Nandini's Niche

In spite of many good intentions and several actual half written posts, blogging has had to wait till right now because my life is like this, except TIMES TWO.

But to make up for it, I have a totally adorable kids-post. Aww yeah.

Nupur turned 7 months old just a couple of weeks ago. She’s such a proper baby now: big enough with lots of head control so people can hold her without freaking out, still completely toothless so her smiles are sooo freakin adorable, squishy and fluffy and silly and really, at peak cuteness overall (going by Angad’s old photos the cutest age is from 7 to about 10 months).

She has just begun to move around, dragging herself along with sheer elbow power, very fond of getting under chairs and tables. She’s not very fast, because she doesn’t have good technique. Angad was better at this dragging business. Nupur keeps trying to do a proper crawl, lifting her butt up with every stroke of her elbow and collapsing because she hasn’t figured out how to use her knees yet. It’s like watching a slug flop around piteously. I have no idea how she still manages to get where she wants to go.

And she’s so different from Angad! It’s fascinating how personalities can emerge at such a young age. Nupur is an “easier” baby than Angad – she sleeps for me, god, remember how I used to call Angad “Awakey Pants”? – and she’s much more stubborn and assertive and less distracted by shiny things when she’s after a prize.

The best part is watching the two of them interact. Angad is impossibly, heartbreakingly careful with Nupur, and completely besotted by her. He comes up with a million nicknames for her and gives her hugs and kisses all the time. And on her part, she only has eyes – and giggles and coos – for him. I could try all day to get one halfhearted gurgle from this girl… and all Angad has to do is walk into the room for her to start squealing happily at him.

Angad is three-and-three-quarters years old, and ever since Nupur was born, he seems very grown up in comparison. We have proper, functional, mutually educative conversations. We can tell him “go get dressed for outside play” and he’ll do it. He outruns me, outjumps me, outlasts me in every physical and mental endeavour. Sometimes this makes me forget he’s really a little kid…

… but not for long, because every few minutes he will pull some spectacularly weird shit, usually pertaining to one of this current obsessions. Right now, said obsessions include:

• Timers. Angad has access to four: the oven timer, the microwave timer, the stopwatch in my phone, and an online countdown timer we’ve got bookmarked in the browser for him. Thanks to this impressive arsenal, not a minute of our day goes untimed. He times the washing machine, my dinner prep (20 minutes, by his decree, but I cheat), episodes of Dora the Explorer, my showers (10 minutes, no cheating), and most obsessively of all he sets my phone timer several times a day (I keep turning it off to conserve battery) to alert him to…

• Twilight. Not Edward-and-Bella Twilight, thank god, but the real after-sunset-before-dark hour. One evening last year he noticed suddenly that it was neither dark nor light out, and found it hysterically funny. He rolled around the kitchen floor laughing and shouting “Is it morning? NOOOOOO! Is it night? NOOOOOOOO! Hahahahaha!” I told him it was called twilight. And ever since then he looks forward to twilight like regular kids look forward to their birthdays. The weirdest side effect of this obsession is that I am now just intrinsically aware of how many hours it is to the next twilight at any given moment of the day, because he keeps asking me in order to set the goddamn timer.

• The dishwasher. Angad loves our new dishwasher so much that he still remembers with great affection the plumber who came over to install it eight months ago – that is a fifth of this child’s entire life. He throws tantrums if he isn’t the one to open the dishwasher at the end of a cycle, he’s got rituals where he drags his dad to show him which buttons lit up when the cycle was complete, and it’s all he talks about when grandparents call these days. A couple of weeks ago we were in Sears and happened to pass by a model very similar to ours on the shop floor. Angad immediately noticed that some of the buttons were in the “wrong” spot, and proceeded to shout about it to me and the salespeople and anybody in the store who would let themselves be dragged to see dishwashers, laughing hysterically the whole time. Two days later he dreamt that the buttons on our dishwasher had also moved around, and told me about it breathlessly in the morning… the very first time he has told me about a dream.

And me? After all the ups and downs of first-time motherhood, and all the anticipation of how much harder things would be with two kids instead of one, I just wasn’t prepared for this: the state of having absolutely nothing to complain about.

The combination of Angad being old enough to practically fend for himself while still being too young for the trials of school, and Nupur being such an easy baby, and us being “seasoned” parents is making for an almost picture-perfect experience of parenting these days.

Aisa bhi hota hai!

(PS: This is post #555! On Fruit Ninja this would get me a 50-point bonus. )

If you will excuse me for writing two baby-themed posts in a row, I’ll tell you what it’s like here in LA, where Mr Awakey Pants is meeting his twin cousins who’re only 15 days older, Mr Happy Cat and Ms Sweetie Pie.

It’s deliciously warm. My kid is feeling his toes sockless outside of a bath for the first time in months. He isn’t paying as much attention to them as I thought he would, though. For eight month olds, out of sight for so many months is out of mind.

The three babies got off to a rocky start. The twins are used to one another and they view the additional baby as an interesting change. For Mr Awakey Pants, though, this is bizarro world. There are more tiny people in the world? You don’t say! They move on their own? Not like dollies, huh. Ow, don’t scratch me, woman. Here, let me return the favour, and pull your lovely hair for an extra treat. WHY DO THESE PEOPLE KEEP TAKING *MY* TOYS? Gimme that back.

After an unhappy couple of days getting used to his new surroundings, Mr Awakey Pants has just begun to settle in. He cracks a smile now and again when Mr Happy Cat emits one of his frequent squeals of delight. He pats Ms Sweetie Pie’s face. Last night he even laughed.

