new friends

My frienships are very important to me, which is probably why I've still sticking close to the ones I made 20 years ago.
The girls I went to school with and giggled over New Kids on The Block in the fifth grade, are also the same ones that I went to bars with for free shooters on girls nights in college, and are the same ones who share my illicit passion for Mr. Jimmy Choo. With them by my side, I never felt the need to expand my girlfriend network - we stuck close for a long time. Literally, we lived two blocks away from each other all our growing up years and while the physical space widened, the mental connections didnt falter.

Marriage, relocation and motherhood has however made it not so easy to keep popping up unannounced in each other's vision. So, I slowly found myself at 30, a new mother in a new suburb, kid of abandoned - well, just a teensy-weensy bit, and the word is not abandonment - its more like everybody else is moving along and I'm still on the treadmill of life, running in the same place. Being very diffident about meeting new people, and abhoring the word 'net-working' makes it doubly hard to put myself out there.
When I do meet someone, I want to rush the getting to know each other phase, so we can cut the whole acquaintance coffee evenings and start the heavy drinking together asap. Which means I often put the girls through the Versova Inquisition - how did you come to live here? What borderline eating disorder do you have? Polka dots - subversive or regressive?

Lately its been better though with baby A, the social butterfly of Versova being my excuse to chat up other mothers - and while motherhood itself can provide endless source of ohmygods, suddenly somebody will mention a joint sneaked in while the baby's asleep and my ears perk up. Hmmm....... there is potential here. Versova is not such a wasteland after all.

genes

So, alongwith the husband's athletic genes Amelia seems to have inherited the allergic rhinitis as well - I just didnt know what I was in for did I, with my secret wish for a baby boy like Vikram. Damn cute baby pix!!

The allergic rhinitis translated into plain english is cold and runny noses pretty much all the time. Which translates into poor appetite, crankiness and sleepless nights for me and the nanny 30%of the time. I know there are sicker children out there but Amelia's dinner embargo, and waking up starving at 4am is leaving me slightly unamused with life right now.

Mumbai daze

I'm thinking that Amelia will never know the city I grew up in - Shivaji park, with its big open spaces - that i learnt to cycle, and swim, and play tennis (badly) and run. Because there are no parks around where I live!!
And safety - I never thought twice before strolling down to G's place for a stayover at 9pm in my jammies - well, maybe I should have - that way I'd probably have avoided the jungle jungle mowgli song. But you know, I'm a breed of paranoid mothers who atleast right now thinks that her daughter is going to have a chauffered car at her disposal 24hours, because our roads arent safe anymore.
And oh, as I grew up and went partying with crazy abandon - well, she wont have the staying up till 4am and driving back with the milkvan, trying to shush hysterical giggles sneaking in to the house. Because everything shuts by 12.30am, now.
And those fantasies about making wasabi her first fancy meal - it was mine, is gone now. With so much else - the innocence of our city dies with the 92 riots...but we still had other virtues - tolerance, fortitude. Now we're just mad - and I dont want her to grow up mad and cynical.
I dont want her to know about crazed gun toting men, who belive that a community will get its due because they killed a few hundred people and had us frozen in our tracks. I dont want her to think this is what different people do to each other - it should be about biryanis and sufi songs traded with ganpati modaks and diwali mithai. What am I going to tell her? I'm still shaking