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ssed about losing control of my tongue nene s exams continue but have not been the worst he even went down to play on the weekends can t wait for them to be over and for all of us to be free of thinking about studies for a while april reading list 07 thursday may 2026 posted by thebluebride in just read uncategorized leave a comment i wondered if i d have anything to show for april in terms of reading not because i didn t read a lot but because i did a lot of comfort rereading but it turns out i did read 3 new things the devil s web mary balogh omg this was awful it s the third part of a series that i started in march and while i enjoyed the first part and the tension between madeline and james built up in the second part the third book focusing on the two of them was such a let down i m all for the beauty and the beast trope and the brooding hero but james was really too much for even me the talisman ring georgette heyer sir tristam s uncle wants him to marry his flighty half french granddaughter eustacie she has other ideas somewhere along the way they end up having to solve a mystery with the help of sarah thane who is up for an adventure and tristram s long lost cousin pretty fun though it did drag a little bit cursed daughters oyinkan braithwaite this was a book club pick and a pretty good read by the author of my sister the serial killer also set in nigeria generations of women in the falodun family seem cursed to be heartbroken eniiye is born on the day her aunt monife kills herself and her life appears to be eerily repeating that of her aunt strong women heartbroken women sisterhood and some magic i liked if not loved this and parts of it have stayed with me in ways in which the seemingly more memorable serial killer novel didn t adieu 05 tuesday may 2026 posted by thebluebride in family shamily the blue bride 2 comments my father in law was not a paragon by any stretch he was a traditional man who by his wife s telling was far from the ideal husband he could be insecure critical moody petty and a grouch he had come to bangalore from a village kerala and never learnt to speak english properly his wife was better educated and used to giving the orders she had practically run her home and raised her siblings since she was a teenager after her mother died this did not make for a seamless marriage for a traditional man however v s father funded his daughters higher education ambitions both v s sisters studied more than he did and for a person who was quite against malayalees marrying outside the community he managed to embrace his children s choices once he got his head around them he was upset by the choices of both v s sisters but once he agreed to the weddings he embraced the new in law wholeheartedly and also their extended family by the time i came along he was resigned to a non malayalee he wondered why my parents didn t just move to bangalore so we could all be one big happy family his ideal state when my sil s father in law died my father in law put up a huge photo of that man in his house he was against adoption but when my sil adopted a baby he was won over time and again his strictures were won over by love i was nobody s idea of an ideal daughter in law but i never heard a word of criticism except for my refusal to adorn myself with gold jewellery my wedding necklace a thin gold chain with blue beads to match my saree was a travesty in his eyes he was actually right that ornate silk saree required heavier jewellery this is not to say that i wasn t supremely awkward in our relationship early in my marriage i loosened up after i had kids i felt like in my in laws eyes i had served my purpose and so i could relax though i now realise a lot of this was in my own head i always felt i didn t do the proper bahu things starting with cooking that are general expectations apart from the gaping cultural differences and this made me insecure i never felt comfortable calling my in laws mummy and daddy and i knew they wouldn t love being called aunty and uncle as v does with my parents v s mum straight up told me to call her mummy so in over two decades of being married i have not directly referred to them as anything ridiculous i know in my defence i was young and when i stopped being young it was too late to change and yet 20 years on we had achieved some kind of equilibrium and i have to give v s parents credit for biting their tongue a lot with me at least with his grandchildren v s father was the cliche of doting when nene his first grandson was born he came to hong kong to help look after him when i went back to work his love language was food he desperately tried to feed his grandchildren but only one of them fully accepted his offerings he spent money on them he never would have spent on his own children this included a mini car and bike that they would drive around the yard blaring a completely annoying soundtrack if he cared that his granddaughters visited him in tiny shorts and strappy tops i never heard him mention it he did however regularly exhort nene to cut his hair in one way v s father was non traditional he gave generously to the church practically helping build the local parish but he wasn t a regular churchgoer and it wasn t entirely clear he was a believer v probably inherited his atheism from his father a farmer at heart he created a green oasis in the northern outskirts of the city whenever he had a bit of money he d buy a cow there were also goats chickens turkey rabbits and a couple of emus he would stand unfazed as they raced around him and occasionally he d make us scrambled emu egg he grew coconuts mangoes avocadoes jackfruit bananas and happily gave away all this bounty feeding people was his love language the man could cook beef fry fish curry and for me because i disliked fish prawn always in copious quantities overall a life well lived relatively healthy almost till the end about april 04 monday may 2026 posted by thebluebride in lifegoeson the anti social rounds the blue bride uncategorized leave a comment april began with easter the christian celebration of spring and rebirth i went to church the service quite beautiful the sermon not intolerable and then we had a quietish lunch at the in laws as per my tradition i organised an egg round chocolate hunt for the kids we went to the andaman islands over spring break and it was mostly lovely one of the things i realised in the andamans is how much i like swimming not just bobbing in the water but actually propelling myself forward in it the other was that i need to rein back the weight gain finally the weather is warm enough to swim in bangalore and miraculously our building pool got repaired i had given it up for a lost cause and so i decided to combine the two realisations and alternate running with swimming to give my knees a break and it s been good my swimming is less than ideal because i have never learnt to breathe while swimming which means i need to hold my breath and then come up gasping after say 20 strokes at some point i need to figure this out but for now i m managing 10 laps up and down also i have banned myself from ordering the kryptonite long chilly banana chips on quick delivery and from eating