My Wonderland

We found this Chinese antique store in Singapore & I love shopping there. I like going there on weekends just to have a look. We have already got a lot of stuff from the store & sometimes I wish for a bigger apartment just so that I could fit some more of these pretty things in. I know it sounds insane, but how great is this 60-year old elm cabinet!

A Madrasi in Singapore

We were in Chennai this weekend. For just two days - Saturday & Sunday. And on Monday morning, K spills his milk and goes,"Aiyo!" :)

The Red Dress Poetry

I absolutely LOVE this piece of poetry - I love it for its complete lack of inhibition. I love the paradox: you hear the voice of a feminist but one who sees herself through the eyes of men; who is fearless enough to flaunt her desires but you wonder about the shallowness of her self-image; who wants to show how little she cares about men but finds it difficult to actually do so; who can start sentences with "I want" and end them with nothing more important than (or something as important as) "a flimsy & cheap red dress". Its about any/every modern woman in so many ways, don't you think so? Makes you wonder whether modern-day feminism is something to celebrate or deplore or both.

"What Do Women Want?"
by Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

A thing of beauty

This gorgeous creature is our unofficial new pet. It comes to our condo with a bunch of it's friends in the evenings to snack on the little cookie crumbs that our security guard leaves for them. Sometimes they come in twos, sometimes in fours. Some days they don't show up at all. Upon some google-based research, I found out that these birds are the "Oriental pied-hornbills" and are listed as 'Critically Endangered' in the Red List of threatened animals of Singapore. This makes our cladestine chance meetings with these birds even more precious!

The "Kabeer-should-learn-Hindi" project

H & I converse in English with each other & use Marathi as a "secret-language" in Singapore (when I want to say something nasty about someone in that person's presence or H needs to tell me its K's diaper which is stinking up a crowded room, we switch to Marathi). H has accepted generally that Hindi has little relevance in our household, but often gets bouts of "I would be betraying my roots if my son can't speak my mother-tongue" paranoia. So the "Kabeer-should-learn-Hindi" project has started multiple times, each time lasting about 2 sentences before H switches back to English.

ps: Meanwhile, Kabeer has mastered Mandarin & his Laoshi tells us that he speaks Mandarin better than the Chinese kids in her class. The irony is not funny.