Inviting Mr. and/or Ms. Hyde

Photo credit: Lel4nd

I sway between being appalled and disgusted, annoyed and amused, every time I see someone’s Mr. / Ms. Hyde peeking out from their otherwise calm/cheerful/happy, and seemingly balanced persona. I’ve also noticed that sometimes it doesn’t take much for that not-so-elusive Mr. / Ms. Hyde to pop out. All it takes for someone to unleash their inner demons is a few glasses of whiskey, rum or the drink of their choice; a conversation that goes awry; a tight situation that demands balance but elicits just the opposite reaction from them.

Book Review - One Bite at a Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler by Tsh Oxenreider

photo source: http://theartofsimple.net/books/

I’ve been cruising over to Tsh Oxenreider’s TheArtofSimple.net for the past several months, to tuck into articles and snippets on living simply, running my home more efficiently and combining green living with my new role as a mommy. Packed with practical tips on everything from homeschooling, green living, carving out your own niche to packing a punch to your day, the website has been my favourite go-to guide on the net for everything simple and interesting. It was here that I read about the Home Management Binder (more on my version of this later) as well as the natural oil-cleansing method that I intend to try. I’ve been following some of Tsh’s tips to add more green to my days and it’s here again that I’ve read a major chunk of stuff about cloth diapering. Like a favourite book that you go back to again and again, TheArtofSimple.net is that place on the internet for me that fills me up with new ideas, reaffirms the ones I’m already practicing and adds a solid chunk of hope about what mums can do with the lean slice of time that they have in-between raising children and managing a home.

The Face-off with Death

photo credit: sandeep banerjee aka smokey bandit / Baby N at 6-months

I won’t forget that night. Maybe, time will take the edge off the shock and pain…maybe, just maybe. But I’m not sure. When you see death in its wolverine cape, lurking around in the inky night, looking for a baby to prey on, you have a hard time banishing it from your memory.  That memory has a pulse of its own. It reminds you of what loss feels like, of how it feels to stand on the fine line between birth and death. Of the two faces of the same coin – life and loss, happiness and grief.

Book Review: The Creative Family by Amanda Blake Soule

Book cover source: Amazon.com

If you ask me, I’ll say we live in a time of ‘maximumism’ – the complete opposite of minimalism. Even the toys and games we buy for our kids are based on the principle of ‘the more, the better’. And when I say more, it’s just not the quantity, but also price. A flashy, shiny toy that shares the same price tag as a kitchen gadget or a designer outfit seems like a better play thing for our child than a simple, handmade toy that can be bought for pennies or created at home. Is this trend good? Does it stimulate a child to think and innovate? Does it show that we love our kids more? Believe me, my answers to these may not be what many parents would like to hear at this moment.

Happy Anniversary - Eight years in words

Photo courtsey: Smokey Bandit; Clicked on our anniversary last year

I've been a writer for as long as I remember. I debuted with a story about my grandmother and a tiger that she scared away. Scrawled in a three-year-old’s handwriting, with a red marker pen on a scrap of paper, the tale was born from the depths of my quirky imagination. After that I was on a roll, writing, thinking, composing. I graduated to poems, then stories, and then articles and D-I-Y pieces for newspapers. I kept diaries, wrote letters to friends and loved the written word.

On the wings of an Origami Bird

Photo courtesy: Sandeep Banerjee aka smokey bandit

A motorbike, a scooter, an aeroplane and a bicycle, all painted in lollipop-bright colours hover over my son’s head. They’re just the things that hold the fleeting interest of a six-month-old baby boy, floating and twirling above his cot with the grace of a ballet dancer. Made with card paper and threaded with twine, this homemade mobile is one of the many mobiles that entertain my son while he lies in his cot, flailing his arms and legs in excitement. There’s another one, a bevy of origami birds, flapping their jewelled wings in the wind and one with little paper animals in brown and purple. Each one of these is handmade with love. And I wish I could tell you that I made them all. But each of these trinkets was folded and cut, strung up and twirled by my husband. Every weekend he makes a new toy for our son and invents a new game to amuse our almond-eyed baby. And every time he does this, I wonder why I wasn’t the one doing any of this? After all, I’ve always wanted to be that kind of mum, who makes things for her little one in the scraps of time snatched from a day that’s filled with the needs of a small baby.

How I wish to define the New Year - 2014

photo courtsey: sandeep banerjee aka smokey bandit

Today is the sixteenth day of January 2014. The first half of January has slipped by, but the year is still bright and brand new, like a coin all shiny and fresh from the mint. It’s crisp and crunchy, full of promise and resolutions, wrapped up in the golden haze of hope. Every New Year, every January, starts like this. With a bang and a bushel of happiness. With anticipation of what it’ll bring and a tiny hint of trepidation of what it may bring that we may not want. But as we hop on to the treadmill of the months, we learn to roll with it, we learn to cope with the patchwork of the days – some happy, some not so happy.

Gratitude as Baby Blue completes Six Months

Photo courtesy: Sandeep Banerjee aka smokey bandit

Today, I’m grateful for my son’s gummy smile. I’m grateful for many other things in my life too. But at this very moment as I look at my 6-month-old baby, a little elf in blue knit leggings, green sweater with shiny red rockets for buttons and a lilac woollen cap with a huge pompom, smiling his gummy smile, I thank God and the Universe for letting me keep him.

Why this blog was born

Art: chandana banerjee

I’m a writer. I’ve been one since my school days. The writing I’ve done so far has been on assignment for newspapers, magazines and companies. But the kind of writing that you do where you twirl your feelings on paper, like an ice queen skimming over a sheet of white, has been reserved for my journal and the crevices of my mind.