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. )

(Is it just me or is Google seriously beginning to rot? I HATE the new blogger interface and will do anything to escape it. And also I want comment threading – which, it’s 2012 Google,  get with the times already!)

So I’m trying to migrate to WordPress. Where the UI is completely insane, I cannot find anything, and I just spent five minutes clicking around to figure out how to change my user name from the random long string of chars they gave me (“g4-

Bear with me while I grapple with the importing and the uploading and the domain remapping and the end of yet another bloody era. I am too old, y’all.
]]> http://nandinisniche.com/2012/01/10/in-cyber-limbo/feed/ 1 Mom With A Plan http://nandinisniche.com/2012/01/04/thoughts-on-a-life-in-clothes/ http://nandinisniche.com/2012/01/04/thoughts-on-a-life-in-clothes/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:12:00 +0000 Nandini's Niche http://nandinisniche.com/2012/01/04/thoughts-on-a-life-in-clothes ]]> Last week after I won that award I began to read all the other winning entires. And then I began following the links from those entries to read other articles, stories, confessionals, and manifestas, hundreds of pages of women (and a few men) bearing witness to the realities of women’s lives. I’ve come away feeling humbled, and inspired.

One read in particular stands out.

A mother and blogger calling herself Vidyut writes a stunning five-part series of articles titled “A Life in Clothes”. This is a memoir chronicling her life so far as a rebellious child in an abusive home, as a teenager dropping out of school to get into a disastrous marriage, then as a divorcee mountaineering instructor and nomad reinventing herself over and over to “learn” each new place she is forced to move to because of social approbation, and finally to now as a city dwelling mom remarried to another abusive man.

Photo © Vidyut

It’s so interesting to note what exactly people consider to be her “failures”, and the exact source of all her struggles. This basic source takes many forms: it is her father forcing modest clothes on her all through her childhood with violence and even now through adulthood with trickery; it is her many “friends” freezing her out simply because they don’t know how to interact with a divorcee; it is the varied cast of the men in her life who cannot cope with her strength and talent without feeling emasculated; it is her two mothers-in-law who insist that she make her peace with ‘a woman’s lot’ even though they agree their sons are abusive. But the source of all this is one and the same: an all powerful patriarchy boxing women into subhuman containers marked “daughter” and “wife” and “mother” with never a thought given to her humanity.

Just imagine this story taking place in a westerm country. Would Vidyut even cause anyone to bat a single solitary eyelash? A three year old running around naked in the house? Cute! A high school dropout? That’s someone who needs help and second chances! A divorcee? What a quaint word to describe someone completely normal. A mountain climber and horse breeder? What a catch she would be for the most eligible bachelors!

In America, Vidyut’s life would be almost boring. In India, it is a monumental struggle.

The thing I find beyond amazing is that all of this reads like a success story. And in context, it is! Against all her overwhelming odds, she emerges wise and strong and powerful, more in control of her own life than any of the other women or even men who surround her. Imagine that. This is a woman stuck in an abusive marriage. How far has Indian society fallen that this is the best we have to offer someone like her?

I’ve been trying for a long time to find the words to show exactly why feminism is “still” so necessary. Now I don’t need to. Read about Vidyut, and you’ll see for yourself.

[Obligatory SQUEEEEEEEEEE break OMG OMG I won my first blogging award!]

Ahem.

The post for which I won the award (Biology vs. Culture: DEATHMATCH) got me thinking. I’ve quite stopped blogging about feminism here, haven’t I? It’s intentional. And it’s been hard. It’s one of the main reasons why I haven’t been blogging very much, because I so often want to and then I think … oh, don’t want to blog feminism again. 

The reason is both ugly and stupid.

Any non-anonymous feminist blogger faces loads of vocal opposition from real-life folks who think feminism is passe or unnecessary or whiny or annoying or strident. It can often get personal: people whose opinions and friendships I value have asked me, “But why are YOU complaining so much when your life is filled with almost too much equality!” And of course my life is positively bursting with privilege so it’s churlish to respond “it is NOT”, and continue blogging as if they never said anything, even if they were completely wrong on many levels to say what they said. It’s so hard to be labeled a bitch by real-life friends! How does anybody navigate that?

