Happy tenth!

A decade – ten years it has been – of togetherness. Should I be saying – ‘you complete me‘? Nah, I would rather say – ‘I am incomplete without you‘! 🙂

It has not been a easy ride (is anybody’s ever?) – there have been ups and downs, triumphs and trials, laughs and lows, tears and toasts… moments when one’s felt euphoric, that life can never be better and others when one has felt down in the dumps, like it was the worst!

Marriage, they say is a life-changing event. I would agree whole-heartedly, especially it still is, in our society and is an important milestone in each of our lives. It’s important that you have someone to share your thoughts with, to laugh-along or to find solace when you’re upset about something – a friend, a companion, a lover, a guide, a protector, a provider, someone who needs your care and attention like a child. I’d say, we experience a plethora of relationships through our spouse. The demands are different and the roles you need to essay keep changing, it’s a dynamic relationship – ever-changing and that’s what makes it interesting. And no matter how many years pass, each day is different.

The initial years are all about moments that set your heart a-flutter – when you’re discovering each other and what makes him/ her tick. You’re fine-tuning your frequencies, being in generous moods to adjust and accept, all in the name of love/ tenderness that you feel for the other person. Whoever said that one has to be in love to get married, was ill-informed. There can be love after marriage too – as has been proved by the several hundreds of arranged marriages over the generations of our parents and grand-parents. You might argue all you want – that these marriages were not on equal terms, that the women didn’t have much choice and the men had the final word always. But you can’t deny that there was love – that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? that love can have so many manifestations!

Slowly as you settle into the humdrum of married life, a few years down the line, life starts losing it’s rosy sheen and you begin to see the flaws and the idiosyncrasies in the partner – what used to amuse you once, might just irritate you or worse still, might be disgusting in some extreme cases. You begin to make further adjustments and a slow sense of familiarity and sometimes resignation – looking at the bigger picture, sets in. Also around the beginning of these years, a child makes an appearance and priorities shift. The bundle of joy becomes the attention-seeker and all efforts go in trying to appease and take care of your child. The child is the apple of your eyes and every single routine begins to revolve around him/ her. The marriage and the sense of seeking comfort in each others’ arms takes a back-seat.

Further years cause more adipose tissues to be built around the relationship as each settles into their own comfort zones and the keen sense of sensitiveness (which is a given during the early years) starts disappearing and you begin to take your partner for granted. Another child or two doesn’t change the equation much and each gets busier with their own lives, there’s hardly any time or opportunity for heart-to-heart talks. And romance? Well, if you are a keen observer, you can surely see it fly out of the window! 😀

I guess, it’s the latter years which again gives opportunities for rekindling the romance?! After running non-stop being a part of the rat-race, when you finally retire and take a breather, that’s when you look at everything around you afresh, with new eyes. The small gestures and sacrifices which would’ve gone unseen and unappreciated over the years get a second look.Sometimes the enormity of the sacrifices which the partner has had to make – which inevitably in most cases in our society turns out to be the woman, begins to dawn upon you. Or maybe not. You just begin to appreciate your spouse a teeny bit more. It’s also the time when the birds have flew the nest, the children are all grown up and busy running the rat-races of their own lives and don’t have much time and don’t need you any longer (till they have kids of their own, that is! 😀 ). You find solace in each other’s company. Further additions to the family in the name of the grandchildren keep you busy and you rediscover the pure unadulterated joy that children can bring to one’s lives. And so it goes on… The lucky ones get to spend these golden times together, the unlucky ones not so.

