Laughing it up.......

........even when you know that it may be the longest, most painful, tearful, slow and exhausting, feeling fat, overweight, unglamorous, 9 months + about another 18 years of your life!!!. And this is all supposed to be worth it. Please come back in a few decades (if i'm on the planet) and ask me that question.

Here is a list just 10 things (i wont bother with the 50 other things) I miss.....

1. Drinks - I mean the kind that makes you feel like you died and went to heaven.

2. Cigarettes - okay I know that sermon. bat habit etc etc. But I do miss it sometimes. Though not as much as i thought I would

3. Wearing regular sized clothes and not my husbands jackets which I hope I never have to wear again. Ever. I look like a sack of potatoes!

4. Working out. Walking not waddling.

5. Travelling.

6. Sleeping in any position i want and at anytime - without being Kicked.

7. Coffee

8. Wearing any footwear I want to. Specially heels.

9. Driving around town whenever I want to and not counting the portholes and assholes on the road

10. Asking friends to get me nice things from Duty Free Shopping instead of Diapers!

The last 37 years I felt like Amitabh Bacchan in Sholay or a Shehenshah - doing things at lightening speed and being a super hero. Errrr.......suddenly the humbling thought dawned on me that I am now a very pregnant Amitabh Bacchan who takes forever to apply cream on my legs after a bath because I cannot reach my own body parts!! @$^@%&%@@&*@&

When they say that its not easy to bear a baby for 9 months one has no idea what they are telling you. But sin

ce I am at 34 weeks, I can only be grateful that I can Move! At 37, this is my first child and I have no (relatively lesser than most women) complaints about the physical aspect. A little pain is what one goes through while at a beauty saloon too. Only difference is that this is a little extended and you don't feel pampered. Instead, get used to being kicked every few minutes. Since i haven't been through labour yet, i cant comment on that aspect but I'm sure that will want to skip that part in any of my pregnancy stories.

Still, its important to handle it with some humour and remain as distracted as possible.

For eg. All work is done in slow motion. Simple things that I took for granted like sitting and standing are now listed under "task" to begin with.

Everywhere you go you are asked to sit down as if you are Unwell. So i have to constant re-enforce to people that I'm Pregnant not Unwell.

The last few months I have oscillated between being singularly focussed in not loosing "myself" to saying "what the heck". I often hear parents complain that they have lost themselves and thier minds since they kids. No reversing the clock now people!........go fight soldier!!! No one said it was going to be easy.

Big question asked these days is - do you think its a boy or girl.

Frankly, I don't care. As long as the child is a sweetie pie. Otherwise, you can have him/her.

The above are only some passing thoughts about my current state of mind and body. It can turn ugly or nice depending on the situation. But there is no turning back the clock now. Go fight soldier. :-)

Timelines and Conditions

Project deadlines are fine. You get a project, pick a team, negotiate the document specs, set a reasonable/unreasonable deadline and get on with it. Ofcourse, you cant be jailed if you dont meet the dealine but you may be in someone's bad books. But there is always the next project!

Not so in life it seems.

God Forbid if you don't meet the SOP mentioned below. Then you are either demented, direction less or plain stupid. This is not the end. Each of the points mentioned above come with conditions.

• You are born
  Everyone wants a perfect being. You must be fair, tall, smart.........basically your personality should be something straight out of the matrimonial section.
• Go to play school at 3 year
  And you are expected to come out of here smartened and polished (like a circus monkey) to face the Real School interview. By the way your parents are going to pay a premium for the seat whether you "perform" or not.
• Finish earning sometimes meaningless grades at 18
  Doesnt matter what you think of studies, if you don't score about 90 in each subject you are bound to be a Looser. Incase you want to somehow mug your way through studies there is always extra tuitions and they are supposed to guarantee that you pass atleast.
  Incase you flunk or repeat a class - you are an outcast for life! - without anyone bothering to know exatly why you are weak/uninterested in studies.
• Pick a profession
  (hopefully the right one) and finish a degree and training between 19 - 25
• Get married! -
  Isnt this the BIG ONE??! - by 28. Doesnt matter if ur not ready or if ur gay, lesbian, disintersted, living in or just enjoying life. Enjoying Life - can mean that ur way beyond kinky!!
• Have a family at 30
  (read as: have atleast 2 babies by 28 years incase you are a female)
• Retire at 60 - 65
  play with your grandchildren

Here is the clincher - For the above timelines and conditions you will get truckloads of advise from people who have done all of this in that order and are not happy! and would want you to exactly what they did!

And their explanation is that - Life is short!!!

Do matrimonial sites really work?

The right question would be - Will I find someone one way or another?!

Well......Life took an expected turn right after that trip to Goa. I got married and gearing up to be mommy in early Jan 2010.

After all my futile attempts at finding a partner I finally gave up last year in May when I turned 36. Its not my style or preference to ask for help (large ego) but I did - ask my parents to intervene. They almost dropped off thier chairs and suddenly there was excitement after a minute of stunned silence. The unexpected suggestion i got from two sixty something people was "Try a matrmonial site"! I would rather dig a well and jump in it than trust one of those things.

So, yes i did get many solicitations from about 50 guys a day to check out thier profiles and marry them. Some 67 year old man who I thought my mother should marry! - wrote in to say that he is a grandfather but would like to find someone to share his old age. No I didnt find it odd or funny but I'm not Anna Nicole Smith!!
Another was a 22 year old from a village in Madhya Pradesh who was looking for - a smart, young, fair bride. I was wondering if it was even important to be have a brain and limbs that worked in this case?!

I was begining to think that this was a crazy idea and if I did not find someone to settle down with I think I would be miserable for a while but eventually make the choice to be happy. Easier said than done I think. But not impossible. So after turning down some ridiculous people I stoppped checking out my profile and left it to fate. Then I get a mail from Ranjit which for some reason I did not delete from my mailbox but did not revert to either. I was on holiday in Dharamshala at that point in time and couldnt be bothered by worldly things like marriage. But 15 days later he wrote back asking me to say yes/no atleast - which i thought was intersting. Because the trend on these sites is that people have short attention spans and never seem to remember who they wrote to. Thats why when he wrote back to me i did ask him to call and we could see if our ideas matched up.

After a brief conversation over the phone we met for coffee. That was the 5th of Oct , 2008. The meeting went into two coffees. We kept in touch off and on through my holiday in Goa . And met again for dinner. Everything remained formal between us. I didnt think much of it expect that I was able to have a decent conversation with this person.

3 dinners later he proposed and I took 10 days to say "Yes!"
Late Jan 2009 we were married. And early Jan 2010 we'll be parents.
By the way I only said "Yes" to marriage........!!!

I did think it was too soon to come to that decision but I think ultimately its about whether you want to take things as they come or want everything "just right". Which by the way is never possible. In our daily lives we've forgotten that we met on the net - as cheesy as that sounds - its ultimately about Life in RealTime.