That’s the ugly part.

The stupid part is where I censor myself and stop blogging just because some readers responded in a less-than-totally-thrilled fashion. Boo, hiss, get blogging, Nandini, and stop worrying about the critics. Right? I should get that tattooed on the back of my hand so it’s staring at me whenever I start to type.

Oooor I could just look at the shiny new blog award I got, and the seriously awesome post which I got the award for, and use them as both bitch-shield and inspiration to blog a lot more.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the Academy…

So. Drawing!

I read about this book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain on a blog that I now forget. The blogger insisted she’d gone from drawing stick figures to stuff resembling Actual Art ™ after going through this book. This sounded somewhat promising, but I was still apprehensive since even stick figure drawing has always eluded me. I mean, I can draw a stick dude just standing there, sure, but make him move? Or sit? Or wear a hat? I’d fail a test that required me to copy XKCD strips accurately.

Okay, I can see you guys don’t believe me. This is why I have come prepared.

The first chapter of the book made me do a few “pre-instruction” drawings. One of the assignments was DRAW A PERSON. Any person. And this was my response (that thing that looks like a five year old’s picture of a generic girl, yes, that one… actually, scratch that, my three year old niece actually makes better drawings than this). I began by copying off a magazine ad but gave up very soon because it was just too hard. This detail is important because…

Compare that drawing with this – a copy of Picasso’s line drawing of Stravinsky, I made just a couple of pages later. The drawing isn’t perfect obviously, but it is (to me) almost miraculous in the increased complexity. I got shirt folds! And crossed fingers! And a truly passable resemblance to the drawing I was copying. I didn’t give up in frustration, even though just ten minutes ago I had done exactly that with a similar task.

And the trick with which this miracle was accomplished was so very simple. That brilliant book instructed me to turn Picasso’s drawing upside down, and just copy the lines without thinking about what the lines were supposed to represent.

This is a huge deal. It’s a key that unlocks so many seemingly unpassable barriers to drawing: if you think you want to draw a finger, then your brain forces you to use your personal symbol for “finger”, probably determined when you were 5 or 6 years old, which looks nothing like a real finger. But if you just say you want to draw these bunch of lines right there at the end of your hand, and then you draw them, fingers just … appear.

So NEAT.

Here’s a before and after of my hand. The before is not exactly before. It was done after I drew Stravinsky above, so it’s a little better than my “OMG A Person” before-drawing. The after is also not exactly “after”, since I was only about 90 pages into the book when I did it.

After I drew that hand I just gazed and gazed at it for minutes on end. I still can’t believe that came out of the end of MY pencil.

But that hand is nothing, nothing, compared to what I drew this past Wednesday. I’m about 120 pages into the book, mind, less than halfway through it. But I think this is pretty freaking AWESOME, do you not think so?

I present to you my crowning glory thus far: a partial copy of Rubin’s “Study of Arms and Legs”. Viola!

Look at that girl up there. Then look at these legs. Look at that girl again. And now look at these legs again. The legs are now diamonds.

Oh, man, if I ever get done gazing at these legs in self-congratulation, I might get back to the book and learn a bit more about drawing. Meanwhile, it’s good to be back in the blogosphere! 

Taking a quick snooze right before her afternoon nap

That’s Nupur, folks. She was born on July 7th at 4:27 PM. Soon after birth, she cried briefly and went to sleep, and we have been waiting for her to wake up ever since. She totally puts the zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz in lazy. She doesn’t cry so much as screw her face up and threaten to scream, and then half the time changes her mind about protesting the soggy diaper in order to go right back to sleep. They say she opened her eyes once, but nobody can confirm this incident first-hand. Verily she is the daughter of mine own flesh.

