N just turned one on Dec. 9. She toddles around a lot now. She mimics sounds and simple actions like clapping and putting a cell phone to the ear (and so it begins..). She’s grown so much from when I last saw her at 3 months, but isn’t at all as big as she seems in pictures. She is the splitting image of R and M.

 I cannot help but sound matter-of-fact when discussing N because I am unable to find a way to adequately describe the presence of a child. See, I’m not one of those people whose ovaries flutter at the mention of say, baby lotion. My ovaries, in fact, are unusually impervious to baby talk of any kind, and I almost never get the urge to procreate. Baby pictures do not move this stone heart of mine, nor do videos of babies bobbing wildly to the theme song of Jack’s Big Music Show. But there is something about actually having a baby around (and also, perhaps not being the one who has to do all the feeding, bottle-sterilizing and diaper-changing) that has made me vaguely fantasize about my own spawn.

 It might be her voice as she coos in excitement at the discovery of her belly-button. Her giggling at her mother’s exaggerated laughter. Her wobbly gait from room to room as she explores the home in which she’s growing up so quickly. But I think the thing that gets you most of all is when a child comes up to you and looks at you imploringly with her arms outstretched, wanting you to pick her up. This total dependence, while probably very hard on the parent that has to devote every hour of the day attending to the child’s every need at the expense of his or her own, can be intoxicating to visitors like me. This child actually needs and wants my attention! I don’t really have to do much but I am needed and my attention is wanted. I want to attribute some of this to how much of a lonely pathetic loser I am sometimes, but I think most of us have a primal urge to be needed.

 N needs to be engaged. Every. Waking. Minute. At any given point in time, N has at least one adult reducing his or herself to a human generator of animal sounds. The animal sound generator stops only to tell N to take a potentially lethal object from the crevices of the sofa out of her mouth. And then gets right back to squawking like Bongo bird next second. 

 But how will I squawk, breast-feed, lull to sleep, pull the loaded guns out of my child’s mouth and manage to dress myself and shower all at the same time?

We spent the winter break at M’s sister R’s place in Louisville, CO. The original plan last December was for all of us (M and I, our parents, R and family, my brother and Peter Pettigrew (he invited himself so it was awkward to refuse)) to fly to Chennai last December. That way we would get away from it all (i.e. winter) and conduct M’s father’s 60^th Birthday celebrations with the requisite Hindu rituals. For the uninitiated, (I belonged to this category till right before M’s dad turned 60) the 60^th birthday is kind of a big deal in Hindu culture, what with your life presumably having been all fruitfully-lived and and your marriage having yielded offspring who are now old enough to throw you your 60^th birthday well, rituals. The ceremony involves the presence of all those who are near and dear and everything, so at the heart of it, it’s really just a big family re-union.

But you know how the economy is bad and times are bad and everything is bad and so it was decided that we’d just have a low-key get-together at R’s place for around a couple of weeks.

Those ten days at R’s were as close to an idyllic vacation as we could probably have had, in our current state of joblessness and apartmentlessness. We spent a lot of our time with R’s one year old N, sipping wine (not always at the same time), playing scrabble. On one isolated occasion, I puffed my first ever cigar while discussing the nuances of female masturbation with R and her best friend V. We puffed and nuanced away till the wee hours of the morning. That was something.

What else? We had our parenting skills scrutinized by the manager of Med, but you already know about that (see post below). Oh and we went snowmobiling one day in Winter Park, CO and I spent a week after picking icicles from the roof of my mouth. 

This tale of heartache and abysmal customer service begins on New Year’s Eve 2008 in Colorado. Having failed to get dinner reservations at a few other restaurants on this busy day, we decided to try Med, a Zagat-rated restaurant on Walnut Street, Boulder. We were a family of 6 adults and a baby, we informed the Med representative on the phone earlier that afternoon. She informed us in return that we wouldn’t be able to make a reservation since we were a party of under 10 adults, but that if we came by at around 7pm, we would have no problem getting a table. This sounded odd to us, considering the occasion, restaurant’s award-winning culinary fare and, according to their website, their status as a “Boulder Institution.” Still, we took her word for it and made our way, baby in tow, for dinner at 7pm.

 As soon as we got there, it was fairly obvious from the crowd and bustle that we were nowhere close to getting a table – the staff at the front desk told us that we might have to wait as long as an hour and a half to be seated. Not seeing much of an alternative (other restaurants around the area were similarly full), we decided to wait it out. So for an hour we jockeyed amongst the crowd of other waiting guests, cramped, hungry, and vaguely annoyed at the restaurant representative who’d misinformed us earlier over the phone that we’d have no trouble getting a table, even without a reservation. Still, we had chosen to wait, so we kept our spirits up, talking about the amazing veggie paella we’d had the last time we were here and engaging the baby (she was a trouper, barely making a sound even as she grew progressively restless).

