To all Mothers...

The first whooshes on a doppler, those hazy crazy ultrasound lines, the first gentle nudge, the first look into those eyes , the first time you hold a life in your hands or be accountable for one..... to love , to nourish and to protect no matter what ..... I suppose a mother is born.

While many mothers have the advantage of knowing their baby almost 9 months more that any other person in the world, the ones who don't , sure find their own ways to make up for that. A mother is proud of her baby, whether it be an academic excellence or the fact that it fought and survived a fatal condition. A mother is protective of her ward, at times( as it seems to us other mortals) bordering on paranoia.

She loves her child, with everything, even her life and sanity. She balances her love , just like a cat holds its kitten's neck to move it around ... firm enough to not drop it, yet soft enough not to strangle the little one.

But I suppose at some point, she always knows she has to let go of her little one. She has to let it go and be a person of the world, belong to the world , make its own mistakes and learn from them. She has to let it go, to grow and live its own life. And even when she does all this, she knows her baby, just knows.   

A Mother is so many things that words would always fall short and on this Mothers' day, I salute all the mothers in this world. The mothers who carried their baby for 9 months, the mothers who adopted a little one into her home, the mothers who bestowed their love on their sons-in-law or daughters-in-law and all those women who 'mothered' another child as their own , this world is what it is because of you.

As William Ross Wallace said ...

                All true trophies of the ages 

                         Are from mother-love impearled, 

                For the hand that rocks the cradle 

                         Is the hand that rules the world.

Happy Mothers' Day!!!

Crazy Lamhe !

One of those crazy moments when we stop parallel to each other on a traffic crossroad, hoping for our side of the signal to go Green first and making faces at each other as soon as our eyes meet :) ...

We try to win - the 'who makes the weirdest face first' and 'whose signal turns green first' contests ! Although no one really loses the first one, seeing my light turn green surely brings out a winning smile and a belly laugh as I zoom away, parting ways but looking forward to a lovely day...

Some might say its childish, but I respect and love the little child within all of us. In a world of rat races , break-neck ambitions and a hurry to grow-up, this kid gives us a break and makes us do stuff we would never get too old to do.

Happy are those who can keep the kid in them alive and today,on Holi , I wish everyone gets to take a break and relish in the spirit of fun and love that the festival brings!!

Some crazy lamhe from last year ... Holi Hai :) !!!

The day of love

It has been a while since you came into my life,

Although just yesterday,it seems,

Two young innocent souls we were

Blissfully ignorant of the universe' schemes.

Years passed and I found
A very dependable friend
And it certainly looked from every side that,
The universe was at its wit's end,
To bring us together,
To kindle the light,
And the flying dwarf struck the arrow
Finally, to all's delight!

Those were the crazy, filmy lovestruck days
Butterflies in my tummy, speeding hearts, skipping beats

And then I grew up, hand in hand with you
Every day an adventure , every dream coming true

I saw and loved a new you, with each day that went
Whatever the time came,you never let go of my hand

It's been a while since you came into my life,
But to this day it all is true
You are still my breath of fresh air
I smile everytime I see you.
You complete my lines even before i speak them
And I think your thoughts at the same time you would,
And that does make us feel, perhaps,
We know each other a bit too much for our own good!

I just know , we keep growing old,
Like an exotic bottle of wine,
I love my task of loving you
And I hope it keeps getting better with time.

                                   - with love, Piu.

A very special year .... 2012.

I took a year long hiatus, till I realized that my blog defines me as much as I define it.

When I started this blog, a dear cousin of mine told me, 'the main challenge is to keep it coming'. That sure turned out to be true.

The year 2012 was packed with incidents and memorable moments to be captured, so packed , in fact , that I couldn't steal a few to pen those down (That's my excuse!).
So finally I thought, even if the new year 2013 is a month and a half old, I should still capture the beautiful year that the previous one was.


The year began with a New Year blast and our very own catena of Indian festivals. Makar Sankranti brought the pithe and sweets with it while Holi painted our lives with its own colours. The Bengali New Year was celebrated with equal candor and fun.Fulfilling one of our wishes ,we added a shiny silver Chrysler Sebring Convertible to our family :)! I made an official trip to Columbus,Georgia in the Feb, leaving RS free for a well-timed Mardi Gras celebration with his guys !



A lot of planning and 4 months into the year, we shifted to our new apartment in preparation for the highlight of the year - our parents' trip to USA! The action started in April and we had a complete fun filled 6 months thereafter with our 2 Moms and 2 Dads. We were able to show them a lot of the country - the east coast, west coast, texas and oh yeah - Vegas!! We celebrated all the three anniversaries, Mothers' and Fathers' days.They got a taste of the very essence of our lives here , little things like long drives, on-the-road planning, strenous long trips, lots of shopping,different cuisines, different driving rules, the varied scenary, and the freedom to feel free. The happiness, their smiles and the excitement in their eyes was all and more than anything we could ask for. We were finally able to make this particular dream of ours, come true.

