Rang De… (The Color of…)

Bubb rubb May 22, 2007

I know this went around a few years ago but apparently I totally missed it and so I’m assuming most of the people who might read my blog totally missed it too. Leave a comment with your favorite lines from this clip. I’m laughing just thinking about it. Bubb rubb!

A definition of happiness May 22, 2007

I know I said I’m not one for reciting poetry and all, but I came across something that struck me in this book, My Antonia, that I’m reading for our book club.  It’s long and I could have shortened to the last couple sentences, but you really need to feel the setting and beauty of the whole passage to appreciate it:

“I sat down in the middle of the garden…and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin.  There were some ground-cherry bushes growing along the furrows, full of fruit.  I turned back the papery triangular sheaths that protected the berries and ate a few.  All about me giant grasshoppers, twice as big as any I had ever seen, were doing acrobatic feats among the dried vines. The gophers scurried up and down the ploughed ground.  There in the sheltered draw-bottom the wind did not blow very hard, but I could hear it singing its humming tune up on the level, and I could see the tall grasses wave.  The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers.  Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around me.  Their backs were polished vermillion, with black spots. I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened.  I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more.  I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.  When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.“

Memories May 22, 2007

I’m often aware of how fast the kids are growing up, how quickly the memories start to blur. There are so many little quirks and expressions and habits that are worth capturing on film or on tape or in words. So I’m going to stem the tide from today.

A typical morning with Jiya:

When Jiya wakes up in the morning, she usually has a big smile, gives me a kiss and announces, “It’s morning time!” Then, for whatever reason, she neighs like a horse. Soon thereafter, she demands her morning milk bottle (doodoo in hindi, which sadly conjures up images far less cozy than a warm bottle for anyone who grew up in America). We have a brief negotiation, which she always wins with the final statement, “I’m coming wit you.” I stumble down the stairs with Jiya in my arms, or possibly holding my hand and stubbornly making her own way down. In the kitchen, I fill up her bottle — her “pretty bottle” if it’s clean — as she reminds me “I want too much, Daddy, too much.” I follow along and fill the bottle to the very top. 45 secs in the microwave and we’re almost ready. “I want to put the topper on!” Of course you do! She usually turns it the wrong direction (maybe because she’s lefty?) while singing “turny turny turny”. I finish off the turny and plop her down on the brown sofa, bowing to her final demand: “I wanna watch little bit Dora.”

Meanwhile, back upstairs, Karam is still usually snoring away despite all three of us hollering, tickling, licking and generally annoying him.  Eventually I drag him out of bed and plop him on the toilet for a pee, where the *real* moaning begins:

“I don’t want to go to school!”

Daddy: “Well, if you’re so tired, we’ll put you to bed earlier tonite.”

“I’m not tired! I’m just comfy in my bed!

“I’m sick of school!”

“I’m cold. I wanna crawl back under my covers!”

Then, as resignment sets in that school is inevitable…”I want a big breakfast, a really big breakfast.”

Just an example of what happens in our house most mornings.  I’m sure there’s a re-run playing in millions of homes across the world every day…