tired

the twins are sick. m has been unwell for the past 10 days, and the dr has said he will most likely need antibiotics for another two weeks. a has now started coughing. with little sleep and super crankiness to deal with, i am down to nil reserves of patience and good humour. my back hurts from carting m around everywhere, my eyes are gritty and i feel as though i am walking around with a fish bowl on my head.

and yet, i still need to function like an adult, a mom, wife, daughter in law. the laundry still needs to be done, food still needs to be put on the table, work needs to be completed. sigh. i miss the days when staying up all night working on a paper was enough currency to get away with behaving like a zombie, or having the flu was reason to live in a room resembling a pig sty.

#microblog mondays

 

scars of life and waves of grief

"to live is to be marked. To live is to change..."

"we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes."

my favourite barbara kingsolver quotes (the poisonwood bible). i was reminded of them when i read this awesome piece on dealing with death and grief:

"My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had... And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it... Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see."

"As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves."

the wave analogy is brilliant. read it. 

#microblog mondays
 

the twins and memory

thankfully, the twins love reading and listening to stories. they love their picture books, and their story books. i may get bored of telling them the same story 50 gazillion times, but not them. i make up random, short anecdotes (aka stories) while feeding them, and they soak them up. to the extent that i can no longer miss out a single word, or replace it with another. if i don't say it in the exact same way that they remember, they scream and get upset. which makes me marvel at their memory.. they must have over 20 story books, all of which they seem to know by heart. and another 10 stories or so that i randomly made up for them.. i wonder at which point they will start forgetting stuff..

i pray quran surahs to them, and other qasidas, and they pick it all up so fast! they are like little sponges.. alhumdolillah! i wish that this ability of theirs to instantly remember stuff would last throughout school.. it would be so useful in learning history dates, the periodic table, etc etc :P

#microblog mondays

an all women police station and a cafe run by acid attack survivors

these two stories that i came across yesterday made me smile, and feel tiny sparks of hope regarding the situation of women in india. first, this post regarding a women's only police station in haryana. and second, the story of 'sheroes hangout', a cafe in agra run and staffed by acid attack survivors.

having more women police officers can only be a good thing, although it will take much more than one women's only police station to balance out the current police force that has only some 5 percent women officers. i am now interested in knowing how the 400 or so women only police stations in the country are faring, and how much difference they make in reporting, punishing and preventing crime against women.

if sheroes was in mumbai, i would totally go and hangout there, to support these women, and create awareness regarding the atrocious crime of acid attacks. more power to them, and all women out there, struggling against the odds!

where is india's alternative media?

i almost never watch news on indian tv. if you have ever seen it, you will understand how disturbing it is, how unlike ‘news’, it really is. i grew up watching the local hk news with my dad, which was so staid and serious in comparison. once i went to university, i read the news online, all international broadsheets: the iht, the guardian, and then slowly news websites like the bbc. as part of my journalism classes, i had to study tabloids like the sun, so i understood sensationalism and triviality and page 3 news. it is unfortunate that this is all that the indian news channels and papers are capable of.

i wonder what they teach journalism students here; distinctions between fact and rumour, between allegations and convictions, between innocence and guilt? do journalists even need any qualifications here? from what i can see of news anchors, they would be more suited in the theater/film world. the recent sheena bora murder has made a total circus of the media. i have read several opinion pieces disgusted with the way indian media has handled itself. and that too, at a time when there were other worthier stories at hand: the gujarat violence and reservations debate, the financial markets situation. prior to this, the yakub memon hanging was what occupied the indian media in a similar frenzy.

the average indian gleans his news from these news channels and papers. few indians will look at international news sources, and hence have no bar for comparison. india needs more alternative news outlets. magazines and newspapers that report news, not sensation. i don’t buy the cliche that ‘this is what people want’. the people don’t know anything else. if there was a choice, they would choose the better option.