Favourite corners and spaces Part 2

The kids have a decent-sized room here. Well, actually they've been lucky ever since we moved back to India in having large rooms allotted to them although now is the first time they are sleeping in their very own beds in a separate room. Growing up, I never had a room of my own. Most of the time, my brother and I bunked together. After we moved to Chennai (Madras) for high school, the shared quarters continued with the study table piled high with books being my only personal space. This arrangement continued into college and beyond with little change and the first time I had any scope to personalize my own space was in the second year of my MBA programme when we were given individual rooms. I well remember the excitement of collecting cast-offs from my seniors, choosing bed-linen and curtains and adding those little touches to make my room as warm, cozy and inviting as possible.

Anyway, given all this history, I wanted the kids to have a bright colourful room filled with their personality (not mine!). We picked up a bunk bed on sale for them as soon as we moved to Bangalore. Their 'study' table is actually our old dining table, a tiny 4-seater which is so badly scratched and dented that Ads keeps begging me to cover it up, Amma! So I do need to get it polished/painted at some point - I'm waiting to see if they manage to damage it any more before I get it fixed :)

Clearly, they do not need 4 chairs to study/draw on the table. And I wanted them to have a chair for when they want to sit by the window and read a book. So we took these two

and turned it into these.

Aren't they lovely? They even have the kids' names on them :)

All credit to the Spinning Wheel for the creative re-purposing. 

The kids' favourite stuffed animals find  a resting place on their beds...and on top of the toy chest of drawers!

My one indulgence was to get a nameboard done for them which now adorns the wall next to their baby pics. I'm tempted to add floor cushions and the like but keep restraining myself. It's a kids room and there should be a lot of floor space to jump and roll around and all the weird things that kids are wont to do :) 

Favourite corners and spaces Part 1

Sharing a few pics from the home which is finally looking the way I want ......after weeks of tweaking (or what the husband calls messing around!)

#1 - The entryway, where the biggest challenge was to find a really simple functional bench (not too large, no upholstery, no frills) to sit on to wear or remove one's shoes. I roamed around the city quite fruitlessly until I found Urban Ladder!

#2 - It's been a long-standing dream of mine to own a really elegant settee. Being mom to two small grubby kids and until now, not having a large enough living room, meant that all I could do was look and salivate :) I went all out after moving to Bangalore though. Found a fabulous woodworker/restorer, decided on a distinctly old-fashioned design, picked some pretty paisley-patterned cotton material from an awesome shop in Seshadripuram and ta-da! Definitely my favourite piece in the entire house (it's also very comfortable). S took one look at it when it arrived and wasn't too happy with the light colour of the fabric, given the aforesaid grubby kids, their grubby friends and all the accidents and spills that are likely to happen. But, hey, one can live dangerously right? :)

#3: Coffee table with hand-painted tiles. I got this done from another awesome guy in Mehrauli (Delhi).

#4: Partial view of the living room.

More photos coming up as soon as a couple of home improv projects get completed.

Undecided

Still not sure which is my favourite spot in the new house.

This...

In the living room

Or this.....

In our bedroom

Though the fact is, I've barely had time to relax in any of these nooks ever since we moved. Mostly the reading gets a miss while they get used plenty for cuddling up with the kids :)

Coming up for air

I would have blogged earlier but my laptop gave up on me and amidst the battery of chores that remain to be accomplished when trying to settle down in a new home/city, I've been on the phone with Dell tech support a lot! 

So. Here we are. A crazy couple of weeks of work and more work. A week at the hotel until our goods arrived, move-in cleaning of the new apartment, unpacking the cartons and getting the house in shape while simultaneously dealing with the Bangalore weather (Hot!! I feel cheated!) and follow ups with all the vendors and service providers we need. Think carpenters, plumbers, electricians, the water purifier guy, the TV guy, the broadband guy. Hiring maids, cook, driver and getting their ID cards done. Buying furniture, putting up pictures, making the house look like home. 

I told S the other day - Moving is like giving birth. You do it once and you swear you will never go through that pain again. But then some people like us never learn. Gluttons for punishment is the phrase they use for people like us.

Anyway, this is probably the nicest house we've ever lived in, a sprawling place with enough nooks and corners for everybody. The kids have their own bunk beds and for the last week, have been sleeping all night on their own, which is a VERY BIG DEAL for us indeed!

