After 4 years of marriage and a kid, there is very little left un-understood between the partners. The way of life and routine almost sets in leaving behind little to be worked on.
Way back in India, we had a comfortable life with a maid, baby sitter, cook, car etc. We would come back from work at 6 or 9,and then spend time with our son, with parents we would take a brisk walk or just talk on how the day was, then there was dinner and in some time a good sleep.
Coming to UK was a paradigm shift.
To start with, there is no maid to walk in house early in morning and get everything in place in couple of hours, like a magic stick make it house again. So that leaves you to do dishes, laundry, cleaning and then setting things back to their respective places, which by the way, is many time more than just writing them down!!
The next big thing is there is no cook. Who you can tell what you would take for breakfast or dinner and be done with the worry of chores. So, now you realize day has 3 big meals with snacks in between and moreover deciding on what they would be everyday.
But there is one more difference in these two lives. And this is the one that makes everything else fall in place. The difference is in the partners. There is a change in the way partners think and care for each other. I do not mean they don’t care way back home- no offense.
But the life here necessitates the two work hand in glove. While on does cooking the other stands shoulder to shoulder doing dishes. When one is busy with Hoover, the other does the laundry. This involvement in making n keeping of house, unknowingly brings a new charm to the relation. Each of you so aware that the other is there for you. Each one takes equal responsibility of nourishing the relationship. You are well aware each is tired after a long day at work and both of you really look forward to doing special things/surprises for each other to pamper them in your own way.
A bunch of flowers on your way back home, a box of chocolates or special snack preparations so on n on .. fills it with all so ‘early marriage charm’ ..something that seems to have sunk under the sands of time. I mean.. there is no feeling as good as getting a cup of tea in bed on a weekend..only to make it special.
You look forward to spending some quality time together,taking off on working day once in a while,going around palces just by the two of you,short n quick coffee catch-ups..its all so much how it used to be..when – in UK terms- we were datingJ
I think everything comes with a cost.. and this cost is worth paying :) .I guess there is more than just the standard of living ,amenities or freedom that I love this place for…its takes us back to where and why we started this journey:)
Monday, March 1, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
My Experiments with UK
With the limited exposure that I have had with this country, there are few things that really make you think your taxes are not going to dogs.
The first visible thing you notice is there is clear and raised pedestrian area. There are proper places from where you can cross the road from. Now these like our Zebra crossing are not the directive principle which people follow if they like, nor is it that people here are extremely humanitarian and stop the car at sight of a walker. There are proper signal boxes fitted at crossing. You push the button and you would see the green light for crossing. The traffic has an obligation and not choice to stop.Importanty, they are there every 100m so you don’t have to walk lengths to get one.
Most of the time when you go around, you would have to take the baby along, if you don’t have a day care to drop him at. For some time before Aki went to day care and even now on times after office hours, I travel with Aki, alone or with Ashish for day to day stuff .Now here, due to unpredictable weather there is a concept of buggy or a stroller, as we know it. It usually comes with a foot rest , a comforter(like a seeping bag) which gets chained around the kid covering the toe to waist n hands if needed/There is a hood to avoid things falling on kid’s head and a mandatory wind sheet or rain/snow sheet. The buggy has usually very steardy handles as I pace almost all my shopping bags on them (learnt from mom’s around)
So, with this entire possible thing about the buggy, pushing it around the roads n shops is an event. Specially when you climb the road or in shop or in mall ,with all your shopping hanging on it, n god bless if you are without a partner, it could be freaking experience.Thoughfuly, the roads here at the crossing area have a yellow painted patch ,done with some different stone to avoid slipping, which merges into the road. So it gradually takes u in and out of the road. Similarly, every shop. Mall, nursery, hospital anything.. Has an entrance similar to this. You will not find a singe shop which has only stairs and no path for buggy transit.
In the trams, there are special places to stand with buggie.That has a cushion at level of your back and open area for buggy to be parked. And this place is there in every coach, so don’t have to rush to get into any specific one.
For those who travel by car, there is, like I mentioned parking on road itself. But nothing comes as free lunch. You need to take a parking ticket before you leave your vehicle on the road. Now you don’t have to run around to find where to get tickets. There are machine on the roads and directions provided on how to reach it. So pretty self managed, yet accountable. Imagine something like this happening in jayanagar nt sure if we would want to empty our pockets at one more place By the way there are road cameras to track the movement and fine receipt reaches directly to your address.
Transportation is made easy with both busses and trams running from almost every locality to the other. With a walking distance of 15 min (from my house to NHS) there are 2 tram stops. There are tram that stop rt in front of railways, so almost no walk to get into rail or tube, for those who have long journey’s to do.
At the railways or even in grocery malls, there is option to help yoursef.There are machines from which you can get you ticket, recharge your travel card or make your own billing and payment etc or if you are lazy enough, Ike me, there are traditional counters as well.
