I get paid for Video calls ... no, I am not that kind of girl :)

Circa 2020; Pandemic has taken over lives. Kids 6th and 5th grades have started with online classes. At 8pm Simran announces to Suman that they are supposed to read a chapter and make notes on questions or some such thing. I can sense anxiety building up inside Suman. She accepts the reality in a few minutes (she has been very good with this trait) and brings her iPad to start reading. Within minutes, she asks me for help to download book as she doesn't like reading on the browser. She is irritated with "Physics" concepts. I don't blame her. Try reading Atoms, aNu, paramanu, particles and molecules within a gap of 5 paragraphs. She started mumbling "i hope they fix these book issues". My question, "What do you mean by book issues and why are you making it an issue" was the tipping point. She started crying and amid many things pointed out "........... you don't have to do much; you jsut sit there and send emails and attend some video calls". My mind found this hilarious. Here is a 6th grader who thinks my job entails only sending emails ... so much so for my value :). No complaints as long as I get paid for it. At this point, my son feels like adding value. "Yeah, on top of this, you get paid for doing this. We do so many things and don't get paid for it at all". It was a "Bhagiratha prayatna" (herculean task) to not burst out laughing and I actually managed to do that. 

My tryst with restaurant fantasy

I am back after a long hiatus. Feeling to pen down my thoughts has only been increasing in the past few months.
today, I created a list of few things I wanted to pursue in this life. One of my early and long drawn interest in owning a restaurant made me look at few options. I read the following. Given my career stage, effort involved at this stage (remember my 3kids still require my time and will need me for few years to come) and the financial return make it a look like a losing proposition. I wrote down things i like about owning a restaurant:
(1) Interacting with customers and ensuring their satisfaction with meals (now, this assumes a high end restaurant in a nice neighborhood)
(2) Cooking different meals

Things I may not like:
(1) Handling unskilled employee community with high rate of attrition
(2) razor thin margins even though some may see it's better with high end restaurants
(3) Long hours which will keep me from my family and other pursuits


I am going to once again put the restaurant option behind me. Now, will want to look bridging the food gap between haves and not haves. Will come back another time with my thoughts 

Discovering K G Satram and Humanity

Days rolling upto Chariji's birthday, i felt this intense longing to be part of the celebration at Thiruvallur. So, i looked for accommodation at a short notice and also thought of renting a car. After much lurking around the web, decided to stay in the ashram and reach there using my own car. took off from my work on 23rd and 24th.

On 23rd, decided to complete some work in the morning and left the house at 12 after lunch. Plan was to attend the evening satsang (touch and go given the departure time). As soon as I shut the door behind me, realized I had not taken the car key and that I didn't have my house key. Thankfully, my mind suggested that I could get house keys from Pari atte's house. Walked to and fro to get my key. This added 25 mins extra to my departure time. After coming down to UB, realized that I had left my SRCM badge upstairs thereby delaying my departure by additional 10 mins.

I started at 12:45 from Brigade Gateway. My entertainment was Master's speech. Journey was smooth inspite of overtaking lot of trucks etc. Around 3:30, after I passed K G Satram village, I decided to overtake a car in front me. Half through the process, suddenly, 4 vehicles with XUV as the leader came charging in the opposite direction. My gut told me to veer towards right on to the mud pathway and I obeyed. IN spite of hitting brakes hard, i went forward few meters and stopped after banging into the mud heap and a stone. First thought "i'm going to miss the evening satsang". Then I got out of the car to inspect the happening. My mind was still hoping to salvage this quickly and make it to ashram. 

All those 4 cars stopped and came by to see what had happened. XUV driver seemed more scared than I was. 

The curious passerby inspecting my vehicle told me that radiator is gone and that I should not attempt to start my vehicle to save it from further damage. Quick conversation with Jay resulted in a roadside assistance number from the internet. Maruti assistance was very helpful and immediately arranged for a nearby service station to call me. The service station person sent his senior mechanical advisor over. 

Meanwhile, crowd gathered out of curiosity. I ignored many to keep the situation under control. My calm demeanor didn’t give them much to pry on. Had a KA license plate vehicle check to see if they could help. I tried to spend some time inside the car but could not do so beyond few mins. I decided to take reading material and have a conversation with the tea shop folks.

Tea shop folks were quite friendly in spite of not knowing Kannada. We conversed in Hindi as the lady was Bengali married to a Telugu guy. The old head and the man of the shop were appreciative of my calm demeanor and applauded the courage shown.

The Chittor service station head communicated twice saying that the advisor was on his way. Turnsout that he is from Bangalore. Advisor showed up around 4:45, inspected the vehicle and said it had to be taken to the body shop. 

Nearby body shops were Tirupathi or Vellore (35kms). I called Maruti again. Maruti was not of great help this time around. They would not ensure if body shop would be open. They would arrange for tow vehicle. Towing the vehicle back to Bangalore was a costly affair (15K). The body shop mechanic helped arrange towing vehicle from Vellore along with ensuring that the body shop owner being available at the time. Costed 3500 rountrip for towing the vehicle.

