On poop-filled days and nightclubby nights

Courtesy: http://memebase.cheezburger.com

Dearest Snowflakes, 

I am so glad to hear that you are feeling better.

My life is ho-hum. Somedays, I want to either kill myself or kill Sid. Mostly him.

Today was strange. It started so badly... First I got up with a godawful cough and a pulled chest muscle. Then I landed up putting some of Chook-Chook's soiled clothes (she is toilet training, not very successfully) with all the other washing. The filth! I don't have words to describe it. In my second try, the machine shut down and I was convinced that it was the shit that had clogged the filter.

Then AJ pooped in the water while taking a bath with Chook-Chook. So both kids had to be taken out, cleaned separately and then the bath, toys and the towels had to be washed.

But just when I thought this shit-smeared day was the worst of my life, AJ went to sleep for full four hours, and Chook-Chook turned golden - happily painting, colouring and singing. Then she and I sat in the wintry afternoon sun and popped bubbles of a meter-long bubble wrap for ages. It was bliss.

Sid returned and rescued our washing - it was not shit but one of Chook-Chook's shoe. It was still my fault but not as disgusting.

It is night now and Sid has brought the mattresses into our living room and put up a disco light thing. So we have a trampoline and nightclub all in one here - and the kids are going wild with fun. 

And I am thinking as I write to you - isn't life good?
I hope the mundaneness of my letter doesn't offend you at such a difficult time. Few days encompass the best and worst of parenthood and I wanted to share it with someone. 

I hope one day your life is as ordinary as mine - just a little less shit-filled. 

Love
Chatnoir

Happy Independence Day: Or guess who has the biggest goat in the world

To all those who can’t think of India without thinking of superlatives (oldest civilization, largest democracy, highest mountain peaks, most number of cows, and longest mustache) - Happy Independence Day. (Oh, and I totally include myself in the category).

Ask Not For Whom The Rattle Shakes

The last thing I wanted to be confronted with on my first baby-free coffee break since having my two-month-old baby boy was the debate on whether working mums were getting too much flexibility at workplaces. Unfortunately, the column by Sarah Le Marquand in the Sunday Style magazine (unfortunately, not available online) that I was leafing through slam-dunked me with exactly that. 

The complainants seemed to be other childless working women who felt they were left covering-up for their working-mum-counterparts waltzing-off for their children's soccer practice or ballet class. It just seemed unfair to them.  

“Great!” I found myself thinking. “Now not only did I not have to worry about how and when I would get back into the workforce, I also had to worry about how I would be imposing upon my child-free counterparts when I do.”

At first glance, I had to agree with naysayers. I am candid enough to accept that even when I do start working, I probably won't be as single minded about it as a childless worker. I would be balancing my home commitments with that of my workplaces’, so presumably be less available than others. Wouldn’t that make me the workplace moocher?

After all, no one asked my husband and I to have children. We chose to have them. Why should anyone, choosing to forgo the joys of parenthood, pay any price for my choice? I am the one enjoying the hugs, the kisses, the first word, the first step, the messy artworks and shaky football kicks. What good are my kids to all the child-free people of this world? 

There is a clear economic rationale to having full-time workers. I couldn't just bank on social niceness and tolerance. Does my being a mother of any economic value to others, I found myself wondering?

Then, I found one (and a bloody good one at that) and sighed with relief.

My choice of having children carries an incredible economic benefit for all my child free counterparts. My kids would make the future working generation of this country. All our pensions will depend on their existence, skills, earnings and taxes. Seen from this angle, working mothers are doing a favour to all the child-free people of this world. They are taking on the pains of labour, breast feeding, tantrums, illnesses, school admissions, VCEs and the choice of university courses so that everyone’s pensions could be safeguarded. And on top of that they are working and contributing to the country’s taxes. Flexibility from their co-workers to attend an occasional football game or music recital is the least they can ask. 

In traditional societies, people had children as their insurance against old age. But with modern states came the concept of social welfare: that it was society’s responsibility to look after its old. The individual didn’t have to have children to pay for his or her elderly care in future. So having children became a lifestyle choice instead of an economic one. 

But what we seem to have forgotten is that while not each one of us has to have children, society as a whole still needs children for its system of social welfare to be sustained. And those children still need to be nurtured into responsible and contributing members of society. So childcare becomes not just the responsibility of parents but of all members of the state. 

So here is my counter to all those who question a working parents’ flexible hours, “Ask not for whom the rattle shakes, it shakes for thee...”

