I have to order everything that Anne lamott has written

Since I totally love the way she writes.

Here are quotes from her that I would have liked to tell off some people. Still hindsight has its uses.

This one is for the mmmim! Always sure of himself and quite insufferable when it comes to arguments.

Certainty is missing the point entirely.”
― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

This one is for ma…

“… the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day.”
― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

And this is one that is dedicated to ma….

“[Her] work taught me that you could be all the traditional feminine things — a mother, a lover, a listener, a nurturer — and you could also be critically astute and radical and have a minority opinion that was profoundly moral.”
― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

This is to reassure a friend who is worried that her OCDs are losing their sheen, in the two years that she has become my friend.

Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting

This one is for my aunt, who makes me a tad nervous about the gene pool I come from…

you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do

And this one is for you my dear readers, but you already know it, else you would never read maidinmalaysia

“You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn’t nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

And this is for me

“writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. that thing you had to force yourself to do–the actual act of writing–turns out to be the best part. it’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony.”
― Anne Lamott

To be a smile millionaire

I am excessively ambitious for my kids, just like your average helicopter mum. I could call it grooming or moulding.
But pushy should do.

If I could make them do exactly as I say, then
I’d like for them both to be smile millionaires, like paramahansa yogananda wrote.

I have been thinking of his words this week,

“Let my soul smile through my heart and my heart smile through my eyes, that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts.”

And everyday when I fetch them from school, I ask them if they were smile millionaires ?

Today, I told baby param that smiling gives you energy when you are tired. And he bought it.

Now, to practice what I stood on my pedestal and preached.

at kalaripayatu class then,

Usually, I am thoughtful and watchful.

Am I getting it right? Am I kicking as high as a 36 year old mother of two can? am I swivelling or are my hips lying? Did that falter look awkward? Ulp. There. Another falter. Am I improving at ALL? Omg ! is that woman wearing skin coloured tights and bending over? It looks ghastly! I mean she should really move away from my line of vision at least. And what about that short mum, What? She joined after me and she can already do the back bend?

I did my routine with a smile today.
I smiled during the lunges, the punches and the break. I smiled when I jumped. I smiled when I stretched. I smiled at people, I smiled at the space between two people. I smiled at my instructor, when she wasn’t looking. I smiled at her when she was. I smiled watching a child do her routine, as intensely and gracefully as the instructor. I smiled at the colours of the flowers arranged at the altar.

Today, there was only the smile. No thought. No mind chatter. Just the smile. And maybe I jumped higher than I usually did?

Beats me

The music class is growing on me.

I am spontaneously singing to the beat of the tick tick tick of the right indicator, whenever I turn the car. And I hear myself thinking that the gait of the beat is in tisra gati!

I Am glad I have a place to confess this.

Offline folks would say tap tap tap mental.

Hot

I took a nap to backspace a hot summer morning, and it s even hotter now, in the afternoon.

#Summerfact a sun kissed warm mango is a cooler option than a chilled glass of lemonade.

#Summerfact a child staying home from school makes the day warmer, hotter, sunnier, longer, hungrier

#Summerfact Better to keep blogposts short. Even the words evaporate in the heat

I meet a fellow blogger…

In Coimbatore.

This man, who happens to be a friend of my dad, has taken all the risks there are to take…

1 he turned into a farmer after a successful corporate career.

2 he relocated to a small town in Tamil Nadu two years ago, after living in Switzerland for 15 or so years.

3 he encourages his two children to work in a farm and get their hands and feet dirty.

4. Celebrity alert. His wife has met boo s mum.
http://www.boosbabytalk.blogspot.com .She told me that she once gave boos mum her phone to call boo during a stopover in Dubai. But boo and her have never met. What? Aren’t you two the only Indians there? And with kids roughly the same age?
And you haven’t met?!

5. Lurker alert. His wife loves to read art navy too. http://abouttimenow.blogspot.in. But she hadn’t heard of maidinmalaysia. Hmmm.

6. Here is the man, who had pomegranates and peacocks in his garden. He now owns a grand farm, but has the simplest ideas to live by.

http://starlitdays.blogspot.in

Gambira nattai

My music lesson is moving. I am one raga old.
We did a kriti by the formidable muthuswami dikshitar, we did tiny namavalis, we sang seven kinds of alankarams, all coloured with the same paintbrush of mohanam.

We sat under our neem tree, that dreamily shed tiny white flowers on to the pages of our book in the hot summer breeze.

Then our teacher did the unthinkable. She moved ahead. We didn’t think we’d ever sing a raga without a rishaba swarA.

Mohanam smugness was setting in. We did third Kalam, we raced in the higher octaves, we tried kalpana swaras and failed, but mohanam was still comfort zone. Mohanam turned friendly even, with its notes that were equidistantly paced…. Quite the scooterete for our toddling steps. A glide fest.

This week, we are wrapping our heads around a new raga. Not quite the scooterete that was mohanam, this. We learn about a new composer, and are trying to Sing a little sharper around the Nihsada , and not shake the gandhara. And making a noise that sounds more like Egad rather than gambira nattai.

Here it is…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v_sHzA6nPuQ