Again, waited in the tea shop and had dinner. Nice chit chat with the crowd there. Got to know that there was another accident on Sunday at the same time (3:30).

Towing vehicle showed up around 7:15. He was a Kannada speaking guy. Helped get the vehicle to body shop. I checked with him on Thiruvallur bus from Vellore. He made few inquiries and also tried to get a cab. He assured to help me in one way or the other.

By the time we got to Body shop, it was 8:45. The owner came by after calling. He inspected and provide the necessary statement. The towing guy gave me a ride to the bus station and checked on Thiruvallur bus. Answer was to go to Perumbudur and make a change. Since it was late at night, I decided against that keeping safety in mind. I decided to head back to Bangalore. The Bangalore bus was slated to leave at 11. So, the towing guy told me that he would check on private bus. After seeing the private bus station, I decided to take the KSRTC. The waiting area was scary. He suggested that I get some food before boarding the bus.

Got the bus ticket, tipped off for being such a great help. Husband was waiting at Majestic bus stand at 3am. Reached home safely.

I am writing this down to remind myself of the fact that human beings behave according to situations, that there still nice people, above all Master’s blessings are always there.

In the entire incident, I noticed that all things were conducive

-       gut feeling to move to the right side

-       the incident happening at a place where a tea shop, eatery and petrol bunk was present

-       Had good cell phone signal with data so I could search and call right guys

-       Helping hands especially the Chittor Maruthi dealer and the towing guy

All in all, I would like to thank my stars (which is the master)

Mango (distribution) Madness

I started my weekend with work hangover and a slight emotional disturbance as a result.  Rather a hectic weekend schedule as my father-in-law wanted to distribute as many mangoes as we could. I tried negotiate/argue various distribution points but in vain. It all started with Friday evening with one of our friends wanting to collect their share of mangoes this year.

I gathered a bunch and put it in the bag and instructed both mava and amma to give it to them incase i slept along with my kids. It turns, both of them could not figure out which mango bag belonged to our friends. Lot of confusion and hence little distribution. However, they got Jackfruit as a bonus ;-). 

On Saturday, filly wanted to get done with mango packing very early (by his standards). However, we got to leave our house only at 10:30 (90 minutes later than planned). So much for planning and execution. By the time we reached the distribution centre (Sri Saraswathi Kalyana Mantapa), it was 1:15pm. I wanted to take my kids swimming by 4pm. After few exchanges and given the way people and the system operates, I gave up on my hope of swimming class. I was successful in not being party to the boring conversation ;-). Instead, had a wonderful opportunity to listen to Manu sing some keerthane and a Kishore Kumar Song. Ofcoruse, we were home only 4 hours after that due to few other stops in the middle. Our day ended with good popcorn, dose, ice cream and beauty and the beast with Kids favorite Kirti Chikkamma and Abhimanyu. It was mast fun

On Sunday, we went through the usual motion of wedding ceremony. Two interesting things on this hectic mango distribution day:
(1) Met a lady who has 6 kids out of which four are 2 sets of twins; so it goes 1,2,1,2 .. all girls till the last two. I almost touched her feet. The lady worked full time and had a very supportive husband; All were very nice people and I am so happy I had a chance to meet a wonderful family.

(2) There were license fee for Radio purchase and cycle usage way back in Nehru days ... funny how "rich" definition is defined by the material things they owned 

Saturday monkeyness

Suman Simran woke up and started browsing photos and videos of their own. Seems like they are getting a good hang of operating the mac.
Gaurav spoke to his great grandma in his own way via Skype.

Around lunch tie, after eating some lunch, suman decided to go sit on the high chair. Simran was standing infront of her to put the high chair platter :). This was a funny scene to watch.
Prior to that, they were pushing each other into the football like chair and giving head bath (imaginary) ;-). pretty funny ... they are keeping themselves busy inside 'coz they cannot step outside due to rain.

Starting my Kids blog

Last Saturday, Nov 13, one of our friends Kiran/Kal gave us a great idea of blogging our kids activities so we remember it in the future. This gave me, an otherwise a non-blogger, a great motivation to blog. Here we go.

The same day, Saturday Nov 13, dad was trying to discipline Suman/Simran. He gave time out to Suman. Ofcourse, Suman does not understand what timeout means. Both of them were sitting on a high chair when dad said "Suman, timeout for you"... while Suman was trying to figure out what dad just shouted, Simran bends down to look at Suman's face and utters "timeout" in a very low voice :). Dad started laughing ending the timeout incident for that day.

Today, Nov 19, Suman/Simran were operating the iMAC early in the morning (ard 7am). I had saved wiggles "old McDonald..." on the desktop. I looked at the computer to witness Suman/Simran watching this song and enjoying it without any of my help :). She must have double clicked the file.

Lack of motivation

What do people do to motivate themselves? I tried caffeine way ...doesn't work; meditation works but need to be very diligent. I thought exercising early in the morning helps but doesn't help as much as it used to.