September saw our parents heading back to India and to lift our spirits, October brought us Durga Puja. Like every year the Goddess and her kids paid us a grand visit and blessed us with happiness. The year ended with a lovely all-snowed-white-Christmas surprise :) !

After a rocking, thrilling, adventurous and surprising year we pulled up our socks to welcome the new year with renewed vigor, new hopes and expectations!
Welcome 2013!!

সেই পুজো

ঢাক এর আবাজ , সূর্য অস্তমুখী
আজ মায়ের যাবার পালা...
ছোটবেলার সেই সারি পরে
পুজো তলায় যাবা
মেলা , ফুচকা ঝালমুড়ি ,
বিকেলে শিল্পীদের পরিবেশনা ,
না খেয়ে রাত জেগে
সন্ধি পুজো দেয়া ...
কত কিছু মনে পরে ....
সঙ্খবাদন প্রতিযোগিতা ,
আরতির উলুধ্বনি
কিছুই তো পাল্টায়নি
শুধু প্রতিযোগী-রা আলাদা ...
আর অন্য আরেক দেশ ....


শরত কালে এই মাটিতেও
কাশ ফুল হাসে
আরতি নাচের ধুলোভরা মাটি
আজ হলো বাস্কেটবল কোর্ট
ঢাকি আজ পাল্টে
হল কিছু বন্ধুগণ
তবে , বাদবাকি সব এক ....

আজ ও সেই পুজোর আগের
আনন্দ উদ্যোগ
ধুনুচির ধোযাঁর মাঝে
প্রতিমার মুখের দিকে তাকিয়ে
সেই এক শিহরণ ,
সিঁদুর খেলা রক্তিম কপাল
আর চোখে খুশির চমক ,
ঢাক কাঁসর-এর তালে
আজ-ও সেই আত্মহারা নাচ ....

--- সুচরিতা

Back to you ...

11th June 2011.... Apart from marking my parent's 30th anniversary, this day holds another special significance for me. It was the culmination of two months worth of fighting off loneliness, struggling through various decisions, and the insufferable pain of being away from the person you most want to be with.

It all started with the husband taking up an overseas trip, which could not be delayed any further. With that, started the madness to shop,pack,unpack and then pack again until his flight to US of A left the Calcutta airport. The following couple of days saw every member of the family working up to cope with the feeling of not being able to see him for quite some time.  

I started searching for some position at or near Irving,TX to be with RS. Ironically all the openings matching my profile chose to be far far away, around the north-east coast area. After debating with RS and thinking and re-thinking for few days about options of him relocating to those areas, I realized I needed to make my goal clear. And there it was, everything started falling into its place. I found that if I were to take up those jobs, it would be a couple more months or even a year before I get to be with him while on the other hand if I wanted to stay with him right away, I would most likely need to leave my job.

After weighing my options for a few weeks, resignation seemed like the only option as all I wanted was to live with my husband ASAP.So I thought of going ahead with that.I chose my family over my career. Does that make me any less hard core or non-career-istic? I dont know and neither do I care! I just know this is what I want and this is what will make me happy!

As fate will have it, out of no-where I got an offer right near the husband's location. However, the profile had no link whatsoever with my domain and ignoring my 6 years of experience ,I took it up. This was harder than resignation, as I gave up doing something I had come to love in these 6 years. But what made it easy was the moment, when I saw him waiting at the Dallas-Fortworth Airport for me, with a bunch of the most beautiful flowers and chocolates. The moment, was a silent witness to my moist eyes, as I realized I was finally with him and as of that moment, we were together again!
 

Desires... Wants... Needs... and our Being

'As tough as wanting something can be ... the people who suffer the most are those who don't know exactly what they want...'  or so says Meredith ...

Have you ever lain on snow, full length, limbs sprawled ? I have...
 Its a great feeling...
Staring up at the dark night sky, from a white bed of snow, and just lay there... feel the bite of the snow, let the chill penetrate the skin and reach my bones, till they go numb ... and there is no cold,no pain, nothing.

We desire a lot of things, want some of them , but just don't need them all, at least not all the time.  But the thing we cannot live without, is our existense, the thing that defines who we are. It can be anything, our poetry, our parents, our kids, our car.... it can be anything. But it means so much to us that we know we will not be able to identify ourselves without it. And when it gets hurt, it hurts us. Sometimes breaks us.

We can forget about our unmet desires, can manage without our wants, can compromise without our needs but we stop surviving without our being.

It feels like falling into the water.... first we try to swim, to stay afloat and then after some time, the fight within us runs out. We try to find our happy place. We want someone to pull us out, someone to fight for us, someone to know us, to understand our being. And when we don't find that happy place, and when the person doesn't find us, we let the water inside us and there is blue everywhere. The sunlight moves further away as we keep getting pulled inside, waiting to save our being.