As seen on TV

When you have stayed in any place for nearly a decade you gradually start thinking of that place as home. What makes it more difficult is if that place in a completely different country than the one you were born and brought up in. Your identity becomes extremely blended.

After being here for quite some time I am often faced with the dilemma of determining my identity. An identity which is not based on what my visa status is or whether I am a citizen of a specific country. Its based more on what was familiar once is now not so familiar and what was at a time new to me is now my way of life. I am now confused if I am Indian in America or an American with roots in India. Now mind you this is not about patriotism or national pride its more of an adaptation of lifestyle and local norms due to the amount time you spend in one place.

But what annoys me the most is how people in both my adopted country USA and my motherland India seem quick to assert that they know everything about each other all based on "AS Seen on TV". I get tired of defending both the countires to each other because seriously both of them are a part of me and none of them are as bad as it seems.

In American media most documentaries of India will focus on crowded streets, half naked children under flyovers and animals on the road. I dont deny that is a part of India but it is so much more. India is a technologically advanced modern country with well lit metropolises and people with liberal thiking. In India reside a very urbanized set of people who are not unlike you. Making India to be a land of yogis and snake charmers would be akin to calling America a land only made of rodeo riders and baseball players. And while India may look to you like this

It is also this












In the same way Indians conceive America as a country with garish neon lights and divorce rates and infidelity through the roof. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Like in any country America has big cities and small towns. There are far more happily married families than divorcees here. And while the American outlook to life is far more liberal then the conservative India society permits you will find moms here with nearly the same issues and problems Indian moms face while raising their kids. And while you may picturize the whole of America to look like this

In reality most of America is probably more like this

Seriously if all you know of the other country is by watching TV documentaries and sitcoms then you are in for a rude awakening. Just like Kynki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi [or any other popluar sitcom] cannot be a true representative of Indian society at large similarly The Bold and the Beautiful cannot be considered as a primer to American scociety. They are sitcoms and as sitcoms go they are more there for the shock factor than to document a country's cultural landscape and hence should be taken with a generous dose of salt.

I am lucky enough to have both my Indian and American friends viewing my blog and  I hope I can be your window to both the countries. All you have to do is keep an open mind and ask...

Rule Bender and why I am looking into military school for toddlers...

Rule Bender is 2 so that makes him a rule bender by nature but it not just his age that gets him this name. I can honestly say he has been tis way since he was conceived. We had just returned from a Disney trip we had taken with another family who had a kid the same age as Straight Line and the whole trip the two kids had been bickering, fighting and in general making everybody miserable. I returned from the trip and firmly told Mr. Clean that if having a second kid meant making up my own bickering team I rather have only one kid. I should have then followed it up with sending Mr. Clean to Siberia for a few years coz without much bow chika bow wow I was suddenly pregnant. So u c even before he was born Rule Bender was already bending rules.

Now before any of you suddenly take it upon themselves to suddenly come up in Rule Benders defense you should know 2 things
a] YOU don't live with him
b] On good days he is like this

This pictured does not even begin to do justice to the chocolaty mess he created that day from a teeny box of Nutella.

I have quite a few theories on why he is this way and mostly all of them are Mr. Clean's fault. See when Straight Line was born I was in India and Mr. Clean here in USA so Straight Line had been exclusively in my care the first 4 months of his life and turned out who he is. When Rule Bender was born I had a Csection and while the doctors were putting be back together again Mr. Clean had Rule Bender all to himself for a few hours. I have an inkling that the baby got switched in that duration coz there is no way Rule Bender is genetically linked to Straight Line. They are really chalk and cheese. Most days end with both of them fighting and Rule Bender driving Straight Line to tears.

When he started crawling I probably bought out the whole babyproofing section of Target coz we so needed it. Well it took Rule Bender some hours to figure everything out and foil my plans. I had serious thoughts of renting him to one of those babyproofing consultants so that he could test out the house after the consultant had done his work.

Ofcourse I should thank my stars that he has still not done this

Coz if I were ever to see this sight at my house I would personally check myself into a mental asylum.

In spite of all the complains I have of him he is my baby. I see a lot of my personality in him. He is outgoing and very people friendly. Straight Line even now is very wary of people and will never initiate a conversation on his own. Rule Bender on the other hand can talk to anyone and everyone. He has to wave hello to everyone on the road; the dog walker with the ferocious looking pitbull, the UPS guy who is delivering two houses down, the guy spraying weed killer on the pavement, the chimney cleaner working next door as long as they will spare him a look Rule Bender will talk to them.