My firstborn is taking her arrival very well indeed, so far. He thinks she’s cute and too tiny. Also we have drummed it into him that she is very fragile and breakable, so he is endearingly gentle with her.

Sneaking kisses to baby sister

And that’s what’s going on with me. How’re you all doing?

Feb 18, 2011: The House votes to ban all funding for Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is already prevented by federal law from using federal dollars for abortion services. This amendment takes away the money they use to provide family planning, birth control, medical and preventive services, including cancer screenings.

Feb 18, 2011: Proposed GOP spending bill would cut approximately $1 billion worth of welfare, birth control, family services, healthcare and other benefits from women and their families.

Feb 17, 2011: Texas Senate passes law requiring all abortion-seeking women to first get an ultrasound. This is in addition to the 24 hour waiting period and “medical information” spiels (anti-abortion propaganda) already mandatory for abortion seekers.

Feb 16, 2011: Republican officials in Maryland cut funding for the Head Start, a daycare program for children of low-income families, saying that women should get married and stay home with kids instead. Huh?

Feb 15, 2011: South Dakota Republicans table a bill that would make murder of abortion doctors legal.

Feb 9, 2011: GOP backs massive tax increase to deter abortion coverage by private insurers. Private insurers. Massive tax increase. GOP.

Feb 9, 2011: Republican lawmakers in Ohio unveil legislation that would ban abortions of any fetus found to have a heartbeat. Fetal heartbeats develop between 2.5 weeks and 6 weeks after conception, before most women even realise they are pregnant. The move would therefore effectively ban almost all abortions.

Feb 7, 2011: Georgian lawmakers proposes relabeling all victims of rape, domestic violence and stalking as “accusers” rather than “victims” until the accused is convicted. Victims of all other, less gendered crimes such as assault, fraud, burglary, etc. would remain “victims”. 

Feb 3, 2011: GOP introduces revised HR 358 bill which lets ER doctors and hospitals refuse life-saving treatments to pregnant women if the treatment may harm the fetus. Ironically dubbed the “Protect Life Act”, it seems oblivious to the fact that if pregnant women are refused life-saving treatments, the fetus dies with them.

Feb 2, 2011: Republicans stop health insurance coverage of birth control. Every dollar spent on birth control is shown to save ~$2.10 in welfare spending.

Jan 27, 2011: Arkansas is poised to ban private insurance coverage of abortions, requiring women to purchase additional special “abortion rider”policies if they think they might need an abortion someday. These special plans are not offered by any insurance provider in the state.

Jan 26, 2011: Kansas Republicans introduce a bill that would require girls under the age of 18 to receive the explicit consent of both parents before seeking an abortion. In the event of family sexual abuse, the girl women will still need the approval of one parent.

Jan 25, 2011: Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MI) proposes the “Life at Conception Act” bill, which seeks to define human life as beginning at the moment of conception and terminate abortion rights created by Roe v. Wade.

Jan 24, 2011: Idaho upholds the right of pharmacists to deny any medication to women whom they suspect of having had an abortion sometime in the past, even if the medication causes no harm to any fetus past or present, and even if the medication is potentially life-saving.

Jan 21, 2011: GOP introduces HR 3, the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act”, intended to codify the Hyde Amendment already in effect since 1976 which denies federal funding for abortions except in cases of rape and incest. The bill redefines rape of poor women to mean only violent “forcible” rape, excluding previously eligible victims of date rape, statutory rape, and other presumably nonobjectionable forms of not-really-rape.

Jan 20, 2011: GOP proposes a $318 million annual spending cut from Title X Family Planning, a figure that represents the program’s entire budget as of 2009 (2010 figures unavailable). Title X is the only federal grant program dedicated solely to providing low-income individuals with comprehensive family planning and related preventive health services. It does not fund abortions.

The really interesting thing to emerge is a nice summary of the Republican platform: fuck poor people.

Birth control should not be affordable. Abortion should not be accessible – failing that, it should not be affordable. Childcare should not be affordable. Women should not work outside the home. And also, poor families should not get welfare benefits of any sort. Fuck poor people.

