Ageing together

I found my first grey hair when I was 21 . With a father who was so grey-haired that he was mistaken quite frequently to be my grandfather,I should have been prepared for this premature greying. But instead I was quite devastated.I remember telling my then boyfriend PP about this strand of grey hair and wondering if he would dump the old lady girlfriend to go take his pick from the college full of young girls.And it didn’t help that PP had a head full of silky black hair then. But PP laughed at my stupid apprehensions and we moved on.

I completed my engineering and then got into a B-school based in Pune. 2 years of late nights, constant project deadlines, the ongoing global economic crisis and the related placement tensions didn’t help my grey state of affairs.I came back to Bangalore, got a job and got married to PP.It was about this time that I realized that I better do something to look like PP’s wife and not like PP’s mom and started applying mehendi regularly.(PP is of a small build and was often mistaken to be a college student even after becoming the Creative Director at the advertising agency he worked for) . I was always very conscious of my grey hair(not enough to dye it though) all through this phase.

Years passed by and PP’s genes also started to act up. Like his dad, he also started losing hair.Since he was very conscious of how quickly he was balding, he keeps his head very closely shaved instead of having  little patches with no hair.So by the time we were both 30, I had a head full of mehendied hair and he had a head with hardly any hair.

When I was expecting BB at 30,our favourite joke was that if baby was to end up with both our genes, he/she would make an appearance into this world with about 3 strand of grey hair and continue with that for the rest of his/her life.Luckily BB came into this world with a head full of black, soft hair. But lets see if our prophecy comes true in a few years :D.

A few weeks back, we were grocery shopping in a crowded departmental store and I strayed away from PP as I was searching for something .When I had picked up all my stuff and was ready to bill them,I started searching all the bald heads in the store to find my bald-headed PP.I smiled as I found my bald head and we headed out together.

At 33(OK technically I am 33 and he is still 32 for another 2 months), we are both quite comfortable with our looks now. We have a long way to go as we actually grow old together,but its been a wonderful journey of premature ageing together with PP.

 

Dancing around (with) trees

When PP sent out a mail to some of our very close friends announcing the release of his book, we got a reply from a very very good friend U who commented that she liked PP’s reason for writing the book . She also mischievously asked if dancing around treeswith  his girlfriend(currently his wife and yours sincerely)  was another good reason for planting trees. We both laughed at this comment and let is pass.

But the thought stayed on in my head and I chuckled as I imagined both of us romancing, running and dancing around trees in true Bollywood ishtyle .Got to say that this is old bollywood ishtyle. Nowadays Bollywood heroes and heroines are too busy doing item numbers or romancing in phirang locales or on beaches.But I digress. Lets go back to the image in my head of the romancing  under the canopy of huge flowering trees with the tree gently showering us with flowers as we dance around it .But knowing my tree crazy hubby too well, my imagination also decided to get real and practical.The cozy,romantic picture soon blurred to be replaced by a image of the hubby abruptly letting go of my hand and running and hugging a tree instead like his life depended on it.

Being married to a tree hugger for 7.5 years has warped even my sense of imagination.

🙄

 

How the Buddha attained enlightenment in our room

We were gifted this nice table  lamp by a very good friend of mine on our wedding day about 6 years back.

original table lamp

But clumsy  me dropped it a couple of time while dusting it and in the process the shade  cracked at a couple of places and over the years, the fiberglass lampshade just gave way, fell apart and finally broke.

The iron base of the lamp looked really sad without the shade and the naked bulb didn’t serve any purpose, but  the lamp was kept away with the intention of finding a new shade for it as I didn’t want to throw/give away the precious gift from the good friend. But a year later, the only new thing on the lamp was the thick layer of dust.  As my clumsy hands were the sole cause of the sad state of the lamp, guiltily I approached PP and asked his help in finding a suitable shade for the lamp.

Now PP is the kind of person who has these phases every now and then when he goes into creative overdrive .When he is in one of these phases, the economy gets temporarily affected by  PP’s  creative  ‘We will not buy mass manufactured stuff, but will make our own stuff with the personal touch to it’  phase.For example, I would say ‘ PP we need a key-stand to hang all our keys. Why don’t we go out and buy one this weekend?’ And PP in one of his creative phases will say ‘ Why do you want to buy one? Lets make one. It’s quite simple thing to make after all’. If the creative juices are in full flow, then I will probably have an utilitarian , unique key stand up on the wall in a couple of hours. But if the creative juices are ebbing, then 2 months later after quite some amount of nagging from me, we will pick up a mass manufactured , not at all unique key- stand from one of the stores catering to the non creative people.

So when I approached PP with this request for a new lamp shade, PP was going through the high creative juices flow phase. As he looked at the lamp, I could see the light bulb come on ( PP’s light bulb and not the lamp’s 🙂 ).He told me  he had a lamp shade already in mind and to trust him to take care of this .I did so a little reluctantly ( not all his creative outputs are always successful). Next day he came home with a big glossy  printout of a tree. He cut the outline of the tree  and then proceeded to cut some random shape from a cardboard sheet.

Then he glued the cardboard cutout behind the tree outline cutout and then proceeded to fix this to the iron base of the lamp..

Cardboard cutout behind the tree outline

So this is what the lamp looked like now.

huh how does this look like a lamp?

Now PP has 2 first loves in his life- trees and the Buddha  ( the son is a close competitor now in this race for the 1st position in the PP’s love list, but the little fellow was not around when this incident occurred). So if trees feature in his ‘ I am a creative genius ‘ idea, then the Buddha cannot be very far behind and sure enough the Buddha statue from Sri Lanka found its way to the base of the tree.

The Buddha seated under the tree

When the bulb is switched on ( the lamp’s this time 😉 ),  Voila we have an enlightened Buddha with a halo life effect over his head.

Now only if attaining nirvana in real life was this easy.

The Enlightened Buddha