Rule Bender has two obsessions in life Balloons and Dogs in that order. Give him a balloon and he will be your friend for life. He does not have any boundaries when it comes to balloons. The kid 3 tables down celebrating his birthday, the open house signs at the end of the road, the balloon tied to the mail box advertising a yard sale, the ones at the pharmacy advertising a deal or the ones fluttering at the pretzel store all of it is fair game to him. You would not want to know how many times I have begged, borrowed or stolen baloons from various stores at the mall just so that he would move away from the store. But getting a balloon is not a be all end all. The real problem starts now. Coz as long as the balloon is all filled up with helium he spends his time trying to pull it down, stomp on it and in general not letting it fly and then when a day or two later the helium is all gone he will be seen flinging the balloon up in the air to send it up.

Anyways Rule Bender has absolutely no issues in playing/imitating Straight Line or any other older kid for that matter. He is always joining them in everything even thought he may not be ready for it. He has no fear at all and will probably end up being the contestant who will be eating sheep eye while shimmying up a skyscraper while jumping through a hoop of fire.

There is a lot more to his story but thats for later....


PS: I would love for you to leave me comments here, makes my blog a little more lived in.

How Straight Line came to be....

Straight Line is 8 year old little old man. He is called that due to his extreme diligence in following the rules aka towing the straight line. While this is a great thing to cultivate he takes this so some very ridiculous extremes which at many times leave me banging my head and telling him to loosen up a bit.

Straight Line was probably the only baby in the nursery who did not cry, get hungry or poop at the 9 o clock light out. Ok maybe not but he was a pretty textbook kid. He made parenting very easy for us and if Rule bender had been our first born my inclination to reproduce would have come to a shocking stop. Straight Line gave me confidence in my parenting skill and his childhood was pretty free of heart stopping moments and trips to the ER.

Coming back to Straight Line he is probably the most responsible 8 yr old ever in the history of 8 year olds. He is definitely Mr Clean's son when it comes to cleaning.. The problem or should I call it virtue is there is no middle road with him. If he is assigned a job it has to be perfect. Tell him to help in dusting and he embarks on a 2 hour odyssey which will give you a complex about your cleaning skills and end up in a sparkling clean room. Tell him to scoop out some icecream and each scoop has to be perfectly rounded to look like a Baskin Robbin ad. Granted its a good thing but when its 9 in the night and all you want is every one in your house in bed then a perfectly scooped icecream sundae with a cherry on top is not in my schedule.

He is a very intelligent kid not very street smart but picks up stuff very easily. I am very sure he taught himself to read by watching closed captioning on the TV. And to all of you who know him he is a total Mommy's boy. His world starts and ends with me. Everything he does, he decides after asking what I want. While I bask in this adoration a part of me also wants him to be a independent thinker. One who weighs the pros and cons before deciding what he wants. A part of him wants him to choose the green shirt he keeps eyeing in the closet when I put the blue one on his bed to wear to school. I guess I should count my blessing while this is still happening coz everyone around me keeps reminding me that this phase does not last long.

Straight Line and me share a very special bond. He is my first born the one I shared every wide eyed moment of parenting. He is such an emotionally cued in kid that he knows from my face if I am upset about something. The same goes vice versa where I know from the way he embarks from the bus if he had a good day at school but then I am mom its my job to be aware of this. He on the other hand does it out of pure love. Straight Line is growing up so soon. He almost reaches my shoulder now and I look forward to looking up to him in the near future.

He is my only hope of attending the Nobel Prize award ceremony or seeing the Oval room at the White House coz if you knew Rule Bender you would not have to ask why but thats another post better left for another day.

The one that explains it all... Part 1

First of all a big thanks to all of you who emailed and left messages for me after reading my first post. Your words of encouragement mean a lot to me. When I get to writing my first bestseller I promise to thank each of of you personally on the first page. Mostly I am glad that my blog had more than my 3 promised hits [Mr Clean, my dad and me refreshing the page].

My post yesterday introduced you all to my family and the nicknames I have for them. Why nicknames coz I scream out their names enough times a day that I have no inclination of using them in writing too. Also I rather protect their privacy coz a few years down the line when my son googles himself he would not want to see his potty training adventure listed on the first page.

