Cookies, Grissini and Friends

The weekly play date that moms organised for Sunshine and his friends, which DH calls mom's gossip date, started again yesterday after a rather longish break. We had to take a break because of Ms Positive's loss. Since it was after a while and it was going to be a full house, I decided to do some baking. I made some oatmeal cookies adapted from, Joy of Baking recipe. I replaced the egg with a pureed pear and some milk to make it into a paste and the all purpose flour was replaced by whole wheat flour, except for a couple for tablespoons.

I also baked some whole wheat grissinis since everyone in the family seem to be addicted to them at the moment and has been munching on the store bought ones. I hope I can convince them to switch to the home baked ones instead.

It was so much fun to have all the kids running around in our apartment although I wished we had a bigger place with a garden so that they have more place to play their messy games. I generally don't stop Sunshine from messing up the living room since his grandparents are using his room at the moment.

Ms Positive and her family joined us for dinner later and it was a fun afternoon and evening. I went to bed feeling happy although I was tired.

Loss

The loss of a dear one is always a devastating experience, but when one knows that the person has lived a long fulfilled life, it does give some degree of comfort. When one loses an unborn child, it leaves one feeling perplexed, clueless and helpless along with the grief that comes with a loss. I think almost all mothers also feel some degree of guilt if they lose an unborn child. I have experienced this loss in my first pregnancy and although it was towards the end of first trimester, it left me completely devastated. It took me a long time to get back to some semblance of normalcy. Even today, after I have had Sunshine, sometimes I wonder what went wrong, what could have been and what could I do differently.

My dear friend, Ms Positive is going through the loss now and for the second time in her young life. She is fluctuating between several emotions, but she is still trying to keep it together and make it as bearable as possible for her and her family. She is taking help and strength from her friends, but at times, she loses trust in herself as this is happening the second time. She is questioning herself and her actions in life and priorities.

Although I know that a strong and positive person like her will eventually come out of this, it saddens me immensely that a good soul like her has to go through this. I guess no one has answers to why bad things happen to good people. At the moment, I am just hoping and praying that she gets the strength to go through her pain and comes out of it without losing her spirit. The only saving grace at the moment is her sweet little child. 

Relationships

I recently heard some disturbing news from one of my friends. She is the warmest, friendliest German that I have ever met. She reminds me of a butterfly, always full of energy, talking and smiling. She is a pleasure to be around. Then suddenly, two - three months back, she disappeared. None of her friends saw her any more on the roads, in restaurants or shops and she stopped turning up for our get-togethers. We didn't think much of it because in December many people went away for their vacations or visiting family. When her disappearance continued into January, I was puzzled and I am sure other friends were too, since we started asking each other if anyone has met her. 

One day, I saw her on the road and she smiled and waved and looked her usual cheery self. Since I was in a hurry to catch a train, I didn't stop. That evening, she sent us all a message that she and her husband have separated. She had deliberately avoided all of us as it was the most painful period of her life and she wanted to sort herself out before she met anyone. I was really shocked. I somehow could not picture this happy, cheerful woman, always full of energy, in this predicament. She has told us that she needs some more time and will meet us all in a month or so. Of course nobody asked her how exactly their marriage broke down although I suppose somebody will when they meet her again. Some of the more observant ones in the group seemed to know that something was wrong even before she messaged us.

I feel very sad for my friend and her lovely kids, but I am not very good with words or expressing my support in such crises. I hope the family finds happiness again. In the last couple of years, this is my third friend who is separating. Each of them belonged to a different group of friends and that means different nationalities, social background etc. I don't want to turn cynical about marriages and it is scary to think that not all marriages last a lifetime. 

Baby shower

My charming friend Deepa and her family are moving to India by the end of this month. She is expecting her second child and we threw her a surprise baby shower a couple of days back.

My biggest take back from the party is that I need to really pull up my socks. The surprise was not completely ready when Deepa rang the bell at my place. I was still decorating and only one guest had arrived. So we had to think of some quick plan to whisk Deepa away from my place so that I could complete the decorations and the other guests could come in and hide at my place. Anyway, the day was saved because Deepa decided to go for a car wash.

I will miss Deepa and sunshine will miss her son and DH will miss her husband. But their move may be only semi permanent and they might come back to Germany. In the meantime, we are also trying to move back to India. Life seems a bit uncertain right now, but hopefully there will be some clarity soon.

