Bloody Hell!

I had a blood test recently - a routine check up which revealed routine things about my body and so forth. Before you ask, yes, it involved a urine test as well, which - however many times I do it - is a major pain. Anyway that was all fine, I don't want to talk about peeing though I just did.

There is a snatch of a memory from my childhood, I was very small, at least in size if not in age. We used to go to our family doctor - named Subba Rao - a super old gentleman who gave us those red tonics and half a 'celin' [Vitamin C] each. It was generally assumed that I got half portions 'cause I was one, but I suspect that the guy was just cautious about loading up the body with chemicals - a thing I appreciate a lot now.

The memory, yes, was about a vaccine I had to get. Mom told me about it and we walked from our house to my grandmom's house first (the good doctor was en route). And I was so excited throughout the whole outing. I could hardly think straight. I dragged mom out of the grandmom's house quick quick double quick so we could get the injection.

"Maybe she will become a doctor" I think they said. "Maybe I will" I remember thinking to myself as I inhaled the deliciously decrepit odours of the doctor's clinic. I had no use for the prattle that they use to make a patient comfortable. I didn't mind one bit the injection - not even the initial pin prick.

During my teenage years, thanks to the braces I had on my teeth, it was all those injections in my gums. I did not mind them, though that slurpy feeling in the aftermath was not desirable. I got four teeth removed in one shot one time, and no worries. The dentist was a very nice (and handsome) man but that was not the point, really.

In recent times, I am a bit more wary. I looked carefully as he broke the seal on a brand new needle. I watched him dab the antiseptic. I decorously looked away as he poked the vein. I only peeked a glance when he was a little rough during the vial change. I still am unafraid of injections - though I did not "become a doctor" - at least not of the variety they were referring to. 

Again about Gulmohars

I used to love the summertime back then. There was the whole last-day-of-school ritual. We would just go crazy. I would warn my family that I would be back home late. And we would get up to something or the other in school - just silly things - like playing a lot. That one time we challenged each other about using the teacher's bathroom; or to throw something into the staff room and escape before we were caught... Random stuff.

Once that was taken care of and all the sundry people we would not really see through the summer vacation dispatched, my friend & I would return home slowly, on our cycles. Weaving in and out and trying out any cycling tricks we had mastered. And then, reluctantly, with regret, we would separate and go to our individual homes (that were two streets apart, so not like miles away or anything).

The evening brought much excitement as my sister & I ran to the library and checked out as many books as the guy would allow. He was always very wary about us, I guess he was convinced that between the three of us (my mom, sis & I), we were capable of making him go out of business! Which was rather silly 'cause mom was one of his biggest supporters and always paid him extra. IF he had shut shop during our Mysore years, we would have been devastated, so seriously, he needn't have worried. [Last month we walked past and yes, he has gone out of business now, surely].

I would make grandiose plans for the rest of the summer. It involved things like: borrowing all the books my friend Anu's parents would allow from their collection (mostly, P G Wodehouse, Agatha Christie); & checking out all the arts & crafts books from dad's college library (all those special things I imagined I could do, if only I lived in the U.S., and had access to pipe cleaners, double sticky tape, craft paper, & what not). I signed up for several hours of basketball. I walked over to houses of my seniors and begged them for text books and work books (seriously).

May in Mysore is really wonderful. It's boiling hot - something that didn't used to bother me as much in those days as it does now. The large number of Gulmohar trees in the city are all in bloom (they were, this year as well, no worry). The koels and other birds are in fine form. And the general atmosphere of laid-backness is only amplified. I barely noticed that people in jobs continued to rush over to their various destinations in the morning. There is a fresh smell that used to hang around in the air - and believe me, I have tested the air right from early morning hours (basketball) to mid-afternoon (cycling expeditions here and there), to early evening (play time with friends).

