o nadan parinde ghar a ja...

Raghav turned 11 today.. my baby brother, the one reason i learnt to play mommy to everyone and revel in it coz his smile lit up my world.. i was too young when the brats were born to make any contribution to their younger years... but with almost 14 years between me and this little thing that my chachi brought home, i played nanny and surrogate mum whenever she had to take a break/nap/get work done.. and i would sit and rock him in my arms and sing him to sleep and tell him all my hopes and dreams and fears and thoughts, he was just a baby, but i felt like if he cooed or nodded or flailed around it was in answer to whatever it was that i was rambling at him about... Anu n the brats got rather mad at that .. to them i was the strict big sister who would play disciplinarian and shoo them around... Raghav on the other hand has perennially been the baby who must be coddled..
today is his 11th birthday.. we were all supposed to get together and have fun and have a bithhday party..
but there were no celebrations at home coz amma was hospitalised this morning... and instead of coddling the baby we've all spent his entire life coddling, we were all too busy worrying whether our grandmom would come home from the hospital... i barely even wished him.. aand now i'm wondering how he must have felt all day.. with teh entire extended family milling around teh house, but no one paying him the special attention he's come to expect.. he was so much quieter than he normally is.. even ate and bathed and helped with everything around the house without needing to be fussed at... my baby's all grown up i guess..

and the brats will turn 17 in just a few short days.. where did all that time go???

happy birthday Brats! and thank you dear microwave :)

so the brats are now 15 years old! shock and awe is what my state of mind currently is... soon they'll get taller and turn from little boys (note to self: stop calling them that before they raise a ruckus) to men and will no longer need big sis for the little things..
but atleast today my boys are still boys.. and at 1:30 am i can proudly write that i was up late baking them cakes to take to school coz they wanted cake and i promised them that they will have it.. and for the only the second time in my life i made cake in the microwave since the old oven has been relegated to the storage cupboard high up on the wall and the ladder is now broken disallowing all access to said storage space..
brats were quite disappointed when mom pointed out that no oven meant no cake.. BUT i decided to risk it in the microwave anyway..(aren't i the greatest big sister EVER!)
and guess what.. the microwave is PERFECT for the brownies i make.. :) the only reason the cake got messed up the last time we tried the microwave was because we let it bake for too long.. tonight, thanks to a timely tip from SJ who i thankfully thought to ask, i only set the microwave for 10 mins.. and spent all that time worrying that it wouldn't be cooked in that short a time. i was too used to the half hour timing of the old oven. :)

so two perfectly LOVELY chocolate brownies ready for my brats' birthday :) yay!

where cats can be alive and dead, and wormholes are for people :)

A ‘what if' can create some completely insanely wonderful scenarios and ideas.. i’ve always been fascinated by fiction and science fiction since i was a kid.. i read Isaac Asimov novels in school and got pulled into comic books and was always surrounded by people who were heavily into ‘science-y’ stuff..  and i do read a lot.. whatever i can understand and assimilate and wrap my head around.. its astounding how much of what was once science fiction or mythology or ‘god-hood’ is now in the realm of reality, even if in not- practically- provable- theory part of reality..

Was watching this rather awesome program on Discovery Channel today about Stephen Hawking’s theories... reminded me of all the science fiction and star trek and comic books i’ve ever read.. all about timetravel and wormholes and quantum theories.. what made it doubly fun was that the brats were watching it with me and after a long time turned to me for explanation of what we were seeing.. its weird how my latent maternal instincts always come out when the brats ask questions.. questions they’re actually interested in knowing answers to... even though now that they’re 15 most of the time they already know a lot of things or dismiss half the things i say with curt scepticism.. but after quite a while today we were not only sitting and watching something together, i was as excited as they were and i actually had answers to things that they didn’t know...

Its funny how after a point science, science fiction, philosophy and religion seem to converge.. something as simple as ‘why is this a law of nature?’ is only answerable with a ‘because it IS’.. and the only answer to a ‘why’ after that ranges from an ‘I don’t know i’m not a theorist’ to ‘that is how god made it’...

Time travel, wormholes, speed and time, superman flying at faster than the speedof light to go back in time and prevent Lois Lane’s death, the USS Enterprise going warp speed through wormholes to cross immense distances, black holes and the time travel paradox, heck, Angels and demons had such a highly fictionalised account of the LHC and what matter- antimatter interaction would create..

I’ve spent this weekend watching the first two seasons of ‘Fringe’. Its a TV show thats aired in India on WB channel.. i got the first two seasons from a friend recently and have finished the firat season over the weekend and am 4 episodes into the second as of tonight.. i just might watch an episode or two before i go to sleep tonight as a matter of fact.. it is sooo much fun! Biochemistry, theoretical physics, nanotechnology, bio-physics, chemistry, its all there.. and its amazing how they’ve woven actual scientific theory with fiction and created such a beautifully moulded story... i mean, even though the essential story plot is strangely mundane.. what with governments and big multinationals using scientific discovery to prevent/provoke a war, people doing unethical things in the name of ‘greater good’ and a hero and heroine with seemingly limitless potential, bravery and strength taking on everyone, including the laws of nature and two universe-fulls of people.. and obviously they’re gonna fall for each other and then discover that they can’t stay together and there will be catastrophic events post which something or everything will end.. as will the series.. BUT.. the journey is so much more fascinating than the end and even the charted road.. coz its the things that happen WHILE the story of the protagonists plods along is what the series is really about.. they’re not just two people destined to fall in love and then fall apart, its more about what their worlds themselves are like.. their personal lives are hardly there in the story of each episode, their individual life, much like in real life, is just a foreground to the larger picture getting painted around them.. their individual existence is important only because they connect to the universe as essential components of it, the storyline doesn’t revolve around them, they work as small parts of the larger storyline..

And i ADORE the way they’ve dealt with the depiction of the ‘crazy scientist’ stereotype.. J

And yes, the lead guy IS rather cute :) 

food and football

last night's England- Algeria match was so boring that not just i, but the four boys ranging from ages 14-20 who were watching also fell asleep midway through it.

the house is unusually noisy this weekend... both my mausis are here for the day and one of them has brought her two kids with her.. so now i have FOUR brats annoying me for the weekend. thankfully one of them is nearly 20 and therefore less inclined to come and bug his elder sister..


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other than that... i made pasta and potatoes in dahi-and-pudina for dinner yesterday... everyone said it was really good :)

brats and the big sis...

a sedentary life would never fit me.. that i always knew.. the last month, particularly the last 2 weeks have REALLY brought home the fact..
Ive been largely immobile.. thanks to a rather silly accident in the kitchen.. that is reason enough for major bouts of frustration since it takes me about a minute to so much as walk from my room to the drawing room. and the brats are having a blast at my expense.. their entertainment is getting on my nerves, now that i cant run after them to beat em black n blue..
they are growing taller.. and stronger.. though i do think that i'm gonna try to convince ma to get them horlicks so they can also become sharper... sharp enough to realise that once i get better.. they'd better watch out...
sigh.. younger siblings are such a pain...

on a happier note.. classes at law fac will start from tuesday and so i shall have an ironclad reason to leave the house.. bandages be damned...

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high point of today:

the brats spent nearly a half hour chanting"no chicken" while simulating a hawaiian hula dance... all because i wanted butterchicken for dinner and they decided to refuse anything i wanted to eat....

cant wait for them to hit puberty.. hopefully they'll sober down then...