A Wednesday

Sunshine and a group of his friends meet almost every Wednesday for a playdate. It was very easy to arrange these in summer when the weather was good outside. We could take the kids to a big play area and they would get busy in no time. The only difficulty was convincing them to go home afterwards.

With the onset of autumn, we are in for gloom and grey and abundant rain. This has forced our playdates indoors. Yesterday was the first of those indoor playdates. There were six kids including Sunshine who were around 3 years old, give or take a few months. I thought it might be a good idea to organize some activities for them as leaving six playschoolers to play on their own could turn out to be catastrophic. So, we started our playdate with a song, my friend and fellow mom Jenny read a couple of books for the kids and finally, they were given a huge sheet of paper and crayons and felt pens to show off their artistic skills. After this, it was time for freeplay.

I have to think about new games and ideas for our future playdates. I really enjoyed it (probably more than the kids) since I love kids and it makes me immensly happy to be surrounded by them. I hope they had half the fun that I had. The biggest success for me was that they refrained from pulling each others' hair, pushing, hitting biting etc that they sometimes resort to when they get bored.

Hopefully next time, we will be able to move forward with the idea of creating a toy repository as well. 

Please give me strong shoulders

A lot of things are going on in my life and I need to be really strong to carry on. Today, Ms Postive asked me to go with her to Heidelberg, but I had to work. Some time with Ms Positve would have been just what the doctor ordered, but I just had no time to spare.

Last week, Sunshine and I were invited to his friends's little farm. He was one little terror over there throwing things, being mean to his friend and even her mom, stubbornly refusing to do anything and everything I asked him to do. In sharp contrast, his friend was a sweet little angel, helping her mom to set the table and clean it later and she was extremely understanding towards Sunshine and tried to save his back all the time. I have been completely unable to figure out why Sunshine acts up at times. He can be really good too and can share and play with his friends. The caretakers at his daycare give me the feedback that he is a very well-adjusted kid always taking care of the younger ones and playing nicely with almost every kid. Why does he have to be little devil around me I wonder.

I do enjoy Sunshine's antics but sometimes it gets just too much for me. Especially when he is aggressive towards other kids. I feel so inadequate as a mother when he ignores numerous pleas to be nice. He is barely 3 and he already knows how to have his way when he is in that kind of mood. It usually ends up in us leaving the place and I feel bad for the other kid(s) and also for dragging him away from other kids. He really enjoys the company of other kids and always feels sad when he or they have to leave. I wonder what I can do to teach him to be a little gentler around his friends.

Integration

As an expat living in Germany, I have created my own comfort zone in the last 8 years or so just like most other immigrants do. My social circle comprises mainly of Indians, expats from other countries and a few German friends and many international as well as German colleagues.

An Indian family moved into our building recently and as they are slowly finding their way in the new environment, I was reminded of our initial days here. We had it pretty easy here. We were 'adopted' by a few friends and they helped us in every step till we knew our way around. There was a lovely German family who were our friends before we moved here. They introduced us to ikea and the spoilt Indians (us) learned for the first time how to assemble our own furniture. There was my husband's German teacher who told me about language classes. Once I went to these classes, I started meeting people and making friends and shortly thereafter, I got a job. There was an Indian friend and colleague who drove us around and helped us find places to shop, for entertainment etc. There were many others who helped in different ways, but these three were guardian angels here in Germany.

Our new neighbours seem to be finding it difficult to cope. There are many more Indians in our village now and almost everybody has their own closed social circles. It is very difficult to break into these. The lady and her little son stays at home and unless she finds a daycare for him, she cannot start her language classes or start looking for a job. Language school is a great place to meet people and have someone to share your challenges as you master a new language. She does not have any venue to meet the local people either. It is very easy to slip into despair in such a situation.

Today, we went to a daycare center together to see if she can find a place for her son. She will most probably get one by October. But that is also quite some time away. I hope she will find some other activities for herself and her son until then. He is such a sweet and intelligent little boy and she is also warm and friendly. It will be a shame if they had to just sit at home till the daycare seat is available.

The Deadly Disease

I had a very long hiatus from my blog. There were lot of things happening in my life and I felt I need to spend time energy and focus on making sense of what is happening.