I'll get started with regular programming soon, hopefully. We have another week before we fly to New York City for a long-awaited trip. It's going to be my first long-haul flight without S so keeping fingers crossed, though I bet Disney Pixar will take care of most of the entertainment needs. At the end of the trip is our meeting with my mint-new niece, my brother and SIL -and my kids and I are super-excited at the bought of holding and playing with the little one.

Off I go now, to call some more people who haven't delivered stuff that was supposed to be here a week ago :)

Dilli ki sardi and an announcement

It's been almost 3 years that we moved to Delhi-NCR and finally, the lure of the Delhi winter is fading somewhat. Partly due to the fact that we've had the coldest winter in many decades this year (Gurgaon managed a cool zero degree minimum for 2 days running), partly because I'm getting older and not getting any exercise so when the cold wind blows, it hits me right...ooh....in the spine, radiating waves of pain up down and along the sides of my back. 

So I posted my usual once-a-year fb update on how cold it was (we'd just had the coldest day in 44 years) and got the usual responses from people all over the globe. Why are you complaining? It's minus 5 here. You don't have to shovel snow. Come to Canada, its minus 15 here now.

Really, people. I don't naysay the many hardships of living in a truly cold country. But come to Delhi just for one winter. Stay in an apartment with really poor insulation, no hot running water unless you keep the geyser on all day, no central heating and non-carpet cold floors, and then tell me whether or not you're better off living in a centrally-heated and well-insulatedhome, having hot water on tap, wall-to-wall carpeting, and heated indoor public spaces.

There are days when being inside our flat is more miserable than being outside in the fresh air!

I was huddling near the room heater, wearing several woolly layers and talking to my parents on skype. They are currently in the east coast of the United States. My dad was in his shirt-sleeves and cheerfully told me - "It's minus 1 here today!"

Damn! :)

But - the silver lining. We will be moving to Bangalore in a few months. I'm still very conflicted about the decision. I love Delhi - it's food (beyond compare), it's shopping (umatched), it's history and monuments, it's parks - the list will go on and on. But Bangalore holds a very special place in my heart too. Plus I have lots of friends there, many more than in Delhi-NCR. Best of all, we will be so much closer to Chennai and the kids will get to visit with their grandparents so much more frequently. If that's not a silver lining, what is?

 

What drama!

I swear my life hasn't been this exciting since.....well, it's been a long time anyway :)

Our landlord had asked us to move, right? We found a place, a really nice apartment, in another block of the same complex. Before we signed the lease, there was a spat between the current tenant and the owner with the result that the current tenant refused to vacate before April-end. Too late for us. Now I ran around like a headless chicken, trying to locate another apartment. In between our homeowner called us to say we could stay until May end - if we liked. I found and liked another apartment, even paid a token advance (there was nothing token about it!) and I was harrying the broker to get the lease signed before S starts traveling again next week.

Yesterday, I met our current landlord in the elevator and he shocks me by saying we can stay for another year! Yes yes it was a shock of the nice kind. Still, we had already paid up for the other flat and I spent a lot of time making phone calls and explaining the situation to an annoyed broker and a relieved husband. How does the husband manage to stay out of all the drama and stress? It beats me!

I have been so stressed about the impending move. The welcome news is that we now can stay put for another year. I asked our homeowner again and again, in many different ways, if he was sure about his decision. After all, the last thing one wants is to be told in September to look for another flat! The fellow seems to be a confused lot and hopefully he won't change his mind again!

So - now's the time to say - All izz well :)

Some respite - until next year! Watch this space :)