I’m pretty disgusted with the world right now.

This guy over here on the left, he’s Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, IZ to his fans, a sublime Hawaiian singer most famous for his totally hippie rendition of a medley of Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World. I can’t find the medley itself on YouTube or anywhere, how weird is that.

Angad loves this guy, always wants to skip to the Iz songs at the end of his YouTube playlist.

Yesterday I was overdue for some me-time so I decided to put on this playlist and stick the kid in front of the computer for a good hour. The minute the first song comes on, this is what I hear:

Angad: Ammaaa, Ammaaa, I don’t want this song, I want Somewhene Oven the Nainbow!

Me: (pretending not to understand, coz I’m evil like that) You mean this Judy Garland version? Here you go sweetie.

Angad: Nooooo, nooooo, the UNCLE song! I want Uncle to sing it!

Me: Which uncle? Bembi*-uncle? He doesn’t sing this song! (*bembi = belly-button. Angad is obsessed with belly buttons, goes wild at the sight of one. He’s always absolutely transfixed by Aamir Khan’s bembi all through Hai Guzaarish. Hence the monicker “bembi-uncle”.)

Angad: No no no, I want the “oooooooo” Uncle.

Me: What do you mean, the “ooooo” Uncle?!

Angad: He says “oooooo” and then he sings Somewhene Oven the Nainbow and then he leaves his guitar in the grass like a bad boy and then there’s a biiiiigggg water and then he says “oooh aah aah”.

It struck me at this point how awesome it is that to Angad, size is not the stand-out thing about Iz. He didn’t think to describe Iz by his statuesque build at all, but instead confined himself purely to what Iz does and says and what happens in that music video.

Isn’t that just darling?

For the first time in my life I understood why people wax lyrical about “innocence”, and I found myself wanting to preserve the non-worldly-wiseness of my sweet little boy, protect him from this corrupt world…

But “wooby momma bear” is an unstable state of existence for me. Very soon my heavy nucleus emitted some alpha particles (or maybe it was methane) and I decayed into my usual self.

Now all I wanted to do was find out if Angad even realized that IZ was fat. Did this 2 year old brain see the fat and find it unremarkable, or did he just not notice it? So I began to subject him to some delicate psychological research.

Me: Angu, Angu, tell me, is that Uncle’s hair long like Amma’s or short like Angu’s?

Angad: Uncle’s hair is long like Amma’s!

Me: And is that Uncle’s tummy big like Amma’s*** or small like Angu’s? (***Am I making an announcement? Yes, I do believe I am…)

Angad: Uncle has a big tummy! Yes!

Me: And what about Uncle’s bum? Is it big or small?

Angad: It’s biiiiiiiiig! Like Amma’s bum!

Me: OI!!

Angad: Yes, Uncle has a big big bum, just like Amma’s bum.

Me: Objection! This is an outrage! Order in the court!

Angad: Amma has a biiiig bum, Uncle has a biiiig bum. Same-same.  Matching-matching.

Wait. It occurred to me that there might yet be hope. What if this crazy kid thinks all adults’ bums are big? They are big compared to his own after all. That must be it.

Me: Angad, tell me, is Baba’s bum also big like Uncle’s?

Angad: No, Baba has a small bum!

Me: WHUT. Wait, let’s see if you understand relative sizes. Is Amma’s bum more big or Baba’s bum more big?

Angad:  Amma’s bum is more big. (And I can almost hear him say DUH at the end of that sentence.)

Me: You snotty little bastard. OK, is Amma’s bum more big or is that Uncle’s bum more big?

Angad: *Thinks*

Me: THIS IS NOT A DIFFICULT QUESTION GODDAMMIT.

Angad: Amma and Uncle same-same. Both bums are big.

If I’m arrested for toddlericide in the near future let it be known that I had excellent reasons for doing it.

The answer is short and simple: I get inspired almost exclusively when I see, read or hear awesome stuff.

