Valentine’s, And my kind of love

#sareespeak

#kashmirsilk

#SS/12/2020

#aucklandnzss

#womenofsareespeak

Disclaimer – long post, content may disturb. Not a suitable read for good moms.

This post is about my girls.

Or rather my kind of love.

I love my girls. I really do. But they can be the most exasperating young women.

Like all of Little Women’s women and Emma’s Emma rolled into one.

They are bossy, strong, outspoken, and they think they know everything.

They take hours to start on any chores.

They practise selective hearing and selective tearing.

They claim I overreact, am so loud, and tell me to chill All The Time, the last thing one says to a roaring bull.

I’ve probably made them who they are.

And maybe that’s a good thing.

They’re great friends, they are Extremely good hearted to all with the exception of the one who birthed them.

Let me throw a little light on their upbringing.

I was and still am the kind of mother who loves her sleep.

When they were little (not much has changed now), I used to wait for them to go to sleep at night so that I could finally sleep. And more often than not, a huge sense of regret would overwhelm me, and I’d hug them, kiss their drowsy lids, and tell them “amma loves you so much”.

And to get them to sleep, they were regaled with exotic tales.

Just to cover myself, you need to understand that when expecting my firstborn, I digested Dr Spock’s Baby and Child care, gifted to me by my mom, her copy, and no prizes for guessing how I turned out. My sister got me a Johnson’s baby care book with pictures, step by step instructions on how to have an award winning birth and be an award winning mum. My baby sister got me a book by an Australian mum, on breastfeeding. My Bible, I expressed between feeds, had labelled bottles in the freezer, and only stopped when the last door had to be removed during office renovations and my friends heard whirring sounds and found me under my desk.

Anyway, getting back to my afternoon nap and bedtime tales, I used to be so desperate to send them to La La land that I resorted to..

Wait, before you judge me, imagine a six and one year old, on either side of me, attempting to tickle each other, giggling to bits, my mind reeling with lack of sleep and the endless chores I needed to tick off before the end of the day.

And so, I told them tales from the Ramayana, stories of Krishna.

One day I will reveal to their father that the reason they’ve become the monsters they are today, is because my tales did not figure Rama and Krishna. On the contrary, my girls fell asleep believing that if they so much as moved, Mareecha, Shubahu, Tataka, Shurpanakha, Putana, Kamsa would emerge from the built in cupboards in front of them.

I definitely had blissful dreams.

At nights, Aunty Latha, an aunt they were a little wary of, loomed outside the bedroom window, like vampires in Salem’s Lot.

That was sleep time.

I had even better strategies for Feeding time.

I had a wall of masks collected from our travels. One particular mask was orange, with white hair, a crooked smile and broken teeth. My older one stopped playing with her rice, after she was told that Mask thatha would swoop out and feed her.

When I moved here, I was forewarned by the spouse that in Western countries, parents do not shout, but generally reason with their offspring.

I behaved for the first few..

weeks, then warned my girls that I would whisper menacingly or draw the curtains, turn up the TV and scream.

My little one especially, used to chide me for calling her Silly. She had this broken gramophone record way of saying ‘You can’t use rude words, Amma, stop it, I don’t like it’. Fifteen years on, she hasn’t changed.

She’s never been one to rise early, but when she was little, she’d had some music exams to prep for, so I’d wake her up early to practise. One fine day, she lay flat on the floor, exclaiming ‘I wish I wasn’t Indian, I wish I was anything but Indian’.

My comeback then and now, has remained the same. That I was and am extremely sorry that she had me as a mother, but worse still, she had a nasty Indian/Asian tiger dragon mum, and she was stuck with me for the next few decades.

The idea probably grew on her – they are both still with me, and quite good musicians.

Just one final tale of terror. Was teaching the little one maths, she was whingeing, I threw a book at her, she ducked, it hit the wall and dented it. No no. The book wasn’t heavy, walls here are pretty soft.

Dilemma, spouse doesn’t like rude words, doesn’t like the girls being screamed at, even ‘silly’ is rude.

By that time, we girls had come to an understanding. Mum knows what’s best, and only wants what’s best for them.

So before dad got home, we set about rearranging the furniture so that the dent was hidden.

Proud mumma. Having raised such geniuses.

Coming back to the present, spent Valentine’s Day yesterday, at the movies with one girl, then family dinner at a friend’s.

Forewarned girls all day yesterday, about Valentine’s special photoshoot.

Today,

Went out for a Dance Arangetram, got home, told the girls to unleash the love while hubby clicked, but not without girls picking the angles, seating him on a stool, which he did quite willingly, as he didn’t have to be romantic or be in the shot.

And unleash the love, they did, as you can see in the sequence of clicks.

Am in a deep red Kashmir silk with dark brown and gold borders, weirdly matched with a brown and orange checked cotton blouse.

Girl 1 is in a pink cotton silk checked saree with orange kalamkari cotton silk blouse,

Girl 2 has draped, a soft green organza fancy floral printed saree.

Husband, not in shot, who got changed before his assignment, is in his comfy off to bed clothes.