Kids are a valuable possession to this government. There are consultation charges and subsidized prescription changes for them. There are free government day cares(of course after age of 5 years).Although I have little faith in their diagnosis, more comfortable with my Indian pediatrician.Most of the times I see single moms here..And with 3-4 kids.Unlike India, where we are getting to max 2 kids, almost every 2nd person has 4 or more kids..
Almost all the services facilities are directed towards making you Zero dependency person.
But if there is some place where it hurts, specially for those who come from India or other Asian countries, is the fact the at the age of 60 ,with you barely skinned hands n legs, and in this extreme cold weather, you got to go out to get bread n butter for your daily chores. If any of our parents have to do this, we would die of shame n disgust. Am not saying they are compelled to do this or they detest this, not at all. This is how they saw their life n their parents n their expectations are set. This is where our culture sets in. With all possible shortcomings, it would never teach us to leave our parents like this to fend for themselves.
The first visible thing you notice is there is clear and raised pedestrian area. There are proper places from where you can cross the road from. Now these like our Zebra crossing are not the directive principle which people follow if they like, nor is it that people here are extremely humanitarian and stop the car at sight of a walker. There are proper signal boxes fitted at crossing. You push the button and you would see the green light for crossing. The traffic has an obligation and not choice to stop.Importanty, they are there every 100m so you don’t have to walk lengths to get one.
Most of the time when you go around, you would have to take the baby along, if you don’t have a day care to drop him at. For some time before Aki went to day care and even now on times after office hours, I travel with Aki, alone or with Ashish for day to day stuff .Now here, due to unpredictable weather there is a concept of buggy or a stroller, as we know it. It usually comes with a foot rest , a comforter(like a seeping bag) which gets chained around the kid covering the toe to waist n hands if needed/There is a hood to avoid things falling on kid’s head and a mandatory wind sheet or rain/snow sheet. The buggy has usually very steardy handles as I pace almost all my shopping bags on them (learnt from mom’s around)
So, with this entire possible thing about the buggy, pushing it around the roads n shops is an event. Specially when you climb the road or in shop or in mall ,with all your shopping hanging on it, n god bless if you are without a partner, it could be freaking experience.Thoughfuly, the roads here at the crossing area have a yellow painted patch ,done with some different stone to avoid slipping, which merges into the road. So it gradually takes u in and out of the road. Similarly, every shop. Mall, nursery, hospital anything.. Has an entrance similar to this. You will not find a singe shop which has only stairs and no path for buggy transit.
In the trams, there are special places to stand with buggie.That has a cushion at level of your back and open area for buggy to be parked. And this place is there in every coach, so don’t have to rush to get into any specific one.
For those who travel by car, there is, like I mentioned parking on road itself. But nothing comes as free lunch. You need to take a parking ticket before you leave your vehicle on the road. Now you don’t have to run around to find where to get tickets. There are machine on the roads and directions provided on how to reach it. So pretty self managed, yet accountable. Imagine something like this happening in jayanagar nt sure if we would want to empty our pockets at one more place By the way there are road cameras to track the movement and fine receipt reaches directly to your address.
Transportation is made easy with both busses and trams running from almost every locality to the other. With a walking distance of 15 min (from my house to NHS) there are 2 tram stops. There are tram that stop rt in front of railways, so almost no walk to get into rail or tube, for those who have long journey’s to do.
At the railways or even in grocery malls, there is option to help yoursef.There are machines from which you can get you ticket, recharge your travel card or make your own billing and payment etc or if you are lazy enough, Ike me, there are traditional counters as well.
Kids are a valuable possession to this government. There are consultation charges and subsidized prescription changes for them. There are free government day cares(of course after age of 5 years).Although I have little faith in their diagnosis, more comfortable with my Indian pediatrician.Most of the times I see single moms here..And with 3-4 kids.Unlike India, where we are getting to max 2 kids, almost every 2nd person has 4 or more kids..
Almost all the services facilities are directed towards making you Zero dependency person.
But if there is some place where it hurts, specially for those who come from India or other Asian countries, is the fact the at the age of 60 ,with you barely skinned hands n legs, and in this extreme cold weather, you got to go out to get bread n butter for your daily chores. If any of our parents have to do this, we would die of shame n disgust. Am not saying they are compelled to do this or they detest this, not at all. This is how they saw their life n their parents n their expectations are set. This is where our culture sets in. With all possible shortcomings, it would never teach us to leave our parents like this to fend for themselves.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Snow snow every where, not a flake to touch
Wrapping up in India and settling here in UK has taken a good amount of my time..and now that the dust is settled..here I am back to my scratch pad.