I was mopping a little bit about a certain health situation when I heard that my roommate during college days was suffering from cancer. Her condition was detected very late because she was pregnant and had just given birth to her second child. Most of her symptoms were attributed pregnancy or postpartum complications. She hardly lived for a couple weeks after the diagnosis. This has left me in a state which I cannot comprehend. She was one of the most pleasant, warmest and friendliest person I have ever come across. She always had a beautiful smile on her face. Now, barely two months after her second child was born, she is gone forever.

My heart bleeds when I think about her husband and sons especially her new born. To lose a loved is bad enough, but to lose someone who is so positive that she is the reason for your very existence - I wish no one had to ever go through what her husband is going through now.

It reminds me how important it is to spend time with people who mean something to you. We often put off spending time together for later. But sometimes that later might just not exist for us for the people with whom we want to spend time. I am trying to take a positive lesson (as my friend would have wanted me to) and manage my time better. I need to weed out a lot of unnecessary time killers and concentrate on enjoying, appreciating and expressing my gratitude for the very special people in my life.

Spring Cleaning

I am trying to spring clean my life. I see too much clutter and too many distractions. So, as a first step, I decided to take a hiatus from Facebook. I am addicted to Facebook like many people are these days. Very often, I find it extremely useful to send messages to friends and family, to organize an outing or a date with my friends etc. But I also found myself spending increasing amounts of time just browsing through the news feed. Since I already spend a lot of 'real' time with my friends, I decided to cut back on the virtual time with friends and acquaintances.

There are only 24 hours in everybody's lives and since I find myself rushing always to be on time, be it at work, be it something planned for Sunshine, be it personal appointments, I decided it is time I took a good hard look at my schedule and cut down on the unnecessary activities.

On a totally different note, I won a book giveaway on Marias Book Blog. It is 'The Last Doctor She Should Ever Date' by Louisa George. I just casually checked the blog to see if there are any new updates and suprise - I had won the giveaway. I have added her blog to my blogroll. She writes some amazing reviews about novels especially romance novels. I love reading especially romance novels and it is my secret (not any more) desire to write one on my own some day.

In the evening my very talented friend Vij is dropping by with her son who is the same age as Sunshine. Vij makes the most scrumptious the most detailed and perfect fondant cakes ever. She has taught herself how to do it and she does it better than even the bakers who appear on TV shows. It was her birthday last week and I couldn't meet her. But, I have a surprise gift for her today and I baked a batch of cupcakes yesterday. I am going to frost one of them today so that she can have a late birthday celebration.

I spent a lot of time with Ms Positive yesterday and she tried a lot to inspire me to chase my dreams and also create new dreams and goals in my life. She might drop in today when Vij is here, if she is free by then. Who needs Facebook when your life is full of such wonderful people.  

To be or not to be - a vegetarian

On Friday, Sunshine and I were invited to my friend Rumi's place. She bought her own house and moved there recently and she invited her girlfriends and their kids to celebrate. The main attractions for the evening were her scrumptious chicken biriyani and mutton curry. There was a small problem though - I am an on again off again vegetarian and I am in 'on mode' at the moment. The last time we met, I still ate chicken and seafood and I forgot to mention that I had turned vegetarian again, when Rumi invited me.

I have a difficult relationship with non-vegetarian food. I love seafood and like to indulge in indian preparations of chicken once in a while. On rare occasions, I have eaten lamb and enjoyed it too. But it troubles my conscience to eat non-vegetarian food. There is the obvious problem that you have to kill a living thing to eat meat or seafood. I grew up in a coastal region and seafood was part of our diet almost every day. So, though having to kill an animal does not exactly make me happy, it doesn't trouble me enough to turn vegetarian. What really troubles me is the hunger that is so widespread all over the world. Every time I eat meat, the images of hungry children's faces haunt me and makes me think of all the resources that had to go into getting that piece of meat on my plate. A small percentage of the people in the world gets to consume such a large percentage of the resources. I know that this is true for almost everything in life, but when it comes to something so basic as food, it seems all the more unfair. It sometimes makes me loathe myself that I would willingly cause more environmental degradation and consume more resources while so many people starve, just to satisfy my palate. However, I am a foodie and the glutton inside me wins many times. Since I am too weak to become a vegetarian permanently, I try it for a few months at a time.