 Then we hit the one and a half hour mark. An announcement made to an unknown party of 6 informing them that their table was ready. We did not take this well and at this point, even the baby was starting to make her displeasure heard. We asked to speak to someone who might explain this to us. The manager was with us in a few minutes and began with a cursory apology. Said unknown party of 6 had originally been a party of 10 and had a reservation, he informed us. The restaurant was still obliged to honor its commitment to this group despite the dwindling of their number. Fair enough, I suppose. But if the management isn’t going to insist on 10 people actually being present after a reservation has been made for 10 people, why be so strict about the 10-person rule for families with babies? We were 6 adults with a baby who had waited for an hour and a half. Surely, the restaurant staff could have been a little more understanding?

 The manager turned his nose up at this suggestion from my sister-in-law who balanced her impatiently-wriggling one year old on her hip as she tried to reason with him. “I’m not going to tell you how to parent..,,” he began his response. This felt like a slap across the face even to me, though he wasn’t speaking to me and I wasn’t the parent in question. But having been at the receiving end of verbal attacks from men I barely know, on matters such as my attire, my refusal to be submissive and even how I raise my voice sometimes, I am only too familiar with the situation in which a man thinks it’s his place to criticize a woman he doesn’t know, on an issue he doesn’t understand (this manager wasn’t a parent himself). I barely heard the rest of the conversation through the indignation welling-up within. I only vaguely remember pointing out that he was completely out of line in commenting about someone’s parenting. He apologized hastily, but it was a superficial apology – one after which he proceeded to defend himself for the outrageous remark. “If I had a kid, I wouldn’t wait this long, that’s all I’m saying. I meant no offence.”

 Seriously? Ok, I don’t even know where to begin with this. See, I get it – the guy is overworked. It’s new year’s eve, guests are clamoring for tables, it’s crowded, it’s noisy, it’s insane all-around. I know – I’ve cooked at a pizza place before, and I know how hard it is, especially with customers being rude and demanding. But we were not rude and demanding. We were only eagerly looking forward to the meal and we were polite. We had waited patiently an hour and a half, like we were told to, and we had kept our baby from crying and annoying other guests even in the slightest bit. So firstly, how was it fair to take the frustration of serving an unusually large crowd out on us, who hadn’t even been served at this point, and secondly, how dare this manager presume to imply that a woman he had just met was not parenting adequately?

 We pointed this out to him, though not in so many words. We kept the tone of the conversation civil, even through the manager’s repeated defense of his comment about my sister-in-law’s parenting and a vague suggestion that he didn’t quite believe that a representative from Med had told us that the place wouldn’t be crowded on New Year’s Eve and that we would easily find a table. What good would an indignant outcry do, after all? At some point, the management insisted on paying for half of the dinner for our table. We protested, emphasizing that all along we had wanted only fair, not preferential, treatment. We also somewhat resented the idea that the manager thought he could say whatever he pleased and then pay his way out of the situation. Eventually, they wouldn’t take no for an answer, so they did pay for half our bill, which amounted to around $85.

 At the end of the day, if a family cannot go out to dinner to a restaurant on New Year’s Eve without their parenting skills come into question by the restaurant staff, I think it’s safe to say that the customer service at said restaurant could use a little improvement.  

When asked what I thought of it, all I could say was that it was sad. Good sad/bad sad? Well, just really sad sad. MaryAnn Johanson of The Flick Filosopher articulates this despair better:

“Not only is this not a comedy, it’s not a kids’ movie. They won’t be bored by it, but they’ll miss what’s so special about it. It’s so exquisite — from the near-silent-movie-ness of it during its first half to the brutal but candy-colored satire of its second half — that people will still be watching this movie hundreds of years from now. And if we’re not lucky, and not smart, and not wise, those people will watch Wall-E and they’ll know that we knew that the ruination of the Earth was possible, and that we did nothing to stop it.”

(full review here)

Yes I know. I should end this quoting streak and put up something more original. I’m on it.

Since all this talk about brilliant TV got me thinking about my first love.

(Bob Kelso) “You youngsters! If there’s one thing I have learned it’s that you can’t schedule love”

(Dr. Cox) “I think your credit card statement would beg to differ”

–

Oh oh and this one:

Turk: Okay, you know what, I vote Elliot goes home! Because she’s all up in our space, honey! She’s in our space!
Elliot: Oh, why? Because I don’t want to dish about other people behind their backs or smell your toe?
Turk: Or finger!
Elliot: All I’ve seen so far is the toe, Turk!