So I am sitting on the other side of the window pane and watching these flakes of snow fall ..they seem of inviting and harmless from this window view..although the entrance for the house knows its good to stay in as of now…so lets stick to the advice. And here is Aki taking a sound nap after his first day in nursery..Though I am tempted to shake him up and share the view..but with the cold n cough he is hardly getting any proper sleep..so let him enjoy something that he needs more. And I rest my thoughts about Aki here and get back to my snowy experience..
The house oversees a road which has 4 lanes, two for driving either side and two for parking on the road.The road is run parallel by the lawns on either sides , which were green till early morning. Looks like the roads are in some hurry to prepare for the Santa visit and making a silver lining along the road.The bare and naked trees in the lawns, too are getting adorned with the peralish snow flakes.
There is harldy any human sole on road at this time..and those who are seen also don’t resemble much to humans with the long fur coats, high boots and fingers sunk in gloves, they are more like black or white polar bears . Bears of all shapes n sizes..The other row of glass windows opens to the Tram stop.Either sides of the rail has been sprinkled with salt, this would avoid the snow piling up there..Every now and then there comes a tram..gulps in all the people on the stop and moves on to its destination.. would probably have a different blog about that experience and thoughfull ness of the facilities here..
Back to to the flakes..Its all looks too gorgeous as long as you have rooms heaters to sit in and enjoy this from a distance.
Apparently this is my first ever rendezvous with flakes.. way back in india when I visited manali in December.. we missed the snowing by couple of days..so this experience is all the more engrossing and fun-filled.I think this has made up aptly for the loss.
So I am sitting on the other side of the window pane and watching these flakes of snow fall ..they seem of inviting and harmless from this window view..although the entrance for the house knows its good to stay in as of now…so lets stick to the advice. And here is Aki taking a sound nap after his first day in nursery..Though I am tempted to shake him up and share the view..but with the cold n cough he is hardly getting any proper sleep..so let him enjoy something that he needs more. And I rest my thoughts about Aki here and get back to my snowy experience..
The house oversees a road which has 4 lanes, two for driving either side and two for parking on the road.The road is run parallel by the lawns on either sides , which were green till early morning. Looks like the roads are in some hurry to prepare for the Santa visit and making a silver lining along the road.The bare and naked trees in the lawns, too are getting adorned with the peralish snow flakes.
There is harldy any human sole on road at this time..and those who are seen also don’t resemble much to humans with the long fur coats, high boots and fingers sunk in gloves, they are more like black or white polar bears . Bears of all shapes n sizes..The other row of glass windows opens to the Tram stop.Either sides of the rail has been sprinkled with salt, this would avoid the snow piling up there..Every now and then there comes a tram..gulps in all the people on the stop and moves on to its destination.. would probably have a different blog about that experience and thoughfull ness of the facilities here..
Back to to the flakes..Its all looks too gorgeous as long as you have rooms heaters to sit in and enjoy this from a distance.
Apparently this is my first ever rendezvous with flakes.. way back in india when I visited manali in December.. we missed the snowing by couple of days..so this experience is all the more engrossing and fun-filled.I think this has made up aptly for the loss.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Not so young Gen
After my office hours, I took Aki to park, a part of routine now days. Swing and slides are something that he associates with dawn now :) !
This was late yesterday and the usual mom-n-kids crowd had left for the day. There was a “herd” of kidos. Herd is true sense, given the noise and commotion they were making and each one increasing his decibel to be over the others.
I was so busy overlooking Aki, that I hardly paid any heed to their “noise” as I would call it. Till a time I heard one of them say “C’mon da he just joined a couple of months back ..which is too early to show results and deserve the Nobel prize”… huh!! Excuse me..are they talking about Obama and arguing over his deserving the Nobel prize!!
These kids in cargos and capries, so concerned about their looks and attitude -are they abreast with the developments? Ok this is not cricketing; that guys get interested may be from toddler age!! This was the current affairs.. And almost all 8-10 of them had their side of argument on it..
They talked about coming weekend,diwali plans, fast approaching board exams, skipping the swimming classes,Manmohan tripping to arunachal pradesh, their cool cycles ,racing..Almost anything and everything around..
I heard them for a while. their arguments their opinions, their ways of weighing things.. What was I doing at this age??
Mind you, they weren’t the “Elite” society kids ..Ambani or the like.....these are kids from a normal apartment that gets flooded almost every monsoon..
I was pleasantly surprised with their exposure and “not so young” mind set at young age.
They are cool , full of attitude, concerned about their appearance but as informed, if not more, as adults..The age for “innocent childhood” is fast decreasing..! necessary evil now!!
This was late yesterday and the usual mom-n-kids crowd had left for the day. There was a “herd” of kidos. Herd is true sense, given the noise and commotion they were making and each one increasing his decibel to be over the others.
I was so busy overlooking Aki, that I hardly paid any heed to their “noise” as I would call it. Till a time I heard one of them say “C’mon da he just joined a couple of months back ..which is too early to show results and deserve the Nobel prize”… huh!! Excuse me..are they talking about Obama and arguing over his deserving the Nobel prize!!