Rumi was mortified that I didn't inform her about my food preference. But I enjoyed her vegetarian starter dahi bhalla (lentil fritters) and I even had some gravy from the mutton curry and ate some rice sans chicken from the chicken biriyani. Rumi and her other friends were curious about my on again off again vegetarianism and asked me about the reason for it. I actually felt very embarrassed while explaining my reasons. For one, I sounded like an environmental nutcase to myself. The other reason was, I did not want to sound preachy or superior or worse still condemning about other people's choices.

Sunshine loved the mutton curry that Rumi made and asked for several helpings. He loves chicken and his caretakers at the daycare have told me that he eats eagerly when there is fish on the menu. I wonder if it is because these are things which he does not get to eat at home. In any case, for the next few months atleast I do not plan to eat or cook meat or fish.

When it rains, it pours.

Ms. Postive always accuses that I spend way too much time on meeting friends and socializing and that I should cut down and find time to improve myself and pursue my interests. Although I usually refute her allegation or make a joke out of it and tell her that my interest is meeting people and talking to them, lately I feel she may have a point.

Yesterday, Ms. Positive asked me to come over so that Sunshine and her son could play together and we could spend some time chatting. While I was about to leave for her place, DH called me to say that he is bringing over Sunshine's best friend AT in an hour as her dad was caught up with something and could not pick her from the daycare. Since the boys were already excited about their playdate and I obviously love spending time with Ms Positive, I decided not to cancel and took Sunshine to her place. When we came back home, I brought her son along so that all three kids could play together.

Sunshine and AT can be best described as little devils. On the other hand, Ms. Positive's son is a well behaved, sweet little boy. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see the little devils hugging, kissing and pacifying the little boy when he started crying because he was missing his mom. They even tried reassuring him by telling him that his mom would come soon and he need not cry. For added measure, they said the whole thing in German as well as Hindi. I couldn't help feeling a little proud about my son and AT because usually they are aces at bullying each other and other kids.

So most of yesterday evening was spent with Ms. Positive and her son, AT and her parents. On my way to work today, my friend D called me to ask if we could meet up. Since I had to be at work the whole day (I generally work from home) we decided to meet in the evening. Tomorrow, we are meeting AT and her parents again to celebrate Holi, the indian festival of colours. Ms. Positive wants to meet once again this week before she leaves on a long vacation to warmer places. Also, my friend P, the warmest German ever, wants to take the kids to the Zoo. And just as I was writing this post, in the train, on my way back from work, my phone beeped. It is another invitation from a friend. I guess Ms Positive is not entirely off the mark about me atleast this week.

Ms. Positive and I go shopping

What is the image that props into your mind when two girls go shopping - shoes, bags, clothes, maybe jewellery? Ms. Positive and I went shopping for our weekly groceries in the Biomarket. For a few years now, I have been trying to buy as many bio products as possible. There is a lot of argument for and against bio produce. Some of my friends and DH believe that it is all a hoax - what is trotted as organic is probably not organic at all and just a way to fleece customers off more money. Till now, I have chosen to believe the EU organic certification logo that is present on the organic produce and hopefully it does carry some value.

While we were shopping, Ms. Positive told me that she knows a local farmer who delivers her very good quality organic eggs every week at her home. So, I decided to try him out once in the spirit of supporting local and independent businesses. I am a little confused about buying local though. When you buy at a supermarket, there the EU logo is a reassurance that the product is actually authentic. Is there anyway to know if a local farmer's produce is really organic other than believing him?

I am going to give it a try anyway.

Ms. Positive Influence

I had an exceptionally boring day at the office on Thursday last week. I sat in front of my monitor like a zombie churning out line after line of bad code which does not do anything much except test the performance of the code which somebody else has written. So my job is to find other's mistakes and once a colleague joked that this would be any woman's dream job. It is not like this was my childhood dream come true, but I used to enjoy my work until some time back. But today, I found myself in a state of existential crisis and self pity.