I guess I’ve generalized a lot in visualising the life-scenes played out above, but most often this, with a few tweaks and side-plots here and there, is the story of our lives 😀

Parenthood and the companionship for the latter years of one’s life – these are reasons enough for marriage, according to me. Parenthood is an inexplicable joy – there are people who are single/ married-with-no-kids who are happy doing their own thing in life. Ha ha, we too were happy go-lucky, travelling around and enjoying the various perks of not having kids, for quite some time. But then, once you are a parent there’s no looking back. That one tiny bundle makes all the difference, you wouldn’t want to trade that feeling for anything in the world. It becomes the focus of all your thoughts and energies and deeds. All you want is the well-being and happiness of your child. Heck, we tried doing a couples-only trip for the tenth anniversary, but couldn’t get the little imp out of our thoughts! 😀 Sights and sounds and actions and happenings reminded us of him all the time and we missed him badly, while he was having a rocking, rollicking time with cousins at his grandma’s! 😛

Having a friend and partner for old age helps one lead a complete, fulfilling life, I believe. We see so many single elders sad and depressed due to lack of company when their world slows down. From the looks of it, the spouse in this case is irreplaceable. It also helps to keep each other busy, active, chirpy and occupied, without causing unnecessary interferences and upsets with the kids’ lives. After all, what can be more satisfying than having your life-long companion by your side as you watch the years pass by, your children grow up, your efforts bear fruit, and you walk together, hand-in-hand into the most gorgeous, brightest sunset of your life?! 🙂

And that, is what I wish for us, on this occasion! Happy tenth PK, and here’s looking forward to spending many many more, with you by my side! 🙂

 

Fun-tastic four!

It was our little one’s 4th birthday last week! 😀 I wonder, for much longer can I call him a ‘little one’?

I’ve already spoken about my new-found-since-the-last-two-years fetish to make birthday celebrations special and personal previously. In tune with that, I set some aggressive targets for myself.
-Make the cake
-Make the frosting, which isn’t just simple butter-cream
-Make the sweet
-Invite his cousins, close family and neighbourly kids
-Cook for the aforementioned 25-30 people
-Have a celebration at home
And all the above in the middle of a busy week at work.
To be fair to myself, I had complete intentions of taking the day off so that I’d have enough time for the preparations. But unfortunately he was down with viral fever the previous week and I had to take two days off to take care of him. This left me with no option but to be at work on the day.

To add to the woes, his school had announced the fancy dress competition on the day following his birthday and they had a theme that we had to follow – birds! After much thinking and indecisiveness following his illness, during the preceding weekend we decided to send him dressed up as a crow. And so followed some hurried scourging around for ideas and procurement of paraphernalia to make the crow costume. With all of the above happening, it was a luxury to get 5 hours of decent sleep and it wasn’t surprising if I felt and looked like a zombie!

Though I did lose some sleep, the birthday celebration turned out to be quite a nice event – the sweet – almond burfi was made 2 days in advance; the cake with the whipped cream frosting was ready the day before and was assembled early morning before I went to work. I did manage to leave office a couple of hours early and rushed home to make some chocolate butter-cream for the piping. The 3-layered-cake, though lacking in finesse of a professional or store-bought one, looked quite nice with the cherries, whipped cream and chocolate butter-cream, I must say. The kiddo had a great time blowing candles, bursting balloons, cutting the cake, jumping around and generally having a good time with all his friends and cousins. Having just a couple of servings of the BBB (bisi bele bath) left at the end for myself, meant that the food was enjoyed too and there were no leftovers – so it was a win-win from all sides! 🙂

Post the celebration and cleaning up, a couple of hours till late night were spent adding the finishing touches to the crow costume. He did quite decently at the fancy dress event and there were no mishaps to the dress thankfully! We did wish that he’d been a tad more vocal with his lines on stage – I wonder why it is that all the shouting and screaming happens only at home and the vocal chords go into hiding when it is required to be of service?!

So that was one eventful week – but there was one cause for agony which ruined the good parts of it for us – on the day of the fancy dress, the m-i-l slipped a couple of steps at the kiddo’s school and now has a hairline fracture at her ankle. This means she is gonna be out of action for the next 2-3 weeks. With the Gowri-Ganesha festival coming up the next weekend, apart from her obvious discomfort and sadness at not being able to take part in the festivities; this means it is more work for the already sleep-deprived me! I’m hoping that I should be able to pull it off with support from my hubby, co-sister and sister-in-law! Wish me luck!

