Change

No more folks round the corner. No more emergency calls home. No more importing idly batter. We are going to be on our own.

Maybe for the first time...no parents, no inlaws...just the three of us.

New place, people, language. New school, teachers and timings. New home, maid and milkman. Everythings going to change.

Change they say is good.

I shall know shortly.

:)

Amma, you have it on your fingers also?

yes.

Your legs also?

yes

amma, everywhere?

yes da....

amma then WHERE can i kiss you??

:) :) :)

Sheesh

Just when you think you have life all figured out...

It gives you chicken pox

About twenty years too late.

Lesson learnt.

!

One gets raped

Another gets canonized

And life just goes on

?

Fishy stuff and chips

All of us have a self image. When it comes to the way one looks, i think i have mine down pat.

Pleasant looking. Rather forgettable for the first couple of meetings. Then i kind of grow on people and they start to notice that i actually have a rather nice smile. Then people get to know me even better and realize i have nice hair. Then they get to know me some more.... but draw a blank. The smile and the hair. My two complimentable points.

Since i am not really competitive or terribly self concious in any sense of the word, i have lived all the years of my life quite happily, first savouring the occassional "you are the older one?" (my poor younger sister had the misfortune of growing much taller than me) and now, the odd " you have a three and a half year old son?"???? that pops up.

So imagine my utter shock when i was buying some chips and other unhealthy stuff when the boy who was catering to me suddenly asked "madam actress aa?"

Quite sure that i definitely could not have heard what i definitely DID hear, i said "aaa??"

"Madam actress??" he said more confidently.

"No" i said.

"Actress madhiri irukkureenga" he said.

"Two hundred rupees billikku ithu ellam kidaikuma?" i grinned and asked the man at the billing counter whose face was oscillating quizzically between the boy and me.

As it turned out, the billing not-so-gentle-man turned out to be the villain of the piece. "Summa solriya nijamma solriya da?" he asked the boy, jolting me violently from cloud nine.

"ille nijammathaan" said MY boy, still looking at me with stars in his eyes.

Big bounce, back to cloud seven.

I couldnt control my self any longer. "yentha actress"??? i asked

"athu pairu theriyathu madam" said MY boy. "aana unga mathiri than iruppanga. ditto"

i laughed....hopefully the way a not so famous actress does. The boy smiled back shyly. The villain looked like he could slap MY boy and fire him for good. So i quickly said thank you and made a hasty exit.

And i smiled all the way back to the car.

sheesh.

But i still smile :)