Universal Conspiracy!

Here I was, voluntarily entering into the blogathon, resolving not to give up, till the end of the month, and what more, I actually started writing a post a day for every day of the month – for 9 days, that is! That is when it happened. My consistent writing and my exceptional writing skills (ahem! Ahem!) urged murphy to stop me from reaching the finish line of the blogathon. So, the entire universe conspired, first it was my flu, and then, consecutive hospitalization and surgeries in the family, not to forget pongal and guests in home, making me toggle between hospital, home and guests – gave me no time to breathe, let alone blog. So, ultimately fate won, and the blogathon - my very first one, lay totally forgotten somewhere in the back of my mind. Now, that things are settled and quite back to normal, I bounce back with some fresh ideas for the blogathon, and it is already end of the month! Sigh! Why is Murphy always behind me?

If you know what I mean…

• When the kids sleep like logs on weekdays, and it takes you more than 10 minutes to move them out of the bed, to get them ready for school!
• When you want to sleep long on weekends, the same kids are up and awake at 6, and as if that’s not enough, demand you to give them milk. NOW!
• When you try cooking a new dish, surprisingly, it comes out tasty, and no one in the house even notices it. Let alone, compliment it!
• Having to go to office, when all the schools are declared ‘holiday due to rains’, and your kids are tempting you to bunk office for the day!
• When you rush to catch the office lift in the evening, and the lift leaves, just when you are about to catch it!
• When you desperately expect a surprise gift for your b’day/anniversary, hubby (surprisingly) gets you a new dress, and the size is XXL (for a medium person L)
• Assuming your writing to be in the likes of all the well-known authors and wondering why your blog is not a hit yet!
• Posting, what you think is a wonderful blog, and getting no comments J

Why me?

When conversing in a group, just when you think of the best line or the funniest joke to say, just when you are about to utter it, someone else in the group utters it a fraction of second before you, and the entire group acknowledges it! You feebly mutter, ‘that’ was what I was about to say, and end up feeling silly or looking stupid. Has it ever happened to you? Well, it has happened to me many times, and my previous post is just another example.

I scan and surf and search the internet for hours to find the perfect image for my blog post, succeed and post it in my blog, publish it and login to fb, when the same picture, the very same one, is staring out at me from someone else’s timeline. Wonderful! By this time, there would have been so many shares for that pic, and now, whoever read my blog would think I copied it from FB. (Not that, it is my original creation, anyways, but still!) and I get that familiar ‘feeling stupid’ feeling. Sigh! Why is that Murphy always keeps coming behind me?

To like or not-to-like

Six months of tight project schedule and hectic time as a family-person, has drained out nearly all the energy from me, that realization has dawned on me that I should spend more and more of 'me' time. So, here I come - back to writing! Since this writing time is supposed to be 'me' time, I start by writing a few of my favorite things and our favorite 'Murphy' in each of those:

- Watching a favorite movie in the TV undisturbed: (ie, without hubby switching channels, or the kids interupting, or no house-hold chores to be done) aaaannnndddd - the power goes off during your favorite scene!

- Shopping like crazy in pondy-bazaar, coming home with handful of carry-bags, and displaying the goodies proudly to hubby, aaannnnnndddd - one of the favorite things which I shopped was left back in the shop itself!

- Reading a physical book after a very very long time, sitting in the balcony swing, with a cup of coffee, and enjoying the book, aaaannnndddd - the book ends all of a sudden with a 'To be continued' note, and the sequel is not available for the next 6 months or so, and suddenly you feel like a kid from whom chocolate was grabbed from her hand!

- Making round, crispy, dosas for the entire family, and hubby praises my talent, aaannnndddd - the final set of dosas which I make for myself gets stuck to the pan!

- In the theatre, the kids behave extremely well without any tantrums, so much that I'm able to watch the movie in peace, aaaannnnnddd the movie sucks!

-After every fight, I turn over to the other side, staying awake and waiting for hubby to come and talk to me first, aaannnndddd I hear snoring after a few minutes!

- As rare as Halley's comet, hubby gets me a surprise dress for anniversary, aaanddddddd the size is XXL!