Does you guys have the same experience? It’s practically impossible for me to take a walk down the street and come back itchng to write. Not even if I lived somewhere ridiculously picturesque, I don’t think, since I hardly ever get Inspired!!! on vacations. Doing stuff doesn’t make me want to write either. It’s rarely that I’m hang-gliding and at the same time dying to get back to my desk to write about it, you know? (Not that I’ve ever actually hang-glid. It’s still on the bucket list.) And while my thoughts do turn to writing when things begin to go to pot around me, I doubt that can be counted as inspiration… it’s more of a coping mechanism.

But put on a brilliant movie (Trikaal, Fargo, Ishqiya) and I’d be hitting pause to SQUEE and WRITE and THEORIZE about it every two seconds if it wasn’t for fear of never getting to finish the movie now when you factor in Angad-related interruptions in addition and also fear of Saurabh throttling me. I read a mindblowing book (Rebecca, The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Doll’s House) and it spawns thousands of words of my own original fiction. If anybody ever plays Dil To Bachchha Hai Ji around me I am guaranteed to feel that telltale tickle in my fingers… the song makes words just come pouring out.

A few years ago I read a – it was fanfic, ok? You’d think this would be embarrassing to admit, but it isn’t, because that’s how perfect it was. It’s a Harry Potter 7th year fanfic that was written before the release of Deathly Hallows, The Crux Of The Matter, and oh my god it just grabbed me and refused to let go. Everything I’ve written since is an attempt to live up to it. I want to fall down on my knees and shout GODDAMN whenever I think of it; it’s nothing short of a religious experience. In the months after I read that one fanfiction novel, I wrote furiously and fast and even managed to make a submission. It even got published. For actual money. I still can’t get that fic out of my head. I have it printed out, pages of it sitting at my desk gathering dust mostly, but just looking at it is enough to remind me about why writing is so worthwhile.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not equating inspiration with the fan experience. I will go fannishly wild over all kinds of things all the time, but only some will make me want to write. For instance, my love of P.G. Wodehouse or Pulp Fiction or any number of truly sublime works of art is legendary, but damned if it makes me want to write. Some things I’m happy just admiring, others light the spark in my head that makes me go I want to do something like that! NOW!

I know if I can recreate a tenth of the spark in me, why, that’s my definition of success. That’s inspiration.

What do you think, people? What inspires you?

Charlotte Silver is the oft-overlooked younger sister in a family of ghost hunters. This is less weird than it sounds. Charlotte’s parents do not actually believe in ghosts, they’re more interested in disproving claims of hauntings while being unable to explain away a couple of strange “energy patterns” they’ve come across in their career.

Anyway, Charlotte happens to trigger some actual, somewhat malevolent sleeping ghosties during a filming session with her parents and older sister. The haunting begins in earnest as Charlotte begins to have cryptic dreams about a girl from the past century, and sinister thuds and thumps and thrown furniture begin to hammer in the ghostly message: find the dead girl, and somehow reunite her with her even deader parents.

And meanwhile Charlotte copes with starting her senior year at a new high school where a mysterious tragedy occurred last year, a new friend with big secrets, a fight with her older and much more glamorous sister, the bitchy rival in the AV club and the cute boy also in the AV club… Standard fare for your typical YA novel, very deftly handled.

The book’s weakness lies in its very-vanilla themes and storyline: nothing big is at stake, nobody is evil, no one’s life is risked and very little happens in the climax. YA books these days tend to push the envelope when it comes to dark themes and high stakes – for example, Sarah Rees Brennan’s “The Demon’s Lexicon” is in a completely different league compared to this. Perhaps it’s not always necessary to go dark and dangerous to be a good book, but the low conflict level in this one did detract from my ability to care what happens to Charlotte. I always knew she would be fine.

Then again, the book is what it is. Light reading is just as legitimate as.. er, dark reading?

The book’s strength is definitely in its solid narrative skills and likeable cast of characters. I can see why there will be two more books about Charlotte Silver. Recommended for younger teens.

4/5 stars!