Bun in my Oven

Ouch! This damn washbasin! Always hits me at the weirdo peeing hours. It’s about 3:30AM in Melbourne. And here I am fully awake. No folks, it's not any jet lag. It's a bun, a spiced up bun, in my oven, a really hot oven!

So while Mr. KUNE (KUnal + NEha) is in the process of making and baking, his mama sits awake at midnight tired of the peeing sessions; and his dad is busy fuming off his mama further by his non-stop snores and spinning-in-bed chores. Poor mama! I know!

With an absent-minded awareness, a dull face, patchy skin, drowsy eyes and a body which I find hard to recognize, I feel, this entire odyssey of pregnancy revolves pretty much around the letter 'P' - You get a 'Pea' in the 'Pod'  as a result of some 'Pleasurable' moments. Your 'Prenatal' phase starts and then you 'Puke' and 'Puke' until you have been ‘Pumped off’ of your last bits of energy left.  Your good night sleep goes for a toss while you 'Pee' and 'Pee' all throughout the night. Thanks to the 'Pressure' on the 'Pelvic' muscles which make it difficult for the body to even turn around while in bed in later months. This is followed by the most awaited phase of 'Pain' and 'Push', I mean the ‘Phobiatic’ phase. And voila, here appears the handsome 'Pie'! Of course with a ‘Pack’ of ‘Pride’ and ‘Postpartum’ chores.

Oh my boy, my dude! Well, well there are still a few days to having you in my laps. At times the thought of seeing you and cuddling you wipes off my mind of all phobias. At other times, my phobic stimulus just seems to take over. May be its my preggo hormones playing wreck with my emotions, or it’s my worn and torn body at this stage doubting its capabilities once recovered, or it’s my dependency on maids in this maid free land, whatever it is. Trust me kid, it’s easier to be an obedient daughter or a daughter-in-law, a loving wife, or a supporting sister than to be a functional mother. However with a single kick of yours, my life seems to get a kick. With that magical wave on my tummy, you make me smile and jump with joy. With that beautiful shape of yours emerging in my belly, you make me feel restless about seeing you, about introducing you to this world. With an ultra-sound shot seeing you scratching your head, you make me feel you, you make me feel like a mother, you make me feel like the most energetic creature around who can do anything, just about anything for this cute Kiddiwink.

My Little Rug Rat! I mean Your Royal Highness! You demanded your mere diagnosis to be done not at home, but at a grandiose Hotel. It’s the night when our Hyderabad house was sprayed with pesticides and we had to shift to a hotel at 2AM midnight because of the pesticides putting unacceptable strain on my smelling hormones, marking a sharp decline in my environmental tolerance. Anyways the following morning, sensing your arrival, I decided to test your presence and voila – you had already popped in!  We are and will always remain honoured with your gracious landing.

Thanks to my motherly instinct which tells me that you are going to be a hard nut to crack. Your Highness! You either seem to be arriving with royal endeavours or you seem to be on a pursuit to bring your spoiled, kinky, irresponsible, and sloppy freaks i.e. your parents-to-be on track.

Your immediate next course of action was to ensure that your mommy was used to and comfortable with all the tricks of the trade cooking, and hence to ensure exclusive authentic mom-made savory bites for yourself in future. So you sparked off some fiery hormones in me which made me fire my cook, who had been serving us for 4 years. All at once it was time for self-cooking. I still don’t know if it was the actual fault of the cook, or it was these preggo hormones caused by of course you, My serene Highness.

Your Majesty! You deserve and command full time attention and care. So you made my days, especially mornings nauseatic enough to not being able to work from office. The day I woke up thinking I might just turn up in office soon, that day was sure to bring me a good number of pukes. With each puke, I heard your voice - “Enough of work mama! Stay at home with me, I Love You. You better love me too”. I was terrified even to take the name of ‘office’ in the morning. For it took me a few hard mornings to recognize that few words don’t seem to go well with you.

That was just the beginning. Very soon, I had to put down my papers because this ‘P’ factor brought with it another surprise, the most awaited ‘PR’ for Australia. As there’s an expiry date to activating PR visa, we realized there was no other time to visit there than then. So my Happy Little Vegemite wanted to be born an Aussie. May be that’s why this visa thing coincided with my conception. Your Highness made us leave our home, our families, our jobs and our country. So soon after, KUNES, expecting, jobless, homeless, clueless, just got up, packed up and arrived in Australia. What followed next was pure gamble.