- Sitting down to blog on the list of my favorites, aaaanndddd suddenly the list of my favorites simply doesn't cross my mind anymore!

Senti mom - Senti daughter!!!

Yesterday, we were watching a movie in one of the TV channels. Actually hubby was watching it and me and the kids were standing before the TV because, the movie was about to end and we didn't have anything else to do. It was a love story, the hero and the heroine finally united after a long drama and cry-baby acting from the heroine. I was finally relieved that the movie ended and we went to the bed-room. I took Swathi for her night-time duties, and I came out of the wash-room, to find Smruthi sobbing uncontrollably in the bed. Assured that it was not the sibling rivalry and Swathi was not the cause this time, I panicked to see her crying like this. It took me almost 5 minutes to soothe her, and make her tell the reason, which was: "The aunty in the TV was so paavam, that she had to cry like this. Seeing her cry like that has upset me very much. I feel so sorry for her".*

So many times, I have cried in the house because of these two girls, and all she did was to find pleasure in seeing me cry, and today she could not control her emotions, because some stupid heroine was struggling to re-unite with her lover. Bah!

All the while, I could not resist thinking how my daughter was growing up to be very much like me. There was not a single love story which I have seen during my college days and not cried in the end. Another emotional, senti-menti in the family? No darling, as your father says, one of me is enough! You needn't inherit me in this trait.

* Her actual words were: Andha aunty eppadi azhudha! Adha paathu enakku manasukke romba kashtama irukku! Romba paavam avanga!"

Why this kolaveri?

Yesterday afternoon, both my daughters were playing and humming something, forming their own words, and singing, which no-one can understand. Since I never learn to keep my mouth shut, this is what happened...

Me: Darlings, instead of these la-la-la songs, why can't you both sing something, which mummy can understand?
Swathi: Why this kolaveri-kolaveri-kolaveri- diiiiiiiiii??? Why this kolaveri-kolaveri-kolaveri- diiiiiiiiii???
Smruthi: pa-pa-pa-poin.....pa-pa-pa-poin....pa-pa-a-paaa-pa-pa-pooiiiinnnnnnnnn
Sri: laughs and gives me a idhu-unakku-thevaya look!!!!

Idhhu-enakku-thevayaa????

Murphy's Law is....

When your brutally adamant, intolerably cranky almost-three year old, wakes up without any fuss, does whatever you expect, wears the most-disliked frock without any tantrums, finishes her breakfast within a span of 10 minutes, arrives in the play-school half-an hour before the usual time....and....

THE SCHOOL IS DECLARED A HOLIDAY DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES!!!!!

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When your five year old messes with your android smart phone, and suddenly you find all your desktop icons missing, including the call logs, you struggle for 10 minutes to restore them back, without any luck, shout at her, warn her, lecture her as to how difficult you are finding to restore your phone to the usual state, and she replies promptly, "Who told you to struggle? If you had told me, I would have fixed it up for you!!!" and she DOES fix it up!!! And worse, within two minutes!!!!

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These days in kg3 household....

In the current age, there lives a girl called Swathi. Fortunately or unfortunately, she is the youngest in the family. Her main mission in this life is to never let her elder sister be in peace. Smruthi constantly lives in the fear of what item of hers will Swathi attack next!

Every day morning, before she leaves to school, Smruthi cleans her study table, locks her crayons, pencils, boxes, sketches, story books, markers, dusters, eraser, sharpner, what more and what not. And she also does the thing, which she ought not do! She WARNS her sister NOT to touch anything of hers, after she leaves for school. Swathi nods her head, acts like a good girl in front of her sister. She literally waits for her sister to leave the house, wave tata, good-bye to her and comes upstairs to their room, and does exactly the thing which her sister told her not to do. She starts raiding the entire room, finds out all the hidden new pencils, markers and sketchpens. And to make matters worse, she also sharpens all her new pencils, till they are half-over. On seeing these, I panic, at the thought of what will happen when Smruthi sees these. So, I swap the half-sharpened pencils with new ones, clean the room of the sharpened bits and try to restore the same state of the pencils and boxes, (hoping that Smruthi doesn't find any difference) before I leave for office.

