Entries Tagged 'family' ↓

Cousin #2 giving my 17-year-old sister wise advice about men.

Me: So S, you should NEVER EVER stay with a guy who hits you. Those guys are total jerks. Walk out as soon as possible!

Cousin # 2: Remember what I told you to do to a guy if he ever hits you?

S: Hit him in the groin?

Cousin # 2: Yes, because the pain there is undescribable. Not just hit– knee.

S: Oh yea, remember that scene in Casino Royale? (Describes Casino Royale torture scene involving testicles).

Me: *gags*

Cousin # 2: Yes, exactly. Every guy in the theater groaned at that. Because let me tell you– you hurt a guy there, and he’ll never forget. Ever. So if a guy ever abuses you, be sure to hurt him there. Then leave.

(Later, on the topic of clothes)

Cousin # 2: Make sure you wear fitted clothing, especially tops. Because if you bend over, EVERY straight guy’s gaze will just shift downward.

S (nods wisely): I understand.

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A week ago:

Aunt: Is your bedroom window open?

Me: Yup, the weather is great!

Aunt (dubiously): Well.. close it before you sleep.

Me: Why?

Aunt (ominously): MS-13.

Me: The gang?

Aunt: Yes.

Me: You think they’re going to come to our backyard? Why would they come to our backyard?

Aunt: They’re not that far away.

Me: They’re at least two miles away– infighting! I don’t think they plan on coming to our backyard. What would they do anyway?

Aunt: You never know.

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A blog post about how to do a good podcast: “Tip # 12: If you’re doing interviews, don’t be Charlie Rose. In other words, shut your stupid face and let your guest talk.”

Ohh Charlie. Mishri still loves you.

This past week has been pretty interesting.

On Tuesday afternoon, my sister came down to visit. She’ll be here for six weeks, owing to the fact that she’s here from India.

I had a lot more to say but right now all I can feel is that I really miss my parents. I think I talked about this a few weeks ago when I first got my visa. I was happy to get the visa but also sad about not seeing being able to spend much time with them while working in India.

When I tell people that I see my parents once a year for a few weeks, they always gasp because it sounds like so little time. Usually I don’t think about that. But right now I’m really feeling it. I haven’t lived with them since I was 18 and owing to the distance and cost, I can’t really see them more often than once a year. We’re emotionally closer than we’ve ever been, in terms of the fact that we each think the other rocks.

I wonder if I’m just romanticizing it all. Comes with being far away I guess.

It’s funny to listen to my parents/ Indian relatives talk about anyone who is dating. They always use the words “going around” or “involved.” It makes me think of couples arm-in-arm, promenading around a circle.
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I especially love listening to my aunt talk about some Indian girl or the other who’s dating someone. “She’s involved with XYZ– god knows how they’ve been going around.”

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Aside from the tone, it’s interesting to note the ambivalence– they’re not quite sure whether they disapprove of girls who find husbands on their own, but they’d accept any choice that we would make, but if you could marry someone at least Indian that would be great, Kthnxbai.

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Which brings me to this article about middle-class Indians who use text-messaging to flirt.

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I’ve always wondered what people call their parents–I call my parents “Mummy” and “Daddy” because we’re Victorian like that.

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Their terms of endearment for me, and/or my sister vary widely. Most of it sounds circa World-War II– darling, sweetheart, doll, etc. Occasionally my mother goes north Indian on us and calls my sister or me “munni” which means “little girl” (according to Google U).

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For my grandparents, terms of endearment were the words “aaana” and “amma” which oddly enough, are what people would call their father or mother. I know a lot of other grandparents used the same terms of endearment.

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But my favorite has to be the way my granddad used to say darling– stretching out the first syllable. “No, Daaaa-ling, you can’t hit your sister, because that’s not nice.”

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Heh.

So our fridge broke down Sunday night. We only realized this because my aunt opened the freezer and noticed that a lot of the food looked odd. It looked… unfrozen.

My aunt did what she does in every crisis, which is to be practical and fret simultaneously. This meant that she called Sears, gave some food to neighbors to store in their freezers, some to cousin #2 (who was visiting), as well as filled coolers with ice and food. Then she proceeded to freak out about the possibility of a short-circuit, and made cousin #2 disconnect the fridge.

It should be noted that at this time, cousin # 1 was either downstairs or momentarily hovering upstairs, looking concerned and periodically cursing through gritted teeth at his brother, cousin # 2. Which just meant more hilarity for me.

The Sears people said they couldn’t make it till the following Monday. That’s right, not Monday the 7th, but Monday the 14th. Ridiculous.

The last time we had fridge issues was right after Hurricane Isabel. Then, like now, we had to toss out a fair bit of food, and we vowed, VOWED, that our freezer would never ever be stuffed to the gills again.

We lied to ourselves, people. We lied. Because our freezer was clearly prepped for the apocalypse. And we’re not even Christian!

All of this makes me think of my mother’s mother, who didn’t have a fridge till she was in her 40s. That means for nearly 20 years, she was cooking for a family of six, three meals a day, every day, and was rarely able to store food beyond a day, if that. And she lived to tell the tale. Once you have the fridge though, as we do, and are as reliant on it as we all are, it’s hard to imagine managing for even a short period of time without it.

Thus, gloom fell over the house.

We’re putting fresh ice in the cooler to keep the food in it cold, but I think we’ll have to toss some of the food out. (Mostly frozen meats). My aunt has called Sears twice today, and they are going to push the appointment back to Friday and have asked us to keep calling so that if there’s a cancellation, we can get a technician over here asap.

Hopefully we’ll be back to fridge-ability in four days. In the meantime, if you see me towing a bag of sausages on the metro, don’t hate; commiserate.

A co-worker and I were joking yesterday about how it would be funny if people wrote press releases about their lives, and posted it on their blogs. I thought that was a fun idea. I think though, that journalistic writing lends itself better to the sort of fun pieces I’m interested in. Thusly, I present the first fake news-story–

From left: Shonai (Mishri’s sister), Mishri, Mrs. Tonse, Mrs. Someshwar

The Amchi Girl Dilemma.

An excerpt:

Few people know of the Amchi community. It’s a small coastal community in southwestern India, known for its distinctly lyrical language, and high consumption of sea-food. But what started out as a small impoverished community at the start of the 20th century has fast become one of the more prosperous Indian ethnic groups. Amchis have spread across southern and western India, and across the world. Many of them have advanced degrees in engineering, and medicine and the odd one in communications (Aka Mishri Someshwar).

But amchis are a fast dwindling bunch. There are only 250,000 of them left. And girls like Ms. Someshwar aren’t helping.

“I want to get married before I’m 30,” Someshwar, 23, notes. “But I’m not sure I want to marry an amchi.”

No amchi marriage= lower likelihood of amchi babies. Community size dwindles. Sound the alarm bells.