But as promised here is a detailed explanation of why the nicknames came to be.

Mr. Clean
is my husband though he looks nothing like this guy. He is just called that because of his love for cleaning. Seriously for him cleaning is a hobby. In an ideal world Mr Clean would be married to Fly Lady and they would live happily ever after but in the real world the laws of attraction took effect and he ended up with me his complete opposite. I am a messy Gemini who lives in controlled chaos. My idea of a clean closet is when I open the door nothing falls out and all clothing is clean and weather appropriate. Mr Clean on the other hand cleans a closet like he is stocking up the mens section at Nordstroms. At the end of his cleaning the closet is soooo clean that it would pass muster should Martha Stewart come inspecting. The problem with that guy is he has no priorities. Unlike me see if I have to choose between cleaning a closet and gossiping on the phone my priority would always be the phone.

But all said and done Mr Clean is the reason my home does not look tornado hit at all times. He is a fabulous husband and an even more fantastic father. His whole world revolves around his family and I am so thankful for that. He is my partner in every sense of the word. A strong anchor to the tempestuous dinghy I am at all times; And I thank destiny everyday that opposites attract coz if there were two of me I would have whole episodes of Clean House devoted to me.

Now before you think I am a good for nothing lazy bum [u may be remotely right] I do the other important things in the house other than cleaning. I am the one who knows how to setup the home theater, the wireless network and program the blu ray player to play netflix. I am the one who plans all our Disney vacations [to all my Disboard peeps you all know what a hard job that is]. I am also the one who will be holding the baseball bat should a hapless burglar decide to break into our house. I am the one who can end any arguments between my kids with one look [unlike him who tries to make them see reason and explain the fine art of loving thy sibling]. Little does he know that fear of losing the Wii trumps evoking brother love every single time. Plus I am the fulltime chef, chauffeur, nurse, referee to the two hooligans. Writing all of this in one place made me realize I work way too hard and need another vacation and a raise in my shopping allowance.

More to come on Straight Line and Rule Bender tomorrow.

The beginning....

I have been going back and forth for quite sometime before I finally decided to jump in and start my own personal blog. It did strike me a bit narcissitic... was anyone in the world [with my immediate family being an exception] be actually interested in my life. Face it I am no celebrity, other then my two brats adorable kids no one had one iota of curiosity about who I was and what I did. But as days passed by I realized my little ones were constant fodder for an endless comedy. My life though filled with mundane moments did add up to an interesting read.

Ofcourse not all days are dramatic but I am sure Angelina Jolie has days where all she does is drop the kids at the bustop.... HE HE who am I kidding her kids have definitely not seen the inside of a public school bus. They go to a school that serves Pollack with Honey Citrus butter and Green Bean Almondine for lunch [Angie's Kids School Menu]. My kids are lucky if there is butter on the bread.

So I figured if not for anything else but my own sanity I should start penning down my thought. With Mr. Clean [thats my cleanliness obsessed husband for those of you who don't know] away for the weekdays in Boston all day long the only words that seem to come out of my mouth are No and Stop It. So here I am writing my thoughts. The site decor is still not complete but I was so motivated to start today that I did not wanna wait another moment. Becoz come tomorrow and my kids on in full frenzy the motivation will pass and the whole thing postponed to another night when nothing good is on TV.

So what should you expect from my Blog. Well there will be posts [about 90%] about the adventures I have every single day with my kids. Occasionally I will voice my opinion about a current issue. You will have to put up with my whining and homesickness when the festival season rolls in India [my homeland] and you will also read about my views and experiences in my adopted country USA.


So a little about me to the uninitiated. I am mom of two hyperactive darling little boys. There is Straight Line [explanations later] who is 8 and then there is Rule Bender [I promise I will elaborate later] who is 2. These two along with Mr Clean make up my immediate family. I have been here in USA for nearly 9 years and have [save a few areas of resistance] adopted the American way of life happily.

I am addicted to the Internet in general. I can partly lay the blame on the fact that I am a Web Designer by profession. I go to office a couple of days a week and spend the rest at home juggling 2 kids and work.

I don't promise a post a day... Heck I have no guarantee of getting a shower every day but I promise to voice my opinion about anything and everything and $&$(#&$@ out  any cuss words that I may utter when outpouring the joys of parenting. So for now my life is a whirlwind roller coaster of parenting and trying to hold a job at the same time. This is my story and you are welcome to follow it.