Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Hearing and Seeing

It is humanity's biggest vice to be interested in gossip or second hand information.  We love to hear about the lives of others.  Be it about relatives, neighbours, friends, colleagues, celebrities, villains...we love to hear stuff.  Be they true or not.  And we help these stories survive.  I remember (years back) I received a forward with 'photographic proof' how NASA faked the first moon landing.  Well, I don't think anyone of us believed the matter, but it still did not stop us from forwarding the mail to our contacts, just because we thought it was an interesting mail.  And I am quite sure, they would also have forwarded it on.  Thus the news spread.

It makes me often wonder how much value and importance we give to the 'spoken word'.  I would think that it is often something that depends from whom it comes.  For example: a friend might tell me a certain piece of information that might seem very unlikely.  I think I may remain sceptical also.  But if I had seen this piece of information in the newspaper (and that, too, on the front page) or if I had seen a documentary on it by a prominent channel known for its quality documentaries, I might have believed the matter quicker.  Which is why I guess people feel more cheated and outraged when the head of states are accused of lying rather than 'petty' players being convicted of being deceptive.

I think all of us realise that we rather believe what we see with our own eyes than what we hear.  Even if we come across things where we have to say, "I couldn't believe my own eyes", ultimately we will believe what we saw.  We trust our eyes/vision that much.  We might accept that we have misunderstood something that was said, but we will never say that we 'mis-saw' something.  

I am myself not sure where I am going with all this.  I haven't seen Jennifer for almost three weeks now.  And three weeks for an infant is three weeks of uninterrupted growth.  I swear: babies seem to grow by the day.  You buy them a dress now and within a week, it starts signs of being 'smaller'.  

All these three weeks, I have been hearing from Jenny's mother and Jenny's grandparents about Jenny.  I hear about how Jenny chases the cats, how she plays in the sand, how she started walking around by holding on to stuff, how she has grown bigger and so on and so forth.  And I have not seen a single picture of her yet from her holidays.  Even if the info comes from the most reliable sources, I still need to see her doing all this.  I am not sure if I am just making excuses because I want to see her sooooo badly, but I I'd rather see her doing all these things than hearing about it. I want to see her roaming around...I want to hear her giggle...I want to see her cranky!  And no amount of information over the phone is going to compensate for that.

Another 3 days and I shall have my wish granted.  I shall see Jenny again in three days.  And I really hope, that for the next immediate few months, we won't get separated again! :)

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

The same night

My last blog entry was on our 15 hour journey to Kerala by road.  I guess I was able to communicate how exhausted and tired we all were by the time we reached home.  We all took refreshing showers, ate homely food and immediately went to sleep.

Regular readers know how Jenny has a habit of trying to jump of the bed.  Since the bed in our room (in Kerala) would not have been able to accommodate all three of us, Anuja decided to sleep with Jenny on the floor; just so that she doesn't have to worry about Jenny falling off the bed.  It might have been around 10 p.m. by the time we went to sleep.  All three of us fell asleep immediately.

Almost at sharp 4 a.m. my wife wakes me up saying, "Your daughter is awake".  Not that Jenny never wakes up, but she usually immediately goes back to sleep after having been fed.  However, if she is 'up' it means she won't go back to sleep immediately.  Being the caring husband that I am (!), I told my wife to sleep on the bed and that I would take care of the kid.

A word about the house: space is ample in Kerala.  Houses are built lavishly...everything is bigger and wider here.  Kids coming from Bangalore love coming to Kerala as they have plenty of space to crawl, run, play and explore.  Same goes for Jenny.  For the next three hours (while the rest of the house was obviously still asleep), she crawled around, explored, and visited all the areas of the house she had access to.  There was no sign of fatigue or anything that this little creature had just travelled 850 km in one stretch.  She seemed even livelier than she would be in Bangalore!  I took some snaps just to show people I am not exaggerating (it was taken on the mobile phone in poor light...kindly excuse the bad quality of the pics).  






 I haven't seen her in almost 8 days now.  But from what I am hearing, she is still exploring and enjoying every inch of ground that she gets extra from what she is used to in Bangalore.  :)

Monday, August 2, 2010

Road Trip

My sister and myself are both 'settled' in Bangalore with our families.  We try to visit our parents once every year with our kids and spouses.  And we try to plan our visits in such a way that all of us (kids, kids-in-laws and grand kids) will be there at the same time.  That makes the period a true family get together.   

This year is no exception.  We have planned our stay with our parents for Onam.  It's not that Onam is a particularly important festival for our family.  But we thought it was nice to be home during festive season and to make the most out of it.  

However, I generally do not take more than a week's leave at a stretch, if it can be helped.  I would rather have 2 or 3 one-week's leaves than a single big chunk of leave.  This would not have left Anuja and Jennifer much time in Kerala. So we decided that mom and kid should go in advance and spend some time with grandparents from both sides, without having to hurry through their vacations.  After much deliberation, we decided that going by car was the best option.  Train was vetoed since they required 3 months' advance booking.  Flights were way too expensive.  Bus seemed to be too strenuous for the kid.  Car seemed the perfect choice.  We could take all the stuff that seemed important for the baby without having to compromise anything.  And we would be able to take as many breaks in between as seemed required.  My father (God bless him!) also agreed to come to Bangalore first and share the 850 km drive with me.

Preparations commenced days in advance.  Shopping...packing...arranging...more shopping...rearranging...shopping...more packing...vaccinations...and so on and so forth.  We were more or less done with the preps two days before the actual journey date.  My father arrived the night before and the car was also checked and prep'd by Friday.  We bought some more provisions for the journey and went to sleep early.

Day of journey: alarm woke us up at 4 am!  Jenny's mom heated up milk and filled up the containers.  Jenny's dad arranged the luggage in the car.  Jenny herself woke up in time to be swooped up into warmer clothes.  We said a short pre-journey prayer and off we went.  

The entire journey took us exactly 14.5 hours.  We had a breakfast and lunch break and 3 feeding breaks.  We learned the hard way (to be read as baby throwing up) that Jenny needed to be fed with the car not moving!  But in general: she was an angel!  I mean it is not an easy feat at all for a 9 month old baby to sit still in a car for almost fifteen hours at a stretch!  At home, once she is awake, she hardly sits still for a minute.  But throughout the journey, she was at peace...she slept well, ate well, enjoyed the ride, loved the breeze from open windows on her face and so on....We were truly amazed on how well she adjusted.

The trip in general was nice.  The route was very scenic...traffic was very bearable...and we did very good time...that is until we reached Kerala.  Kerala never fails to amaze me.  I could always tell I had entered Kerala when I saw the vegetation suddenly grow lush and green.  But over time, I came to realise that another way to figure out that I had entered God's own Country was by paying attention to the roads.  4-lane roads suddenly become single-lane country roads with more traffic than even the 4-lanes could have accommodated; all this with a generous dose of road-works, that include digging and concreting!  It was pathetic.  Whatever time we saved till Kerala, we lost once we got onto our roads.

Anyway, the journey was safe...we reached home well...and more or less at a decent hour.  As soon as we reached, Jenny immediately went into the arms of her grandmother (my mother) as if she had been seeing her on a daily basis.  Another interesting thing was that immediately after having had a bath, Jenny was back to her normal self.  On seeing her, nobody would have believed that this baby had just travelled 850 km in 15 hours!  She was crawling around, shouting, playing and so on as she would have done in Bangalore.

Thus Jenny reached Kerala for her vacation.  More posts regarding her stay there and my stay (without her) here will follow! :)