DANCE, LITTLE LADY, DANCE

I am not cut out to be a housewife. After weeks of being housebound, I discovered this profound facet to my personality. I need the constant stimulation of having people around me most, if not all, the time. Agreed, being around an energetic toddler is fun, but two months of watching Pogo was really beginning to tell on my psyche.

Things came to a head when I noticed the other members of my family tiptoeing around me. I have a feeling that my imitation of a snapping wolf at their simplest queries had something to do with this. This was when I decided to throw caution to the winds and enrolled myself in a dance class. This was an extremely brave thing to do for one who was born with two left feet and had no concept of this mysterious thing called rhythm.
So off I went, all togged out in my new pink tracksuit and hair up in a ponytail. The least I could do was to look the part even if I couldn’t dance to save my life!!!

Did I say I was brave? Let me amend that statement. I think the dance teacher happens to be the bravest soul I know. He took one look at what passed for my dance moves and did not bat an eyelash. Of course, he did turn pale under his tan, but I am going to put it down to the heat in the gym.

Three weeks later, and I still have not been thrown out of the class. I call that progress. Yeah, I have been asked to dance with a group of school going kids, but hey, at least I am dancing!!!

Best of all, my pathetic attempts at moving my body to the beat have won me a lot of sympathizers, who keep trying to help me figure out the contortions that pass for free-style dancing. Their sympathies I soon hope to convert to friendship. Hurrah for dance class!!!!

MANY FISH IN THE OCEAN

Let me warn you at the very outset. This blog is not for the faint-hearted. Specially the ones that belong to the vegetarian variety. Not that I have anything against vegetarians, just that I am not too sure you guys would want to hear me go on and on about fish, specially dead ones.

Like any true blue Mallu, (except for my dad, who is the sole exception in our family) I love fish. The fried variety to me is manna from heaven. I love to eat it with just plain boiled rice much to the disgust of my mom.

My last trip to Kerala, needless to say, was filled with fish of all shapes and sizes. While the ones in the aquarium fascinated my son to no end, the ones frying in hot coconut oil were what my fantasies were made of.

Appu was endlessly fascinated by the whole preparation process. Right from day one he learnt to listen for the sound of the fishmonger’s little rubber horn mounted on a rickety old bicycle and at the first honk would rush to let us know that the fish had arrived.

Then he would squat next to his grandmother, who would clean the fish and ask her, “Ammuma, meenine kulipikyugeyanno? (Grandmother, are you giving the fish a bath?) This would send everyone into peals of laughter and now everyone calls the process “bathing the fish”.

I got yet another insight into my son’s complicated mind with the next incident that again involved fish. The neighborhood children would show my son the fish they were rearing to eat mosquito larvae. The “tank” consisted of sheets of plastic stretched on a frame filled with water. The fish were reared in this shallow pool. One look at the fish in the pool and my son exclaimed, “Aha, meen. Fry cheyidu tinnam!!! (Aha, fish!!! We can fry and eat them). Atta boy Appu, you are a Mallu too!!!