Updates - Feb

There's been a lot going on here at Casa Mommyland. Work has picked up a good amount of steam and I have two new blogging assignments (both are paid - yay! And one is work-related). S and I have been trying to sort through a lot of admin and personal stuff. After the kids are asleep, we sit down on the dining table and  get going. That's how romantic we have become :)
The kids break for their first summer break in March (mid-march in Ads' case and end of March for Y) and they have 10-15 days off at that time. An SOS call has been sent out to Chennai for grandparental assistance. Initially, I just wanted someone to come over to watch the kids during their break, when I was at work. But soon, I had another, more pressing reason for help - we are moving again!!!
Yes, yes....we are being turned out of our lovely apartment. We have some time - a couple of months if we need it - but we have moved house 5 times in the last 5 years and this time, I just want to get it over with. We have started hunting for a place in the same complex, and hopefully something will come our way in the next few weeks. There aren't too many units like the one we live in, so fingers crossed!
Moves or no, the summer is here (well- almost) and I am in full vacation-planning mode. (Psssttt....not that I take account of the seasons while planning holidays...:)) Our vacation theme for this year is Exploring India through short and sasta holidays :). There are 2 long weekends coming up - Holi in March and Good Friday in April. We are going to Alwar (Rajasthan) in March, before the summer heat descends and in April, I was looking to go to the Kumaon region in Uttarakhand. I did all the research only to realize that neither train tickets nor hotel nights were available. Fully booked! Clearly there are many more freaky travel planners like me out there. We might still have managed to find the odd hotel or homestay someplace but the train waitlist was a real constraint since S does not want to drive there. Our Mussoorie (it took us 12 hours to navigate the 6-hour journey) and Jaipur road trips (7 and 4 hours respectively) last year have put us off long drives, completely.
So now, there is much discussion and argument in the household about where to go.
Not to forget that with all this happening, both the kids have been down and out with a nasty infection of the tonsils. If they absolutely had to fall ill, I would have preferred them to do it together instead of one by one, thereby making me take off more days than I can afford to. But who listens to me in this family???? No one! :(

Two headaches less

Two major to-dos have been ticked off the relocation list. First, the apartment - check. A nice complex, a stone's throw from a metro station, and just off the main 'mall' road of Gurgaon. I haven't counted, but I think there are atleast 10 malls, all jostling for space next to each other, down that road. Definitely a mall-rat's Mecca, but for a mall-o-phobic like me, a plain disgusting sight. Oh well, atleast Haldiram's is a stone's throw away and visitors to our place can always go shopping if they're too bored. The complex has a tennis court, swimming pool, a (really nice) children's play area, a (tiny) gym, and is on a quiet residential street.

Second, the school - check. We interviewed at only one school, which is a new (international) school, only about 5-6 years old. People who have their kids there are happy and the online reviews that I read were also largely very positive. We took a school tour and it seemed very similar to the one Ads goes to currently, so we were hoping we would get in. And we did. We also toured another international school, which is an IGCSE school based on the Montessori method. While I really liked it, S had his own reservations regarding whether Montessori kids can cope with the mainstream system later in life. I couldn't convince him. Truth be told, I didn't try too hard since it was quite a bit more expensive than the first school, and we weren't willing to pay that much.

So. Coming back to the first school. Ads starts in the 1st week of April, in Grade I. The whole admission process was interesting. After the school tour, we met the 'Public Relations Officer' who gave us some gyan on the school. She asked both of us, individually, to fill out a long questionnaire, in order to understand our 'value systems' and 'parenting philosophy'. I don't remember all of the questions, but they ran something along these lines.

What is your life's motto?

What is your vision for yourself, and for your child?

What do you look for in a school for your child?

How do you enforce discipline in your home?

What are the 2 most important values you want to instill in your child?

How can schools and parents work together to create the best environment and opportunities for the child?

How do you define 'quality'? How do you create 'quality' in your child?

There was a father's questionnaire, and a mother's questionnaire. S and I kept comparing notes to see that we weren't writing in complete opposition to each other! I also told S that I was memorizing my answers so that I would remember what rubbish I wrote, in case the Principal asked me :)

A week later, we had an 'interaction' with the Principal. It was just a nice informal chat. She asked us some questions on our background and tried to see what kind of expectations we have from this school and the education system in general. I also think she was gauging whether we are the kind of parents she wants to have in her school, though she wouldn't admit it if we dragged her over hot coals. I'm pretty certain a lot of these new schools cater to, and actively solicit, a certain kind of student profile. In short, they want parents like us. Well-educated, articulate, in good jobs in the corporate sector. It may be unfair but it's true. It's also true that this is why parents like us prefer going to such schools, because we know we have a very good shot at getting in, unlike the better-known ones like DPS, Amity and Shriram, which have more applicants than they know what to do with. Every day, I see an article in the newspapers about parent's woes in getting admission for their kids in Delhi. Fortunately, Noida and Gurgaon have more supply than demand and the situation here isn't as crazy as in the city. 