Most of all, it was time for renewal and to do all the things I wanted to do in my life, which the regular schedule of school & homework & exams and so forth didn't allow me to. Over the years, I have become rather attached to this, which is why it's a good thing that I am in an academic job. Whatever else it is or isn't, the summer is awesome. Except that over the years, it is losing it's charm. One year it's a house move, the other a school move, or it's house painting or a family function. It's some unanticipated travel. Or that pile of things left over from the semester.

Obviously, as a full grown (ahem!) adult, it's incumbent upon me to finish all those tasks. To use the summer, when there is no teaching, to check all those boxes. To make sure that, by the time the undergrads come back to the campus and life goes back to insane busy-ness, I am ready to give my undivided attention to just juggling the usual teaching-research-home-parenting-other stuff stuff. So no more dreamy lists and fun "projects"; no more 3 hour basketball sessions (or whatever). No origami. No writing. Just Nose To The Grindstone again. Fine, I will do it. But I am under no obligation to like it. Mind it. 

Mum's the word

I was away this past weekend, attending a wedding, somehow feeling super tired, and catching up with family. I go months without talking to my aunts & uncles, and I only very rarely meet the relatives next removed. Life is busy and I don't get too down thinking about this, but when I see them it feels so good. Plus there is my grandmum, who is pretty awesome.

I am reading the Murakami (1Q84), and I needn't tell you how brilliant it is. Mum read a couple of chapters and decided its a book of short stories. Nothing I said (in Page 512 at that point of time), could convince her otherwise, so I let it go. Which is the best strategy sometimes. No big deal.

She started quizzing me about my early childhood memories. Now this is a tricky thing, right. Sis and I have to talk about this stuff with regular disclaimers that we don't blame her for anything. Not that anything bad happened to us, just the regular parts of growing up and so on, but mum, she is getting increasingly sensitive about this stuff.

So I told her innocuous things. Like I remember being three or so and sitting reciting the alphabet. I was on the living room couch, I remember. It was brown that year. Dad was in his favourite cane chair. I asked him after I got done 'was that capital letters or small?' Of course I don't think this is a pure memory because the story has been told many times in family circles. (As evidence of what, I don't know).

I remember being in our little garden. Early morning, checking out the dew drops, climbing on the gate, plucking the delicate white jasmines, praying, snuggling up to mum early morning inside the mosquito netting, yeah well, lots and lots of things. These are like snapshots in my brain. Not videos. So I have to order them chronologically now.

I was always super tiny. They sent me to a different school than my sister, for a little bit. Because it was closer to home. And it would be easier to not lose me despite my Thumbelina like size. Or something. Well, that school sucked big time and I regularly had to deal with boys who would take off their shorts and run around and all sorts of nonsense like that.

Not that I told my parents any of that. How was I to know? I thought that was how things were in schools. Finally someone figured out that this school was terrible and they pulled me out. I don't remember too much but I think I can picture the scene where a bunch of us kids were taken by one of the maids hired for the purpose, to the school, in the morning.

My mum was always very busy. She was studying for her M.Ed. (when I picked up random words like 'curriculum' and 'corroborate' from her in my Thumbelina avatar). Then she was working at an Institute for Language Studies (where I hung out for ages after school amidst the mango and banyan trees with my quiet friend Vijayalakshmi-with the short cropped stylish hair-style).

Then the old folk at home fell sick one by one and she was busy dealing with that (while I branched out and went to school and figured I was good in studies but not so much in eating and waited the whole day to snuggle up to her in the early mornings). Then she started on her Phd (and I really think I wanted to help her, though all I did was grade the numerous exams she gave kids for the sake of her data).

Although she is right here, few hours away, I miss her a lot. I want to tell her everything. I want to sit down and have a good cry on her lap. But I don't. I spent a lot of time talking to her this weekend. We discussed family politics. Some philosophical musing type stuff. We talked about the kids. We talked about the wedding. And my work. And her apartment. Neither of us talked about ourselves, our feelings, as usual.

