I have 4041 hits on my blog page with 21 entries as of today. Not bad, I think to myself. I stopped making new entries more than 2 months back. Lots of reasons, nice valid ones, why I stopped. Don't want to remind myself those reasons by recapitulating them here. So you guys don't get to know them either. Sorry. Barnali knows them and so does Jumi and also Eff. If you know these girls, and really want to know the reasons, you could ask them. *naughty smiley*
Still in Mumbai guys. Sigh! This big bad wonderful city doesn't want me to leave. Ninad has now started asking me if I have any intention of going back to Guwahati at all. I asked those two little things who are delaying my return when they intend to heal themselves but they don't reply. Much like a lot of people who don't reply my mails and messages. Sigh! This blog will have much sighing.
Ninad is big time into FIFA. He is the goalkeeper of a football team in his school. He sometimes scolds me for not having sent him into a Football Academy. I wasn't even aware that there were Football Academies when Ninad was a kid. I try to reason this with him. I knew about Tennis Academies and Cricket Academies, but football was not in my league or list of interests. So his blaming me about not putting him into a Football Academy was quite unfair. He says he will make his son a football player. He is 16 years old and in the 11th grade. And, no, he is not married and does not have a kid out of wedlock either. It is the fantasy of a manchild. Now I have to wait for the grandson, whenever he arrives, to cheer him in Barcelona or Arsenal or wherever he plays his FIFA matches. I hope Ninad can afford to send him to Football Academies that prepare you for World Cup matches. I understand they are prohibitively expensive. I get this worrying thought in my mind because now, when he should be preparing for his engineering entrance exams and class 12 boards, he concerns himself more with the thoughts of sending his son to a Football Academy. I have advised him to get in touch with his books whenever he can get his head off from thoughts of FIFA. Sigh! What more can I do from 4 longitudes away?
I was well into quite a pleasant dream last night when my cellphone rang. It was Ninad. He told me to listen to 3 FIFA songs: Dreaming, When you love and one more, I forget the name. I said I would, in the morning. He made me get up then and there, switch on the computer, log into YouTube and listen to the songs. I enjoyed the songs, but Sigh! That's my sonny for you and his obedient Mom.
Rabia is the new temporary entry in my life now. She is pretty, 7 years younger than me, has 5 children scattered all over India, one grandchild and is the 5th out of the 10 women her husband married. She is divorced but got a good share of property, one and half bigha of village land from her wealthy husband after the divorce at the intervention of the village heads. She grows multiple crops including rice, jute, has a fish pond, grows vegetables, owns hens and goats and is quite an entrepreneur. She has made her own house, sells the food she grows and grows enough food so that they don't need to purchase any for the entire year. She is illiterate but can read phone numbers, picks up new things instantly and is an asset as a helping hand.
Rabia was our help with domestic work. Then her husband left her and she went back to the village to look after her alimony. She is called to our place to help at every major event. Be it childbirth or marriage. It earns her an extra income and her presence benefits the family immensely.
She is grateful to me because I have helped her get treated and operated which is something all doctors do by default. Doctors try to get treatment free of cost or at minimal cost or pay out of their own pockets for the economically badly off people who approach them for help whether or not intimately involved in their lives. It is a common story. But the people who they help remain eternally grateful and jump at the first opportunity they get to pay back in whatever way they can. As did Rabia. I had driven her to the charity hospital in my car, shifted her to a government hospital as the charity hospital did not have the operating facilities, gone to see how she was doing everyday till she was discharged, drove her back home on her discharge. She remembered everything. This is an observation I have made of the economically weaker section of our society. They never forget to be grateful.
At one week's notice, Rabia prepared to come with me. She put the minor son who was staying with her in a Madrassa as there was no caretaker for him at her home, got two of her nieces to take care of her house and fields and hens and goats, packed her bag and came with me. It was her first airplane ride and the flight was one of the bumpiest I have ever made. I looked left and right and saw people with shut eyes and silent chanting. The stewardesses were sitting and clasping their seat handles quite tightly. The 'keep the seat belts on' sign was lighted and the pilot was scaring everyone by telling them to be seated and not go to the washrooms and keep the seat belts clasped and describing how bad the weather was.
Rabia was in the row behind me in the middle seat. I turned around to see how she was doing. She had happily shifted to the window seat which had been empty and was looking contentedly at the thick grey clouds. The blissfulness of ignorance. She could not understand the announcements and did not find the bumpiness of the flight unusual. I was too 'not in a normal state' to feel any fear. But I was aware that under normal circumstances I too would have remembered a God. I was amused at Rabia's state of bliss and laughed silently.
A month later she suddenly asked me why the plane ride becomes bumpy when there are clouds. Her observation amazed and impressed me. I explained the reasons to her and told her enough so that she would be sufficiently frightened on her next bumpy ride. * naughty smiley*.