I should find an alternate career, but what? I could be a chef, because I love food and experiment a lot with it, but what I really enjoy is baking. I could be a baker then, but I am constantly transforming all my cakes and cookies and brownies and everything else I bake, into healthier dishes by using whole grains or whole grain flour. My family has largely developed a tolerance or even taste for these, but sometimes even they ask me to not butcher the dish anymore. I could be a writer, but now-a-days, it is exteremely difficult to make a living out of writing as far as I know. Plus what would I write in my resume? - I have published in school and college magazines as a teenager and in some obscure children's magazine once when I was trying to get into NUS, Singapore. That would surely get everyone excited.  I could probably turn to gardening, only if I didn't have this giant black thumb. I would love to spread awareness about leading a more environmentally friendly life, but how do I start. Hmmm.. software is just the right field for people who are not particularly creative or talented.

I had already fnished my hours for the week and had the Friday off, so I invited my friend Ms. Positive over for lunch. She is a very enterprising young lady and a mom whose son is around the same age as Sunshine. Sunshine and Ms. Positive's son are friends, but unlike other moms, she does not talk to me about children or for that matter any domestic matter except occasionally and when she does, it is brief. Infact, she is very vocal about her disapproval towards moms who get together and talk about these things. She always insists that one should spend that time exploring the world and learning new things. She practises what she preaches - in the last couple of years, she learned a new language, a new dance form, started jogging regularly, is part of various interest groups, goes to a craft class and is in the priliminary works for founding a voluntary group to help the local people lead a healthier life. Those are just her hobbies; she earns her bread and butter running a biotech company which she partly owns.

Ms. Positive was deeply concerned about my lethargy and unwillingness to explore when I told her about my career dilema. She fished out a one liner for me - 'Fake it until you make it'. She confided that she learned many a new thing this way - by pretending that you are already what you want be and working towards being as good as you pretend to be. This way you will always be faster than you will be if you expose yourself to the world only when you are convinced that you are really good. Her parting words of wisdom were - "We are already in our 30s and we have only a few more years when we will have enough speed and agility to learn and explore. So try whatever catches your fancy and with the unlimited power of internet at you fingertips, you are more likely to be a success than a failure." I think I am going to take her advice very seriously.

A really really late apology

How late is too late? By some strange twist of fate I got in touch with a friend from my teenage years, to whom I had been a jerk, towards the end of our time together. She was always on the social media site where I found her and I would have found her if I had looked earlier. But I never did until a mutual acquaintance of ours mentioned that he had met her. It brought back memories of our friendship and all the fun we had together. We pushed boundaries in a severely restricted society and got into trouble a lot. But we had a lot of fun being constant headaches to the stuck nuns in the school where we studied together. I don't remember the exact details but I ditched her when she was in a spot. I unilaterally decided that I did not want to get into so much trouble.

Ever since my acquaintance mentioned that he had met her, I had this intense desire to contact her and apologize to her. So many years have passed and I expected her to find it silly that I would apologize now. But, when we started chatting, we were like 16 year old girls again. It was as if so many years had not passed in between. She was as warm and humorous as ever despite the fact that life had not been kind to her, atleast in her teenage. Her family situation was never stable and she was in love with a guy whom her parents did not approve. They got married when she was still a teenager and had a kid soon after. Turns out I was not the only jerk in her life. She was left to build her life on her own with a child when she was almost a child herself. But she was no weakling, she did it and today she is climbing the corporate ladder in a very sunny place. Her son is a teenager now and a blessing, according to her. Apart from having a successful career, being a single mom, she has found time to explore her inner artist and has set up a charity organization. Yes, she has been her own knight in shining armour.

When I apologized to her halway through our conversation, I expected her to laugh it off. Instead she told me that my actions hurt her a lot and that she is glad that I apologized. She forgave me quickly and we were back to our girly talks. After our conversation ended, I felt so happy that I found my friend again and I apologized although it was so many years too late. I am glad my friend is so generous that she forgave me. I had a feeling in my heart that I had been blessed with so many wonderful people in my life and I have not been good to all of them. For a change, I should be the wonderful person in somebody's life giving more than I get.

When I was in this exuberent mood which was tinged with a feeling that I should be a better person, my doorbell rang. It was my "warmest German ever" friend P. She is the kind of person who can lift your spirits when you are down in dumps. Imagine what it would be if you are feeling good already. I greeted her with a smile and tight hug which almost matched hers. P and her son could not stay long and they left a very unhappy and whining Sunshine behind. He wanted to play with them, but unfortunately, they already had other plans. But nothing could spoil my mood. Because I was feeling blessed.