Michael: What do you think of when you hear the name Sudden Valley?

George Michael: Salad dressing, I think. But for some reason, I don’t want to eat it.

Michael: Right. But Paradise Gardens…

George Michael: Yeah. Okay, I can… I can see marinating a chicken in that.

It’s moments like these that make me want to pledge my life and my right arm to Arrested Development. Or should I say left hand? If I can recover it from that seal with the yellow bow-tie, that is.

So we covered sexual liberation – definitely good. Samantha not considering her 49 years as a factor when deciding to abandon an unfulfilling relationship -excellent. I mean, I am all for wanting and seeking out long term companionship with that perfect someone or whatever but if that isn’t really you or if you haven’t found that person, why settle just for the sake of it? You make compromises in any relationship, no doubt, but that doesn’t necessarily have to mean having to change your preferences or lower your expectations (when reasonable, of course). It simply means being able to navigate through the potential pitfalls of proximity and the normal wear and tear that ensues when two adults live together. Too often people confuse settling for self-centred or immature behaviour or even reconciling with the fundamental lack of compatibility with their partner, with acceptable compromise. It’s called short-changing yourself, and it takes courage and intelligence not to, so much props to Samantha exhibiting generous amounts of both.

**plot spoilers ahead (in case you care)**

And now, for the the things that have been grating on my nerves. I cannot imagine how or why Carrie would go ahead and marry Big at the end of all that. I mean, you expect a little more wisdom than this from allegedly smart people with like 20 plus years of relationship experience under their shiny Prada belts. So let’s dissect this travesty of true love into its fundamental flaws:

FF #1: They’ve been together TEN YEARS. It’s not too much to ask for them to know by this time how they want their relationship to be, i.e. if they want to get married or just simply cruise along happily as they have so far. Instead they have this awkward, tepid discussion about marriage, and almost on a whim, decide in favour of it.

FF #2: If someone could be so unsure of marrying you after supposedly loving you for most of their adult life that they would be swayed by your recently betrayed friend and, heeding their ill-placed advice, metaphorically de-entrail you by standing you up on your wedding day, it is a definite deal breaker. The closest you could ever get to a relationship with them again, if at all, is civil exchange of pleasantries at the occasional awkward run-in at the supermarket.

FF #3: Instead, after almost a year of not speaking to each other at all (I’m just going to go ahead and ignore the lame poem crap Big emailed her), they suddenly decide to take another stab at a stroll down the aisle again when, in what I presume was intended to be a poetic gesture, Big proposes with a (HER!) diamond studded shoe, she gleefully accepts. Because according to Carrie:

FF #4: “Sometimes decisions about relationships cannot be logical”. Like hell they can’t. Sure you might fall for someone because there was like, I dunno, a shooting star in the heavens when you first saw him or something, but how can a decision about loving and spending your entire lifetime with a person be anything but soundly anchored by logic? I mean, this is the kind of flimsy rationalisation that makes me retch at tamil movies and now I get this same crap flung at my face by a supposedly progressive, thinking woman?

FF #5: Carrie holds Miranda (at least) partly responsible for Mr. Big’s lack of decency. There is just so much wrong and sad about this that I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s just make this quick and painless then. Miranda, best friend, in bad place, hasty, angry, bitter when she told Mr. Big they were crazy to marry. Mr. Big, dumbass, dbag extraordinaire, what happened to his judgement, love for Carrie? Carrie, unbelievably retarded.

URGH. There. I’m done.

I know, I know. At this point it’s like, at the risk of conjuring the nasty mental image, flogging a dead horse. But I’ll add my 2 cents to the cacophony anyway, because I’ve been reading reviews and such on the matter and no one really seems to have mentioned a few things that have gnawed away to the depths of my soul ever since I saw them on the big screen. But let the formalities not go unobserved – I’ll first do the whole stating my stance on the overall series thing and talk a little about the things I did actually like.

I never really saw the TV series. Well, I have watched the occasional episode here and there and also, I have not resided beneath a rock anytime these last 10 years. So I kind of get the general idea – Four different caricatures of women coming together in a flashy, if unrealistic, vision of an inordinately white New York City (a fairly grave sin for a show that purports to be at least 50% City). So as far as I can tell, we have Miranda as the brainy one, Charlotte’s the dopey romantic, Samantha luurves the sexy times and Carrie, oh Carrie – a pseudo intellectual who incorporates all the aforementioned caricatures into her own.

So the good: I do love the premise, even if perhaps only an ostensible one, of sexual liberation for women. I mean come on, it was (quite literally too), about fucking time. Women have always been made to feel awkward about our bodies, what with all the unpleasant connotations attached to female sexuality. Those of us from cultures which place an especially huge premium on something as meaningless as virginity, that supposed holy grail of virtues, will certainly attest to it. We’ve grown up told that it’s wrong to do it, talk about it or even think of it until we’re married and even after that, we know the closest we’re ever going to get to a discussion is hushed whispers and childish giggles at the mention of a penis.

