family

Saturday we're having a small engagement puja at my parent's house. Sheena's parents are flying into town tonight, Sheena and her brother come into town Friday, so right after work I'm picking her parents up from the airport, then the festivities will begin. It's on. Tonight we're proly gonna grab a bite to eat at Lula's, then maybe watch a movie or something. Tomorrow we're having dinner at my parent's house. Friday we're going out to eat with my sister and her fiance, then Saturday's the puja. Ooooh man! I've been cleaning my apartment like a mad man getting it ready for them to stay. Dusting things I've never dusted before, buying shit for my house I've never bought before, crazy.

But on the other side of the coin, we've been having family drama for a while now, and it's been culminating as of late. I've always been the "mediator" in my family, helping keep the peace between different members of my family at the sacrifice of my own well-being. About a year ago I decided not to do that anymore, and told everyone so. It's been hard, and the stressed situations aren't getting any less stressful. Cause my family's developed a dependency on me that they've already realized they can't depend on anymore, but now they have to figure out how to handle their relationships on their own, when negotiating and conversing under stress is not anything they've ever really had to do with each other. That's not a very pretty process to experience.... Uuuuuuugggghhh, why's this shit gotta happen now?

I had dinner with my parents last night, and apparently, my mom played the dilruba for four years in high school. Crazy! She said that her final year, her teacher was encouraging her to go to college for music, but my mom thought it would be better for her “professionaly” to go into nursing, so she did. But that explains a bit about me, huh? I wonder if my mom picked the dilruba up today, what it would be like for her, if she’d be able to remember some of the stuff she learned in high school or not. That would be CRAZY, if I could have her teach me some of the music SHE learned. Hello! Can you tell I’m excited about the idea? :P

Here’s a picture I found on the web of a girl playing a dilruba. this is NOT my mom.

I was chillin with the moms while we were eating last night. She had made ladoos—specifically, graham-flour-sugar-balls-of-splendor. I was asking her how she made them so i could give I a shot sometime, and she got into all these stories about me when I was a kid. She was saying ladoos used to be my favorite sweets. She used to make them whenever we were having people over, and keep them in a dhaba (stainless steel tin) in a cabinet under our stove. One time, she walked in on me sitting on the kitchen floor with the dhaba open in front of me, and me just chowing through the sweets. She was surprised that I knew exactly where the ladoos were and that I just went ahead and helped myself. Lol, I was like 4 (NO this didn’t happen just last week).

My mom used to keep all-purpose flower and sugar in these two canisters in a floor level cabinet under the counter. One time when I was 3, she left me in the kitchen for a minute while she went to do something in the living room. After a bit, she started thinking I was unusually quit. She came back into the kitchen, and again i was sitting on the kitchen floor, with the flour canister and sugar canister open in front of me, and I was slowly moving all the flour from the flour canister into the sugar canister—handful by handful in my little three-year old hands with the rest of me COVERED in flour. Why did i want all the flour in the sugar canister? Who in the world knows what I was thinking at that time, I couldn’t tell ya... But I could just see myself doing that, and being really into it. Lol, that definitely sounds like me. My mom didn’t want to put all the sugar in the canister to waste, so she cleaned out what flour she could and used the rest of the sugar as it was. Consequently, my dad started REALLY liking the tea my mom made. Cause she was saying the little bit of flour that ended up in the sugar made the tea a little thicker. Now that’s funny.

It was a good weekend. Yesterday for mom’s day we took my mom to the Chicago Botanical Gardens. That was cool. I’m starting to see more and more everyday how my mom really is an artist in her own right. We were talking about the gardening she does in our back yard, and her approach and the satisfaction she gets from it is almost exactly the same as me with music. Funny how that works out, huh? Then afterwards, I cooked dinner for everyone—mung bean and potato shak and rice—and we watched Love Stinks. When I first saw that movie years ago, I thought it was pretty good. But actually, it kind of sucks. It has its funny moments though.

I went to the Cubs game on Friday with Pratik and Paras. That was awesome. Bleacher seats and we won 11-0. Hells yea. Friday was a long day, I cut out of work early for the game, afterwards had a beer with Paras at some bar, Mullen's or something like that, then went home, ate, took a shower, and went to some Rush and Division bar for Jared’s girlfriend's birthday, then went to some Lincoln Park bars to hook up with another friend. I know what you’re thinking, Rush and Division? Lincoln Park? Nikhil, what’s happened to you?! Totally not my scene, but I was chillin with friends, so it was all good.

I gotta start running this week.