Come evening, both of them go into their room, and do something. They play, share their things, and continue with whatever they are doing. I relax thinking that all is well. Suddenly, I hear screams and shouts from their room. I panic, thinking that one of them is hurt and rush towards their room. And BOTH of them are crying. Upon investigation, seems like Swathi had received nice blastings from Smruthi, and so both were crying. Swathi - because, she was beat by her sister, and Smruthi - because her new pencils were gone.

"Ennoda pudhu pencils ellathayum iva sharp pannita"

(She has sharpened ALL my new pencils)

I try to pacify her saying that I had kept new pencils to swap her already sharpened pencils. She opens her boxes and shows me all the sharpened pencils. Seems like the little one has continued her raid and repeated the process, in the afternoon also, before Smruthi came back from school. (Swathi leaves for school after Smruthi and comes home before her!) And there goes another set of new pencils! Swathi becomes so happy, if she has succeeded in irritating her sister, and knows perfectly well, how to do this.

The other day, Smruthi comes home with a gift pack from her school , which had a full stationary set. It was a return gift given by a birthday baby in her class. Swathi tries to pacify her sister, to share them with her. But Smruthi would not budge. So, obviously, she started crying, and here goes the conversation between them:

Smruthi: No way! This was given by Ansh. I will not give you.
Swathi (crying): Wait, wait! I will tell appa, when he comes.
Smruthi (maintaing her cool): So? I will not give even then!
Swathi (still crying): Wait wait, I will tell amma not to get you lolly-pop
Smruthi : I don' t want ( in the same tone as "I-don't-care" in some old advt)
Me: (trying to intervene): Smruthi, why don't you be a good girl and give it to her just this one time?
Swathi (immdly): Amma, nee london-ke poidu ma! Akka solra pechaye ketka maatengara!!!
(Amma, you better go to London itself. Akka is not at all listening to anybody's words)
On hearing these, immediately Smruthi started crying and Swathi stopped hers.

I was totally shocked and looked dumb-founded on hearing these words.

This little git, knows perfectly well, as to what will make her sister cry and what will not!!!

7am Arivu - My view

Well, I can't stop from giving comments on this one. Never have I been so disappointed by a movie, which I wanted to watch very badly - not even the Harry Potter ones! The main reason being.....I'll come to that later. Good things first!

The movie starts with Bodhidharma leaving for China, and those were the only parts of the film which met the expectations. Even if the Bodhidharma history had been extended, the movie would have been worth watching, and Surya was as usual good - both as Aravind and Bodhidharma. And the next best thing about me watching this movie, was that both my daughters were well-behaved throughout the movie (except for frequent visits to the loo, bickering me for pop-corn and pestering me as to when the movie will end). Maybe, that is the reason why this time, the movie was not good. Murphy's law!

The script was good, and the story could have been directed even better. The second half of the movie looked as if the director didn't know what to do next, and asked the characters to go and just act on the screen. The main focus had been on projecting a powerful Dong-Lee, that all logic was forgotten to the core. The director has extended the dimensions of hypnotism, to the level of transferring the martial arts skills to the hypnotised person, within a second's look. Dialogues & dialogue deliveries too could have been better.

The main reason why I was so upset with the movie, (right from the beginning) was Shruthi Hassan. Average looks, average dance, poor dialogue delivery, and absolutely NO acting skills. And to think, she is Kamal's daughter!!! KAMAL's daughter. Forget acting, she couldn't even give a romantic expression. She was totally bland in the song - "Mun andhi saalai.." there was absolutely no expression at all!!! Looking at this song, I got the similar taste of disgust, when I saw SJ Suryah dance for "Mayilirage...'. I no more like that song after that. Shruthi Hassan could seriously do with some genetic transformation to inherit some of her father's acting skills.

Positives: Aravind, Bodhidharma & Dong-Lee
Negatives: Poor direction, loose story-line and SHRUTHI HASSAN

Overall, a nice story wasted!!!