So as a young Indian woman of suffocatingly conservative upbringing, it’s really refreshing, seeing confident, successful women unafraid to want or ask for sex, without necessarily attaching emotional strings to the man in question. I mean honestly, if you think about it, there is really no logical basis for being this averse to solely lust driven or out-of-wedlock sex. As long as it’s safe and consensual, what’s the problem? Why does culture ramble on in nauseating hypocritical fashion about loss of self-respect and dignity associated with promiscuity, when such a huge part of the world does not even have the decency to treat each other with kindness and common sense regardless of race, religious beliefs, social status or sexual orientation? I may be oversimplifying (and being quite cliche) here but the world would seriously be a far happier place if people got laid more. Who thinks of bombing stuff or being mean after a mind numbingly spectacular orgasm?

Ok, so I drifted off a bit there with my live and let live rant and it’s gotten kind of long. So I’m gonna break this up and put up the second part in the next post. Stay tuned.

A commercial I saw recently leads me to pick up (though somewhat tangentially) from where I left off the last time. I ended that post with a link to the ever eloquent Tamil Punkster’s post on Hindu culture’s attitude towards menstruation and menstruating women, which if you haven’t read already, you should.

Anyway, things on this side of the world aren’t much different. I saw a Midol commercial a few days back and okay, have you heard their tagline? It’s ‘Reverse the Curse’. Really. ‘The Curse’. You’d think we women spent 3 (or more) days every month incarcerated in a windowless room forced to listen to Bryan Adams. ON-REPEAT. And at the end of all that the men had the babies anyway. I mean, ‘The Curse’? Come on. At first I wasn’t paying much to attention to the voice-over, or even the actual commercial though I vaguely perceived a woman skipping along the shore of a beach all giggly because, well yeah, that is exactly what us chicks like to do when we’re not menstruating. And then – “Midol, Reverse the Curse!”, proclaims a disembodied voice.

I don’t get it. I mean, yes it’s not exactly rainbows and butterflies when the womb is all crampy and spewing out blood but what is so “The Curse” about it? It’s just as natural and essential a process as any of women’s other bodily functions and well, no menstrual cycle = no mankind. So then maybe our wombs are a bad thing after all, seeing as how most of mankind is so sexist, racist and homophobic. But that’s besides the point.

So why the wrinkled noses at the very mention of periods? Why the immature whining and name calling?

Why do some women go out of their way to accommodate the most unreasonable expectations when it’s clear how unfair it is? I once had a friend who, in the months leading up to her wedding, had little or no contact with her fiancé. It was a long distance relationship as it was and it was, for reasons I cannot understand (given the abject lack of communication), heading towards a marriage. She wasn’t vocal about it but her frustration was palpable. Everyone kept telling her to hang on just a few more months and then she’d get to be with him. And she did. I’m not in a position to comment on their marriage today but I can bet anything she’s putting in much more than her fair share to keep that happily ever after going.

I once asked her why she tolerated this. In a matter-of-fact tone which belied the egregiousness of her statement, she remarked that this was just how it was with men in general, especially so in our culture (referring to how we’re Indian women and all) and that our needs would just have to be sidelined for theirs. It wasn’t fair, she admitted when I pressed her out of both disbelief and concern for her. “But that’s just how it’s always been- Might as well just accept it and make the best of it.” She also said that she used to question this but has now learnt to accept the status quo for the sake of the smooth running of the marriage. She spoke of this acceptance as if it were a mark of the maturity she’d acquired through the difficulties of the relationship. “I have learnt the hard way that demanding equality with a man is impractical. I’ve understood the differences now and I’m really happy, especially now that we’re married and together. More than I’ve ever been”.

I don’t know about you but this attitude, coming from such an educated and otherwise intelligent young woman, scares me. Worse still, she is not alone. I have heard many young women take the same stance, passively accepting the inequalities in their relationships, because well, they’re not the only ones. Male supremacy has been so deeply institutionalized in our culture that anything other than quiet deference to your husband’s priorities is tantamount to blasphemy.

But why are we clinging on so desperately to a culture that so blatantly discriminates between the sexes? I mean, this is a culture that has, for thousands of years till today, deemed women unclean and unfit to be in the company of during something so natural and normal as menstrual periods, when there is absolutely no scientific or logical basis for such a stigma. Why are so many thinking women even today, so reluctant to change the status quo that they would rather let such hateful behaviour pass for cultural norms?