When I got my ectopic surgery done in March, I had to remove it because they cut open the area under my lower tummy, then the healing took some time, then my Dad passed away, followed by my mom’s visit to the UK and I forgot about the damn thali in the midst of all this. Second – why is this self professed world citizen expressing so much of love towards a thali? I thought I was the traditional one. Third – My mother and I were grieving, there was no way in hell I would have spent that time with an insensitive guy like DH. Fourth - if DH wanted to get back at me and not use the things from me or my family, why the hell didn’t he stop using the netbook (that was a present from me), why not stop using the umpteen watches that I had given to him. No DH’s choice of ammunition was my Dad’s chain and rightly so because he knew that nothing else could inflict me a better hurt. He chose to hit me below the belt and I just hate people who do that.

But I didn’t blow up, I swear not, I got up as elegantly as I could from the side of the bed where I was sitting, looked him in the eyes and said that I did not want to talk to him anymore. This happened on 30th December.

Fact: By 1st Jan when I realised that we were not talking to each other I had forgotten the very reason why I had stopped talking to DH.

A Word About Our Arrangement

Child Woman made a comment on my previous post and I thought I should give an update on my marriage situation.

First a bit of background – DH is a quiet person and I mean very very quiet. He also has a difficult time expressing his feelings (excluding anger of course and that is just the contouring of his face, nothing action orientated). Me, I am talkative, you know really useless talk. Sometimes even I wonder why I said whatever I had said. In a relationship I used to be quite expressive and vocal. But all that stopped during my first marriage. I had an a**hole for a husband who raised his hand on me for each and everything. Over the years that I was with him, I spoke lesser and lesser with my ex and the arrangement suited me just fine. In a relationship if I don’t see the other party open to a conversation, I don’t pursue it – people need their own time and space to talk about what hurts / upsets them.

Now back to the present – I am still not talking to DH. This is the longest we have gone silent – 25 full days. But something odd has happened. Every night we lay down in bed with our backs to each other of course, and somewhere in the middle of the night we end up in each other’s arms. We hug each other and I mean really hug each other tight while sleeping. During our talking period, intimacy was a thing of the past. So I for one am really enjoying this. Each morning we wake up as strangers and go about doing our own business. Coming to think of it we don’t even see each other’s face anymore. When DH is cooking, I am in my study and when I am moving around the house, he is in his study. Works pretty well for us.

This is why they say “Strange are the ways in a relationship.”

In no way am I saying that I will never ever talk to DH, it could happen. Last Tuesday I did wake up with a start and saw the clock showing 7:30 am. I shook DH and said that he would be late for work. Now that was talking – wasn’t it? OK nothing since then though!

Tell me - how do you deal with friction in a marriage?

A Good Day

When you have nowhere to go, no one to talk to, no one to hug you and comfort you, you take solace in God. You get on your knees and beg that He gives you enough courage to get you through the day.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

I cannot change certain things that are happening right now. At work, my boss needs to find out the direction that our department has to take. Without any real alignment with other teams, we cannot move forward and the solution to this is in my boss’s camp. I just need to take a deep breath till everything is sorted out.

DH, while there are so many things I would like to change about him, I do not want him to change just for me. For now, I am OK with this status quo and yes, I can live with the silence.

The things that I can change and have a control over are my health, my studies and my finances.

I woke up this morning at around 4:30 am with the firm decision that I would be happy and remain happy throughout the day. Did some stretching exercises, a bit of yoga and finished it off with meditation. Then I covered myself with purple light (I am an advanced Pranic Healer, it helps when I put my mind to it). Worked hard from 8:30 to 4:30pm – did not surf aimlessly and actually got some work done, not much, cleared around 180 emails. At 5 got on the elliptical and exercised for exactly 40 mins – burnt 270 calories, clocked 14kms – an all time high.

I worked from home today – so it was literally a no spend day. My wallet is happy. Dinner was just a mutton roll; hated every bite of it. Thought it was a good way of eating less, just eat what you don’t like.

A won all the badminton matches at school and has got selected to play at West London Level. Hope he does well. In Dubai he used to be a tennis player taking part in a lot of tournaments. Here I cannot afford to give him four hours of individual training daily. So it is a blessing that A has found another game just as interesting.

It has been a good day – thank you God.

I still miss Daddy though and I think I did not grieve enough back in July when he passed away. It‘s all coming back to me now. Why did it take so long for me to realise that I love him like crazy?

And it's just two weeks into New Year

I don’t think I have ever been this down in life. Everything seems out of control and I just don’t know what to do anymore.


At work my job is to find gaps in work processes, source manpower from various departments, initiate a project and find solutions. Problem starts when one of the departments involved in the project tries to steer the decision to one they think is right. And to top it all, they would have the backing of some high level boss. Thing is I can’t stand office politics and don’t want to be a part of it either. Worse still, I am no longer sure who is in charge of the projects – is it me or the other department? To be clear – my boss is just as confused as I am.