Once a woman is in the club, she should not plan a shift. Though we shifted not once or twice but thrice before we could call some place home. Every time I wondered whether we were being railed or derailed, I felt the ever mine boy inside my tummy, boiling his own courage and pouring some to me as well. In the middle of an ocean of countless sensitive circumstances, a single sign of clean progress would make me weave new hopes about our years to come. And well! Seems the gamble played off well. Things started to fall in place. Yet.. Ninth month and here I sit, staring at our yet to open luggage which has just arrived from India a week back.  Well, a mother’s work is never done.

And my dear brave Littlie! All this while, your cooperation, butterflies you caused in my stomach, your ever growing martial arts (kicks, flutters, what not), your cute little face I see in my dreams and the excitement you bring with your anticipated arrival have kept the fire burning, and the aspirations elevated. Lucky are we to have you and the surprises galore you bring, which are already spicing up and energizing our lives. After having traversed through many a shades of the sky, and with a beautiful rainbow just around the corner, you are simply awaited and anticipated with lots and lots of love, wishes and prayers, and ouch! A little bit of labor-phobia!

From a flat belly to a belly full of paws and claws, from fifty three kaygees to sixty nine kaygees, from Me-as-Boss and Maid-as-Maid to MyBaby-as-Boss and Me-as-Maid, from mental tiredness to physical tiredness, from girly whirly shopping of all types to Toys & Nappies & Wipes,  from time-to-kill to a full-time-drill, from immaturity to a little bit of maturity, from a woman to a mother, the way I see it, it's been a journey from glamor to glory.

C’mon! Say me No!

“Sure!”, “Yes!”, “Why not!”, “Anytime!”

An affirmative attitude might very well lead you to your short term goal, of being the go-to guy or girl for any of the solutions to your friend’s or stakeholder’s concerns; and win you that temporary assurance of being a goody buddy.

But hey! Did you do a reality check before uttering that easiest word around – “Sure!”? 

- Or you just went ahead with the flow of the moment in order to win over the heart of the seeker?

- Or are you just too casual about your credibility?

- Or is this your sweetly sarcastic and intentionally easiest way of turning off the seeker in place?

If it’s the first one, well, ideally you should perform as per what you commit. But do keep in mind “Under-committing and over-performing is better than over-committing and under-performing”.  Doing the latter, that too in repetition, can in turn land you far from where you had set your eyes in the first place while uttering the easiest and most friendly word “Sure!”  That said, there are times, when your generosity is put to test. When even after trying hard, you cannot fulfill certain commitments because of unforeseen circumstances or hurdles. It’s understandable if it happens once in a while.

If it’s the second one, you don’t belong here.

If it’s the third one, then, hat’s off! I am quite a fan of yours, but only and only if you back yourself up with sufficient guts to stop being fake with the seeker once you’ve made your intentions clear by your false affirming. If for some fragile part of your personality, you’re unable to do so, this can put you up in an ugly mess of embarrassments. Personally, the easiest way to piss me off is to keep me waiting for the results and never actually coming up even closer to or discussing them, and neither denying the impossibility of achieving those. Constant yet soft irritation eats me more than direct denial.

Professional or personal, this applies to all dimensions around you. Call it whatever you like - expectation management, the art of saying No, negotiation skills, risk-assessment, or just being integral to yourself.

Personally, I oh so much don’t want to come across any such fakers, and mistake them as my friends.

Professionally, I have always liked working with colleagues who could say me No earlier, rather than keeping me in waiting mode, and bombarding me with a bullet of not-so-sweet surprises aka shocks later on. To the best of my knowledge, I too have followed and worked with this belief system. The results were kind of mixed. Some bosses I worked with were a bit too turned off by my version of the understanding of the task at hand and the associated potential issues. These I must say were the ones who always found themselves in one trap or the other later on, mostly dealing with projects which had eventually turned from green status to yellow to red. Thanks to their strength of not being able to deal with the reality check in first place. Some on the other hand, have appreciated this element of mine, trademarking it as “good and timely risk-assessment”, and have saved their asses a red-alert situation.

So! The moral of the story is - 

Speak up when you have to! And say what’s on your mind. If your mind is too unpleasant to be heard, try some polishing techniques but ensure that you convey the correct message. Whether or not it gets understood in its correct sense is not in your hands.

This might lead to a temporary discomfort in the air, but will surely earn you credibility and respect in the longer run, if the intentions were good and logical.