Birthday and surprises

April is a relatively busy month for me – we celebrate the hubby’s birthday and our anniversary, they being just a week apart. I am the sort of person who doesn’t believe in or get excited at the prospect of cooking traditional sweets or new dishes, but somehow when it comes to my loved ones I find this sudden rush of enthusiasm to make everything by hand. So normally around this time and also during my son’s birthday I try out recipes, excitedly and revel in the aftermath of glowing praise if they turn out to be a success. But you will never catch me doing so for my birthday – I believe birthdays need to be made special not by ourselves, but by the loved ones around us! 😀

The hubby’s birthday was no different and I did some elaborate planning well in advance. It helped that he was going to be out of town on work on the preceding two days. I had decided to make a cake (using the available mixes for cooker-made cakes; I don’t yet own a convection over that will help me bake cakes from scratch – it is something I hope to own sometime soon and I hope my enthusiasm to bake stays till such time that I own it!) and this time I decided to try and make the frosting for it too. That saw me hurriedly scouting the shops for essential ingredients on the previous day. As is my wont I decided to try out one of the many internet recipes for easy, quick to make sweets that I have collected over the years and chose the ‘Mango peda’ – all it needed was a can of condensed milk which I bought and pulpy ripe mangoes which we thankfully had a stock of at home. I made the sweet two days in advance and made the cake and frosting on the preceding evening – just in time before the hubby walked into the home. Having my mother come over to help manage the kiddo, I sought her assistance in making ‘Bisi bele bath’ – one of the hubby’s favourite dishes. This way the culinary aspects were made special enough, I thought.

On the gifting part I had pretty much made up my mind several weeks ago to get a collage made with all photos of the hubby and the little one, right from the time of his birth. I painstakingly scoured all the photo archives in the hard disks and chose the photos well in advance. I had inquired at various shops – physical and online, to check out the prices to have a collage framed/ canvas-mounted and had worked out the most reasonable option, as I was sure it wasn’t something worth splurging high amounts for. Having ordered the photo online and gotten it after some anxious moments of the courier guy coming over to the office and having had to go back it being a long weekend of holidays; I had given it for lamination/ framing and collected it too on the previous evening.

As if picking up and packing the gift on the previous evening after work, along with the already aforementioned task of frosting the cake was not enough for last minute action, I decided the sonny boy was old enough now to make a card for his dad. Imagine the joy of receiving the very first hand-made card from your little one – I wanted the hubby to have that too! 🙂 I also picked up craft paper on the way back home and spent a frenzied hair-pulling hour with my son, trying to get him to draw and colour and write ‘Happy Birthday‘ straight! 😀 After much fussing and some tears on choosing which Winnie – the Poo stickers to decorate with, the card was made and ready.

I think I had told the kiddo a dozen times already that it was to be a surprise and he shouldn’t be telling his appa anything, but the moment the hubby walked in, as if on cue, he blurted out saying ‘amma cake madiddale!‘ and when I admonished him in a whisper he defensively cried saying – ‘cake madiya anta ashte heliddu, surprise ide anta helalilla‘! :p Though during the later part of the evening he did give away the secret that there was to be a surprise, thankfully he didn’t spell out what it was to be! 🙂

The card and collage were handed over sometime before the midnight hour as it was the kiddo’s sleep time and I didn’t want him to miss out on the fun and the sweets and cake were sampled on the d-day. Though the reaction wasn’t as profusely expressed as was expected (we wives never do learn to keep our expectations low, do we?! 😉 ), there was a deep sense of accomplishment of having made the day special for my loved one. And the icing was the fact that the sweet and the effort was very well appreciated by other friends, colleagues and family members, with some of them going to the extent of saying that the sweet was too good to be called homemade and tasted just like store-bought ones! If nothing else, that compliment surely made my day! 😉