The three kids have such distinct personalities, it’s a delight just to observe their reactions to one another. Sweetie Pie is quietly assertive and deliciously huggable. When Awakey Pants takes stuff from her she almost always snatches it back. And she never squirms out of a good cuddle the way Awakey Pants does. Happy Cat is delightfully sociable and plain happy. He’s also clearly the smartest of the three, the first to figure out how toys work and the one who understands the most of what is said to him. Awakey Pants, by contrast, is cautious and wary, territorial and introspective. Slow to move on to new toys, content to explore one thoroughly in solitude. The twins are bound to do him good.

More updates as events warrant.

And by the way, to change the subject completely, the avocados here are mindblowing. I’ll never be able to eat that rubbery green gunk we get in upstate NY again. That is all for now.

My new digs: http://nandinisniche.blogspot.com/

Bored and restless am I. It’s time to move on from this “wendelin” business. I’m fixing up a new place to get properly restarted with blogging (already have a few posts cooking up in the drafts folder).

Just a little while longer, my dearies.

There was once a guy who ran for the senate. This was his campaign ad.

And this was his opponents’ ad.

Duuuuuuuuude.

So, what are y’all up to on New Year’s?

Bet you a million bucks it’s nothing like what I’ve got planned, hyuk hyuk hyuk. I’m off to Boston tomorrow, my pretties.. that’s right, eat your hearts out. MIT and Harvard and … Boston, people! Staying with sister-in-law’s husband’s brother and his wife. No, I’m not as much of a weasel as you’re thinking, I’ve known this SIL’s H’s B’s W for a while, independently; she’s a friend of mine, and a sweet one too. (You never know who’s reading this blog… ;D)

Anyways. You people make sure you do something fun with yourselves, and try not to be too jealous. HAPPY NEW YEAR, a couple of days in advance!

PS: I watched The Wicker Man (awesome), The Long Good Friday (snoozefest), Lakshya (decent), Parinda (surprisingly good) and A Streetcar named Desire (brilliant). And may I just say:

HUBBA HUBBA.

Addendum: My jealous husband in a fit of pique defiled this picture. I say, PTHOOOOEY – dude STILL looks hot.

Because I haven’t done it in such a long time…

Well. I’ve been sitting at home for the past week or so, and it’s amazing how easy it is to fritter time away. I’ve literally been too busy to post here. Actually, scratch that. I’ve been too busy finding things to do so I can say I didn’t have time to post because I haven’t had anything to say. (Yes, my early new-year resolution is to tell harsh truths.)

Turns out I’m in a “nothing to say, nothing to write” phase. only the Harry Potter fanfiction has been coming along.

Anyways, I hope you guys had a good Christmas and Hannukah and all the associated days off. (I refuse to say “holiday”, what is up with all this utterly random political correctness anyway? It’s a Christmas tree, people, and calling it a holiday tree won’t suddenly mean Jews will start buying one for Hannukah. Bah.)

And if I don’t see you before New Year’s (coz I’m off to Boston for the weekend, me pretties), happy new year also. See you soon!

As I was telling my husband about Parineeta – that it was a same-old same-old love story that’s very well done – he picked up on something in my tone of voice, I guess, and insisted I had really liked it but wasn’t admitting it.

I hate to say it, but he was right. I find myself thinking back on the little things that were beautifully done, the big things that were subtly conveyed, and I find I like this movie, really, quite a lot.

When the source material for a movie is a literary classic, there’s a ready-made bedrock of internal unity and external finesse to build on, and given Saratchandra Chatterjee’s play, Pradeep Sarkar, the director, does build on it. Sure, the plot is one that has been overdone in Bollywood. Shekhar, a rich, bratty young man and his childhood friend Lolita are in love with each other without knowing it. Enter rival love interests – Lolita’s older benefactor Girish and rich heiress Gayatri Tantia – complications are already setting in. Throw in an avaricous businessman as Shekhar’s controlling father, money problems for Lolita’s family, a few giggling siblings here, a sultry special appearance by Rekha there, and you have the whole story. But I have begun to look beyond the obvious irritants in this bare-bones plot (greedy capitalist dad as the villain, I ask you?). In the telling of any story, execution is everything, and here it is quite marvellous.

The important things are all conveyed with great restraint and style rather than the clobber-over-the-head style of most Bollywood fare. The rivalry between Girish and Shekhar is never a shouting match cum tug-of-war with Lolita as rope… instead, it is amply communicated in Shekhar’s light rebuke of Girish for serving cold rotis. The nearly wordless love scene between Shekhar and Lolita is the entire statement of their devotion to each other. Shekhar is freely irrational when emotional, as real people often are. No textbooks hero there. Lolita’s only acknowledgement of her jealousy over Gayatri Tantia is to repeat Shekhar’s father’s dictum, I won’t waste time on an unprofitable venture. No passionate entreaties, no wringing hands, no teary-eyed damsel in distress, and you’ve got to admire this movie for that. The only exception came in the end, when Shekhar physically breaks down the brick wall separating him from Lolita. What pushes this scene over the edge into cheap melodrama is the wedding party around him, which turns into a cheering squad: Break it down, Shekhar, break it down! But that was five minutes. In the larger balance, it doesn’t upset things too much.

The sountrack, like everything else in the movie, is elaborate but nicely understated. If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, let me put it this way: the music is lavish and very sweet, but it is used as merely a setting for the characters, rather than the other way around. I really like Soona Man Ka Aangan, and the breathy eroticism of Hui Mai Parineeta.

It was easy to look at Parineeta with a critical eye at first, and dismiss it for its flaws. I’m sure the parenthetical narration by Amitabh Bachchhan had a little to do with it, as did the superfluousness of many characters (I hate it when the law of economy of characters isn’t observed). But really, it’s a sweet tale, beautifully told. The actors – Saif in particular – were brilliant, never allowing their star personas inhibit their portrayal of the character. The direction is great, the sets superb. I don’t know what I was complaining about before.