Vocal Mama

When Yuvaan (Y) was small, he used to love wearing clothes with footballs printed over it. With time, his choice of clothes kept changing. Since last 2 months or so, he has been obsessed with the spiderman. He loves how spiderman dresses, jumps, and talks. He likes other avengers too, but he insists to dress-up with something spiderman-ly (spiderman or his web printed over it) only every day. Well, this spiderman saga was found cute by us initially. We bought everything spiderman-ly for him; be it clothes or shoes; this story is not about how we are spoiling our little son (haha) but is about him pulling through something truly unexpected. Midst of the spiderman saga, I bought Y a new water bottle and since Spiderman print was not available, I got him a blue color water bottle which had a small boy wearing Captain America shield printed over it. When the bottle arrived, Y was elated to receive it. As I said, he adores all kind of avengers. He took it to school for a week or so and insi...

I moved to Mumbai at the age of 21 for work. After settling down in the rented apartment and basic sightseeing I started mingling up with my flat mates. As I am an extrovert, making new friends was fun. Within a couple of weeks, I grew close with a couple of my flat mates. One day while cooking I cracked a joke; a new friend of mine (P) laughed and said that my jokes are exactly like one of her friends who also happens to be a Punjabi like me. I jokingly asked if she is talking about a boy. She said Yes and I said, “I think I should meet him then”. P took this conversation seriously. Coming weekend, she went out with her set of friends, came back home, and asked me if she can give my phone number to the Punjabi guy. I smiled and said I am not sure. I really do not remember why but I asked her if I can share my sametime ID instead. People who do not know, sametime was an internal portal of TCS where people could chat/share stuff; it was basically like MS teams. She said okay! This Punja...

After facing the global pandemic in 2020-2021, 2022 was a breath of fresh air for most of us.  January  2022 started with my whole family getting infected by the omicron variant of COVID. We combinedly took a week to recover. January ended with me consulting a therapist for the first time ever after struggling around the fact of my dad’s demise for 8 months and also while celebrating my mom’s first birthday after my dad’s passing.  February  began with S and I celebrating our 8 th  meeting anniversary and us celebrating my mom-dad’s 31 st  wedding anniversary (again a first after dad’s passing) and ended with a refreshing trip to Rishikesh.  March  brought a little joy through Holi. Last week of March 2022, I started going to the gym and consciously trying to heal/get over my grief.  April  as always was one of the best months of the year. I celebrated my 30 th  birthday and then our 6 th  wedding anniversary. Also took a short...

 Do you know that there are 5 stages of grief? I only knew about it when my papa passed away and I could not feel better even after months. The stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. They say depression is the longest stage and I have lived through it so I will agree. After 9 months of my dad’s passing when I did not feel better and met a psychologist, she confirmed that I am going through the longest stage of grief and there is no other way to get out of it than feeling my deepest sadness. She gave various advices which she said would help; crying out as much as I want was the top most. Since I was in a bad state, it was easy to follow her topmost advice.  After a month or so, I decided to give working out a chance. I had read that its good for mental health. I thought if nothing than I will at least have a better body and thinking that I started working out in March.  Initial days were okay. I used to think about my dad all the time while wor...

Sometimes, we gotta understand that some of us are naturally the givers. It normal for us to keep giving. Giving makes us happy and content way more than the receiving does. We are the ones to drive and thrive the relationships. We are the cool ones. The live and let live ones. The ones who cut a lot of slack. The ones who get energy from making someone happy.  Needless to say that a lot of times, we get very little in return and although we should not but we feel bad about it. We (of course) can’t expect people to treat us the way we treat them; not everyone has the same heart so inspite of getting hurt at times and again; we keep giving, cutting the slack, forgiving, and forgetting because we are the givers and we know no other way.

 I was around 15 when I started travelling alone and kept travelling (mostly) alone till I got married. After that, mostly S and I travelled together but for work reasons, I did take few trips alone. Then, in 2019, Y was born and all my trips after that involved him. Let me tell you that travelling with a baby or toddler is not at all same as travelling alone or with other adults. As they say, “parents don't take vacations, they take care of their kids at a different location”. I can’t deny this fact but then we parents do get proficient with time in this matter and seamlessly take care of our kids anywhere and everywhere.  Last week, for the first time in 3 and a half years, I travelled alone. I took a one day trip to Mumbai without Y. My in laws and S stayed behind with Y and because I had left him before to go to office for full day, I was certain that he will be alright. I started telling Y, 3 days prior that I will be going to office for one whole day and will be back by ...

I am not a very patient person. I have a short temper, but most people don’t know that because I can act/tame myself down in public. My son was a very calm baby. He was very easy to handle until around 2.5 years of age. His early years of life were spent in house because of Covid and only when he started school, he got introduced to the outside world. I started seeing change in his personality once he had started school, but I never expected such a huge flip around 3 years of age. He turned 3 in June and the calm in him got totally replaced by chaos. His verbal skills are multiplying every day, his emotions are always on a turmoil, and he pretty much understands how he can express himself. Forget expressing, I can see that he can now literally manipulate us in agreeing whatever he wants to do. Yesterday, I wanted to go down to take a walk after dinner. I asked Y if he would like to accompany. He said yes but he insisted that he would like to cycle and not walk. I was in no mood of runn...