These kids in cargos and capries, so concerned about their looks and attitude -are they abreast with the developments? Ok this is not cricketing; that guys get interested may be from toddler age!! This was the current affairs.. And almost all 8-10 of them had their side of argument on it..
They talked about coming weekend,diwali plans, fast approaching board exams, skipping the swimming classes,Manmohan tripping to arunachal pradesh, their cool cycles ,racing..Almost anything and everything around..
I heard them for a while. their arguments their opinions, their ways of weighing things.. What was I doing at this age??
Mind you, they weren’t the “Elite” society kids ..Ambani or the like.....these are kids from a normal apartment that gets flooded almost every monsoon..
I was pleasantly surprised with their exposure and “not so young” mind set at young age.
They are cool , full of attitude, concerned about their appearance but as informed, if not more, as adults..The age for “innocent childhood” is fast decreasing..! necessary evil now!!
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
A trip to Yercaud
Yercaud is a hill station in Tamil Nadu,widely known as “Poor man’s Ooty”
So we had our expectations set when we left for the place on Saturday morning.
Had a comfortable drive in Innova, SUV makes a huge difference in comfort in long trips, specially with kidsJ The “Clifton Inn” where we stayed was good, good enough as per expectations from Poor man’s land.
We started for our first destination- “Lady’s Seat” at around 6:30 when it was still bright. And to our surprise, when we stepped out of Innova, it was thick mist. Dense to an extent that you would see only a meter or tow. It wasn’t as cold as thick the mist was. We got lost in our photography, and in no time it was bright again!! Aaha.. those are the moving clouds..!! Man.. that experience was amazing. Ooty also hadn’t felt so good to me. And from that eve till the day we left.. it was this wonderful experience every evening.. on the roads.. in the lake..on view points..anywhere we went ..Simply Amazing..
Apparently the place is coming up with good high-end resorts. There was club mahindra’s association resort “Lake forest”. Had good lunch buffet…some good food after a long time. and even better resort…Well spread ..British beauty in IndiaJ
Pleasant morning and amazing evenings, very good viewpoints and temples, lovely lake and on every corner there was a perfumery. In all good place to spend time with family
A pack of cards and a game of Tambola is all you need to enjoy this place to fullest, at least from our experience !!
The place is not the activity place. It’s small with just one day sufficient to explore it. Good for letting your hair loose and relaxing.
Monday, September 28, 2009
What’s the big fuss on austerity?
Off late the print and TV media have gone crazy on the display of austerity in politics. The Youth Icon of congress travels in train shelving his high profile and doing away with helicopter only to be the best food for the critics. UPA government seems to have committed the cardinal mistake by flying in the economy class.
No, am not negating the fact that these acts were hollower than they looked. That this pseudo austerity is the way to go ahead in shaping the jeopardized state of politics. I, like most of the other sound audience, understand that things need to go deeper than displays like this.
But are we being fair in making this act so down trodden? Was it better if this new phase of “being conscious” had not started at all? Or was it good, if we had not tried to question the stakes lost in keeping the ministers quenched at the fives stars?
There are gaps and grey areas in this “Austerity Raj” which makes it look phony. There is very little done on accounting how much it saves for poor man and how much does it pay back from those savings. If a minister can spent 50K on daily basis from “his savings” then he can as well donate prosaic amount of 5K daily to relieve the farmers from deaths and droughts. All this is true ..And this is being questioned solely because some one has ignited the move of austerity.
So, though not complete in it, we should appreciate the act has made a marked change in plotics. The NETAs would now have to do minimal and cut on the flamboyant image, to fool the janta.And for all we know we may revisit the Mahatma days where this philosophy was practised and not preached aloneJ
No, am not negating the fact that these acts were hollower than they looked. That this pseudo austerity is the way to go ahead in shaping the jeopardized state of politics. I, like most of the other sound audience, understand that things need to go deeper than displays like this.
But are we being fair in making this act so down trodden? Was it better if this new phase of “being conscious” had not started at all? Or was it good, if we had not tried to question the stakes lost in keeping the ministers quenched at the fives stars?
There are gaps and grey areas in this “Austerity Raj” which makes it look phony. There is very little done on accounting how much it saves for poor man and how much does it pay back from those savings. If a minister can spent 50K on daily basis from “his savings” then he can as well donate prosaic amount of 5K daily to relieve the farmers from deaths and droughts. All this is true ..And this is being questioned solely because some one has ignited the move of austerity.
So, though not complete in it, we should appreciate the act has made a marked change in plotics. The NETAs would now have to do minimal and cut on the flamboyant image, to fool the janta.And for all we know we may revisit the Mahatma days where this philosophy was practised and not preached aloneJ
Monday, August 3, 2009
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