***
On that note:

Sanjay Leela Bhansali vs Wes Andersen: Or A Comparative Analysis of Little Consequence.

It was after watching Wes Andersen’s The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou that I first found myself questioning whether I was being too hard on Sanjay Leela Bhansali for his movies set in never-never India. 

After all, both Andersen and Bhansali set their characters in unlikely settings that disoriented our sense of time and place. Both prefer exploring the the lives and times of the priviledged upper classes. Both are acute aesthetes with a particular love for all things vintage. And finally, both litter their creations with myriad references drawn from unlikely sources. 

So why is it that while the sibling protagonists of The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited and the father-son explorer duo of the Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou absolutely charmed me, the heros and heroines of Black, Guzaarish and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (particularly the first two) left me a little irritated and confused? 

Was I - horror of horror - one of those people who immediately accepted the pretensions of foreigners but played-down the works of her compatriots? 

It was after attending a talk by Sabyasachi Mukherjee - the costume designer of Black and Guzaarish - about his work in the two films that the deceptively simple answer dawned on me.

Andersen succeeds while Bhansali fails because he makes comedies whereas Bhansali tragedies. 

ANDERSEN'S characters and settings are eccentric, if not outright outlandish. The Tenenbaum family is characterised by its dysfunctionality. Steve Zizou is the last of the seafaring explorers out to discover the mysterious murderous fish that ate-up his friend (I kid you not). And the three foppish American-Jewish brothers of The Darjeeling Limited go on a spiritual journey across India in a Palace-On-Wheels-like train hoping for a life-changing experience. And he gives them all kinds of aesthetic quirks: the clothes, the accesories, the sets, the music hark back to many different eras and cultures at the same time. 

But here’s the thing. Andersen doesn’t ask us to or identify with these weirdos or find them believable. He merely wants us to be amused by them. If there is an emotional quotient to his films, it only ever hovers on the surface ready to recede instantly in favour of the next eccentric twist. The highly stylised sets, clothes and ambience only add to the characters’ alienness. And we, as audience, remain amused observers of these curiously aesthetic, dysfuntional beings throughout the length of the film.  

Andersen doesn't take his characters or his audience too seriously. 

ON THE OTHER HAND, Bhansali demands that we as audience immerse ourselves into the raw emotional experiences of his characters: the deaf, dumb, blind Michelle McNelly’s struggles to express herself, Nandini’s determination to realise a pre-marital love affair, and the quadraplegic Ethan Mascarenhas’ desire for mercy-killing. All this darkness is overarched by a theme of everlasting love. There is nothing remotely amusing about these characters or their situations. 

Yet, Bhansali refuses to give them a recognisable backdrop. All throughout Black, I kept struggling to place McNelly in a specific time period. There was a lovely vintage quality to the clothes, sets and backdrop that pointed towards a rich, Anglo-Indian family living in pre-Indepedence Shimla. Yet, the references limited themselves to cold, inanimate things. There were no British people intermingling with Indians in saris or nehru topis, no references to the political turmoil: anything that clashed with the immaculate European aesthetics of the setting was cleansed-off the frame. The McNellys were basically European, accidentally being played by Indian actors. Ditto, the Rajasthan-Italy combo of Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, and the Goa of Guzaarish (which somehow seemed closer to the crumbling Colombia of One Hundred Years of Solitude to me). 

Unfortunately for us, the audience, we are then asked to become one with these outlandish creatures: to cry in fury, misery or sadness with them and for them. But how? All through Black, I kept getting distracted by the unlikely but overpowering sets. And I kept feeling manipulated. Bhansali wanted me to feel urgently for McNelly, but at the same time maintain an aesthetic distance from her life. One minute I was invited in, the other minute decidedly booted out. At least, McNelly shared her ordinary looks with us. The Sofia of Guzaarish in her garters, gypsy skirts, aprons and faux-European demeanour didn’t even offer us that. In fact, my mind absolutely refused to interact with this alien creature. Let Bhansali and Mukherjee cry for her, it said, since they thinks she is so fantastic.  

If you want to evoke human feelings, you have interact with the ugliness of our human lives, right? In fact, some of the world’s most raw, emotional artworks - think The Scream, Guernica or Francis Bacon’s works - are ugly. It is a precarious aesthetic ugliness however, and for that reason, they are deemed masterpieces. 

So tell you what, Mr Bhansali. You give me a character decidedly rooted in a reality (ugliness and all), and I will give you one whole bucketful of tears in return. 

And let’s leave the bohemian aesthetics to Andersen.