It's a Girl!

A baby girl!

Yeaaahhh..

Now that you have surpassed your initial glee of becoming a parent, you must send her to school. Not just any school.. An English Medium one! Preferably in a girls’ school..so she does not get into any ‘unnecessary mess’. What follows? Well, if she scores reasonably well in her exams or is awarded exceptionally heavy and charmingly incomprehensible  books at the end of every academic year … You are definitely doing fantastically well as a parent.

Of course you haven’t ignored the envious looks from those parents whose wards barely manage to surpass the 50% mark.  And once she is out of her school, you hope, pray , plead and strike all sorts of deals with the All Mighty, so your one and only..beautiful little girl gets into a college worth writing home about. Of course if your child has been smoothly hovering about the coveted 90-95% mark, your prayers to the one above would be as decent as anyone would expect.

College.. 

Well, if she doesn’t manage to get into an impressive college, you gradually begin to nurture the belief..that a good  college is really not a big deal..or it slowly enters your mind… Why the hell did I not have another kid?? And if you already have one, its high time..you buy some extra samosas for him/ her on your way home or spend your bonus on the magical tuition teacher the neighbours have been talking about!

Either way…as she cruises through her college days..and gets really comfortable in her ‘purani jeans’ you begin to wonder, is she really dating that skinny guy in maternity pants? What do they do besides having coffee? Isn’t she hanging out at Sheila’s place just too often?

 Sigh… I wish I could get back my college days.. I wish her dad would go for a walk more often!

A few unexplainable days, some mails from college mysteriously performing a vanishing act and your daughter comes home proudly declaring that she is now a graduate! While neighbours and family members, no longer envious of her success begin to ‘notice’ her for all the ‘obvious’ reasons. Anyhow …you have suddenly established yourself as a lady with a modern outlook you annouce to the world that your daughter has more to do than merely tie the bloody knot!

So your daughter steps into more advanced study and then finds herself a job in a fancy, swanky office where you have never dreamt of walking into, unless to meet your husband, you know you have made the right decision! 

However the ‘unexplainable days’ and night outs with Sheila continues… but you chose to ignore it as you are still quite kicked with the almost sinful pleasure generated in you when you narrate your daughter’s success to your neighbours!

However as time goes by, you no longer get a kick out of her success and in fact you don’t even care about the new feverishly expensive purse she gave you on your birthday; you simply want to see her get married and have a family just  the way things happened in your times!

Well, there are three things you don’t want your daughter to say.

1. I want to  of marry Sheila
2. I want to completely focus on my career and I don’t want to get into any sort of marital contract till the next 5 years
3. I want to become a CEO and then marry.

Lets us imagine, our daughter’s response was somewhere between 2 and 3.

Suddenly for you, it does not matter how much she scored in school, how she graduated smoothly in spite of the strange man whose hairdo pleaded for the want of a comb and how she has been making enough money to sustain the entire family.

As Time Passes By..

The rapid evolution of Slim n’ Sleek technology has lead to the gradual death of certain objects that we all held so very dear in our formative years. Unnecessary excess is nowadays seen as something that should be briskly trimmed and done away with, as we progress though our lives. My friend P, recently bought an alarm clock for herself and while I am still in my frivolous shopping spree, lured by its antique look, I decided to buy one for myself as well. It is an old fashioned alarm clock, solely capable of showing the time and alarmingly screeching, whenever it is set to do so!

Purchased merely for its decorative value, it ended up to be more than it appears to be .One of the most remarkable thing about the clock is its ticking sound that constantly reminds me of the time passing by and the time that will never come back. In the quiet of the night, when every other object seems to have worn out, my little clock ticks away like a loving friend, who would never part my company!

This reminded me of the old grandfather clock that adorned our wall about a decade ago in our Calcutta house and required a great deal of effort to keep it going. It would require regular wounding and care  and in return it would bring in some order into our chaotic lives. In its own commanding grandfatherly ways it would announce the completion of an hour. Gong!!!

An hour gone by…an hour that will never come back!

Time is no longer what it used to be. Time is now endless. No authoritarian gong demarcates time, indicating and letting us know that it is now time to go home.. However in times as ours, I love my little old-fashioned alarm clock that reassuring ticks away with every passing second, reminding me of the significance of  time and the gracious values that it has inherited from its stern and at times grumpy old grandfather.