I liked the low-pressure admission process in this school, and in other similar schools. At no point did we feel like supplicants begging for a seat. I know that as these schools become better-known, they also become more snooty in their attitude. A few years down the line, it might not be as easy getting a seat in this school. But for now, that's one headache off my list. Cheers.

Love the winter, but the insulation sucks and some other cribs

Dilli ki sardi. How many times had I heard people talking about it with varying degrees of wistfulness and nostalgia? We experienced it for the first time (as adults) in 2010/11 and boy, did it live up to expectations! Mostly bright sunny days, fabulous for sitting on the balcony and dining al fresco. Y and I (who are the only people at home for lunch) invariably have a picnic lunch on the sun-soaked balcony, sitting on my yoga mat :) Getting dressed up in tights, smart coats and scarves and feeling like a fashionista :) Never having to sweat and enjoying brisk evening walks. Yes it was horribly cold and foggy and miserable between Xmas and Sankranti but overall, it's been just a fantastic season. 

My only crib during the season - why are the apartments so poorly insulated? There have been many days when I actually felt colder inside the flat than outside! Why do builders cut corners when it comes to this very important aspect of construction? You build a 500-unit condominium complex, and the quality of construction is so poor. Owners (and renters like us) complain of seepage issues, flaking distemper, poor insulation and many other issues. Another thing - there's a fancy clubhouse with gym and pool and all the works, yet the gym has all of 3 treadmills. For 500+ units! Granted, the occupancy rate is something like 80% but still, isn't 3 treadmills a little too miserly? Don't even get me started on the rusted and broken-down play equipment in the children's park. What about just having some nice, easy-to-maintain plastic stuff that won't injure my children?

It's almost like the builder set out to build something really good, but at the last lap, just got utterly bored and said: Screw it. Let's finish and leave this project. I guess they just cut corners (and of course, they are not the only ones) wherever they could and the poor consumers just live with it.

Is this symptomatic of India itself? All flashy and India shining outside, but the rot inside is deep and stultifying.

Setting up and decorating house

We got back to Delhi, to be greeted by 25 cartons of stuff that had arrived from the US. The shipment was almost 2 months late (we were supposed to get it by April-end). My first reaction on seeing the boxes filling up precious floor space was one of irritation, because my unpacking enthusiasm had waned completely.....how was I to find the energy to unpack all these boxes?

As I started on the task, my irritation grew, supplemented by a sense of wonder at my own foolishness, near-sightedness and acquisitiveness. Why on earth did I have so much STUFF? Specifically, why do I have so many clothes? My clothes spilled out of every box. I had used them to pad our curios, kids' toys, my kitchen stuff; and there were enough left over to ship to every woman in Somalia. Oh well, I exaggerate, but I am so mad at myself. I have imposed a moratorium on any more clothes purchases for myself for the next one year. I'm confident I'll stick to it. 

I lovingly unpacked many of the curios I had purchased on our travels to Mexico and Canada. It was a delightful exercise to think about where to place them (some place Yukta-inaccessible, of course), and move things around until everything looked just right. I leave you with some snaps of the apartment. Still a few wall-hangings to be put up (some need to be re-framed), and I need to get some balcony furniture too. But the latter can wait since it's still too hot and dusty to think about sitting outside.

This display in my study has the boomerang (Australia), a Chinese tea set (Chinatown - Vancouver), and sand painting (Arizona Indians). The stand next to the couch has two cute drums (Hawaii).

The kids room - lots of Ads' artwork and I still have to put some more up.

Living room - 2 paintings depicting the Ramayana (Bangkok), my beloved Mysore painting (a housewarming gift from S's aunt) and a random bright yellow vase picked up at a thrift shop in the Bay Area!

My beloved Warli shares space with a piece of pottery depicting the Aztec calendar (Mexico) and a mask from South Africa (which I have never visited; it was a gift from a friend who holidayed there).

Some thrift-shop finds with green tequila shot set (Mexico).

One of my favourite paintings - the San Francisco skyline. My brother bought this for me.