(And I still haven't directly told her I ran the Ultra Marathon in December)

Inspiration

I keep thinking 'ooh i must write that in my blog' as I read something. Then I think 'naa. let me finish the book and then I can write a proper summary' - of course that never really happens. By the time the book is done with, my opinions of various things read along the way have changed. I have forgotten how I felt at the beginning of the book. I have started to even dislike it a bit. I never seem to like a book as much towards the end as at the start. And also, I don't do reviews of movies or books or stuff like that, generally. It feels like too much effort!

Just to mix things up a bit, I thought of talking about what I am currently reading. A running book (its highly unlikely that a running book ends as well as it begins, unless, of course, its the Murakami, that genius). It doesn't matter what it is. Or who it is by (you know its not the Murakami, of course). But its super inspiring! Sports stuff always is, to me. All the sports movies my husband has made me watch over the years. The books by all the basketball legends that I have managed to plod through despite the poor English and organisational glitches. And more recently, all the books by runners I have read. Oh! And not to mention that article about Zola Budd I chanced upon in Runner's World in October last year. Just super cool!

It made me think about my own career as a sports person. Or the lack of my own career as a sports person. Some of these people seem to hint at a genetic predisposition to sports. I had none. Dad used to claim some prowess at Tennis and Swimming, but I never saw that side of him, really. Mum wore a half-saree to school and though she is good at Yoga and can really walk a fair bit for an ancient person, is not particularly sporty. None of my various relatives, except one cousin of dad's who was supposed to be brilliant at Kho-Kho (but he doesn't seem to have done much, and well, he died young), accomplished anything by way of sports. It was thus a pain in the neck to describe to them my passion for basketball. And then later for the guy-who-played-basketball. Of course, the fact that I did not grow much (or at all) was another problem, in both cases (He is SO tall! Well, I will soon cut him down to size, I would reply, though I DID NOT mean that). This still is.

It was in the VI std. that I started on basketball. Initially, as in most coaching I have gone through, the coach made us just run. It would drive the boys nuts because I could beat them. They would go crazy the next day, trying to beat me. But there was always a bunch of boys I could defeat rather easily, and I am sure they all hated me (probably still do!). I was not particularly skilled in basketball though, I worked hard, somehow always preferring the running parts of the coaching to the others. Now I think I do okay, I can shoot decently (for a short person of middle-age) and dribble reasonably with my right. I guess there was a point of time in the past when I was good. But it was when I was in the 9th std. My parents refused to even consider sending me to the camp in Bangalore. I was not overly keen anyway, I figured it would be painful, and was studying for various things, which was the reason I used to wake up at 5 am, drink milk, study for a bit, cycle off with best friend to the courts, sweat buckets, return home, shower, eat, pick up bag, cycle off to school (and then take a nice nap in class)...

At the coaching, after a point, I was with the girls from the sports hostel. They were all nice athletic strong meat-eating girls. I was a skinny vegetarian kid who had eaten maybe one egg her entire life. But the coaches liked me. I am not sure if it was just my crazy enthusiasm for running and sweating; my geekiness in listening closely to their advice, or the fact that I was not supposed to really be there. Girls from our type of families, who were good in studies, and not looking for athletic scholarships for college, did not show up day after day to sweat it out. I think it was something like that! Skill-wise I am not sure I was that great, really!

The sub-text of it all was irrelevant to me. The coach had once come home to ask my parents to send my sis to some camp. He was politely turned down. I felt super good though because it meant I stood some chance, genes-wise. And also, I adored and worshipped her. (Now I just love her!). As for me, I just was looking to be out there, wind in my face. I had people come up and yell at me about studying for the JEE or something like that. I was doing that. I loved that too and was doing that as well as I could, and my early morning jaunt only made me concentrate better, never tired me out or anything!

This is getting too long. I did not want to say all this stuff, at least not now. I just wanted to say that I like those books, mostly 'cause they make me feel like I am not the only insane person around. That there are insaner folks out there. With the difference that they all manage to accomplish something using that insanity, whereas, I, just, well, run. And hope that my past mistakes and irresponsibility towards my ankles will somehow be forgiven and forgotten...