DH and I aren’t still talking. But now I know the reason for his silence. Apparently sometime in Dec I had told him that I do not want to talk to him. (I think it was more like me saying I do not want to discuss something.) No I do not remember the incident, but I have let it be. May be DH needs his space and he will come back to me when he is ready. May be DH will never get over this silence and may be our marriage will fail. Right now, DH not talking to me does not affect me. I am pretty comfortable with just interactions with my son at home and various other things at home keep me more than busy. End of the day this is my policy – Don’t seek out for attention, affection and love; these have to come to you and not the other way round. I guess one has to work at relationships and I have been plain lazy and now it is too late.

Finances – I have had to give my car back to the company. They let me use it for two extra years while I changed from a sales job to the one in Supply Chain and people in Supply Chain do not get a car. I am OK with public transportation as long as it does not include grocery shopping. How do these people do it without a car? My purchase list becomes smaller and smaller every week; I can’t think of lugging the bags from the store to home. All fingers point to me buying a new car. Fact is I cannot afford a big car like the one I was used to and my pride does not allow me to buy a small car. Right now my pride is winning; but it’s my back that’s breaking with two hours of commute whenever I go to the office.

Daddy – I MISS him like crazy. I go to the living room to dust the place and every time I see his picture, I start crying. I was such a bad daughter; don’t think I ever gave him any happiness. Mom and he were always so worried about me – for being so headstrong, stubborn and independent. I wish I could rewind the clock and given in to some of his desires. I just wish to God that I could make up to him somehow, someway......

The only silver lining in all this is my son and I am thankful for his presence in my life.

Silent New Year

It was only when I read and commented on 30in2005's post that I realised that my To Do List to 41 does not mention anything about my marriage.  Fact is that I do not know where it is going.  We both come from previous marriages which involved a lot of shouting / arguments and in my case a whole lost of violence.  So in this relationship when one of us gets irritated with the other, we just close the other one out - no talking, no shouting, no nothing - civil disobedience as Gandhiji would call it.  We have perfected this to such an art that we both can last, live under the same roof, without talking to each other - sometimes as long as 23 days (that has been the maximum and we have done it twice already) before we open up.  And finally when do talk, the issue in concern seems so petty to even discuss.

The problem with this silence arrangement is that one party is always in the dark about what exactly prompted the withdrawal.  And while keeping quiet seems much better than having an argument, after a point one gets used to doing things alone and the presence of the other person in the house does not matter.  Like having house mates you do not get along with and want nothing to do with.

On New Year's eve my sister-in-law had visited us and we had gone out for dinner, all four of us (son included).  As the meal was getting over it dawned on me that DH hadn't talked to me at all - not a single word!  It was just SIL and me yapping away.  When it struck 12, I did not get my customary hug and the New Year day was spent in utter silence.  Mom says what we do on New Year will follow us the rest of the year.  Ah well I guess it means that there will be more silence at home.

I am not really sure what I have done this time and right now I am not even bothered.  I am beyond hurt now, just PISSED super PISSED.  Hope everyone else had a better time.

One More To The List

The time after 7pm is not exactly my favourite time of the day. It’s when I have finished my office work, my house work and have nothing much to do. With A in his room studying and DH in his room also studying I can pretty much do whatever I feel like doing. But no, I just sit and do nothing and I really mean nothing. I surf – that is again nothing in my books and then just let my thoughts go wild. Sometimes I wonder what the purpose of my life is – I wonder what exactly have I been born to do? I don’t know whether this is part of me growing up or growing old – but this nagging feeling is pretty much in the background even while I am doing some work and in the evening free time the thought tugs at my very core. With the limitation of having a family and the responsibilities that go with it, I cannot be as radical as I want to be. If I had a rewind button I would have never gotten married, forget a second time and would have been quite happy to lead a nomadic free life. Let’s not talk of how things could have, should have been...anyway..

The thought of minimalism has always appealed to me. I even had a shopping ban in Feb which I broke only in October and even then I did not splurge all that much. Minimalism appeals to me because I am materialistic to the core and being minimalistic makes me go against my nature and test my endurance level, very much like an obese person taking to exercise and wondering how long the body would stand extreme exercise.

So with the New Year I am back on the bandwagon of minimalism, but this time am planning to take things a bit more extreme. I am going to take one day at a time and be conscious of what I spend on. Let’s get this thing quite clear – food for me is sacred and I will not crimp on it, but with all the other things I will be bullish about, i.e. no more buying.

In other news – it was a good day in terms of to-do to 41. I managed to do some exercise (read that as stretching), limited myself to just two meals (max about 1500 calories) and had my daily tablets. With me working at home, it was a no-spend day.