every two hours in happier news i had one quite eventful saturday comprising book club and attending a concert of choral music with mincat at a church normally i wouldn t do two back to back things restraining myself by the need to sit with the kids and their books but i ve been putting myself first more these days the music was lovely even if the church was hot the whole thing made me wonder if i could get back into religion just for the peace of it without the belief then again i reverted to good catholic girl skittish that an aunty would pull me up for my strappy dress although i had a dupatta on one sunday i took the kids for a swim ended up sparring with mimi because she refused to wear a cap as required her head is ball shaped and hard to get a cap on fish ball her swimming coach in hong kong used to call her he being skilled at getting the cap on her head a few boys of nene s age came at some point and he froze caught between us and them but he ended up staying in the pool and playing for hours after we left v and i dropped mimi to a birthday party and went to look for curtains v wanted to buy curtains for the dining area i suddenly decided that maybe we could buy curtains for the hall area i hate the ones he unilaterally bought without consulting me i ended up selecting something which i was quite pleased with more on this later we picked mimi up and had dinner in a french restaurant in sahakarnagar of all places so the curtains the guys came and installed them and they looked lovely i was thrilled with them for 24 hours sometime that night v told me he had spotted a stain and put stain remover i had a busy day at work and didn t look very closely the next day he said there was still a stain and had put more stain remover i then looked closely and there was this massive patch i m not sure whether it had already been there or was the result of v s stain remover efforts i was so upset with v for not telling me about this before putting on the stain remover and surprised he had not raised this with the curtain guy he says he didn t have the time honestly the whole thing felt like a metaphor for my life where every happiness has to be marred with some dark patch speaking of which at the end of the month my father in law passed away he had been low key unwell for a while but relatively ok until march when he was hospitalised he was not the same when he was discharged his began to lose weight rapidly had to have more frequent blood transfusions and worse started to lose his memory the last week he declined rapidly still i wasn t ready to accept he was at death s door because the doctor s prognosis seemed quite wishy washy and my own grandmother had been in a similar state for years not to mention v s mother who made a comeback the kids and i went to see him on thursday he looked awful was barely taking in fluids and couldn t recognise us the next day he passed away we had been mentally prepared for this eventuality and my attitude to old age is that a death without protracted suffering is the best one can wish for nevertheless it was a sad event and the end of an era nene who was quite close with his grandfather despite being barely able to communicate with him due to the language barrier broke down in tears when he saw the body and both kids had a good cry at the funeral which took place the next day after a busfull of relatives had arrived from kerala now there s a whole lot of admin to be done which is keeping v occupied and probably keeping his mind of the grief though the loss of a parent is the loss of a parent i started writing what i remember of my father in law and it turned out to be long enough to be a separate post so i decided to make it one may may be better but i m not holding my breath amazing andamans 27 monday apr 2026 posted by thebluebride in great escapes uncategorized 3 comments i had a few days off during the kids spring break and we initially wanted to go to the north east we narrowed down on shillong but then realised that the accomodation food and activities might not be to our pampered kids taste we then shifted focus to ladakh but i didn t want to skip pangong lake and we didn t have enough time to do the acclimitasation required given that the kids love beach holidays we settled on the andaman islands which have been a source of fascination not just because of their indigenous tribal populations but also the images of white sands and turquoise waters that have been doing the rounds we decided to mainly stay on havelock island now known as swaraj dweep but then realised it s best to book buffer days in port blair where the airport is in case of delays or cancellation of the ferry to havelock so that meant me needing to take an extra day off which now that i think about it might have allowed us to go to ladakh heh we landed in port blair in the afternoon and after checking into our hotel rushed off to see cellular jail this is where the british imprisoned indian freedom fighters including most famously vinayak damodar savarkar the originator of the hindutva movemenent when i saw the central watchtower with long buildings in spokes fanning out from it i was reminded of jeremy bentham s panopticon concept the idea was that instead of having many guards surrounding prisoners there would be one central watchtower which allowed a guard to watch prisoners without them knowing they were being watched so that they would assume they were always being watched and self regulate accordingly the french philosopher whose work has deeply influenced by own argued that in modern societies this form of surveillance is internalised as a soul apart from the design of the prison the complex is interesting because it highlights a part of indian history that wasn t played up in our history textbooks the militant violent resistent to the british it was too hot to do anything after that so we headed back to the hotel to cool off and then had a nice dinner at hotel s rooftop restaurant the next morning v nene and i went for walk to the marina again blazing hot we were impressed by the nicely built promenades the quality of the roads the infrastructure there is a well maintained sports field and a swimming pool and the clear water looking in the sea even here in the most developed part of the island we could see a few coloured fish and an octopus after breakfast we took a ferry to havelock and checked into the silver sands beach resort on vijaynagar beach in term of hotels in the andamans i found that they were either very expensive i e over rs1 lakh for two rooms or of the very basic variety i had some doubts about this hotel because there were some bad reviews and i got v to book two higher tier large rooms that had apparently been newly renovated well they turned out to be enormous enough for an entire double bed to be put into each unfortunately though the hotel only allows one single extra bed per room given their size the hotel could have done more with them in terms of decor there was a couch and a coffee table useful for playing card games but they could have had more furniture and decorative items ditto with the bathrooms which had twin basins but lacked hooks to hang a handtowels also the wifi was non existent in our rooms that said the hotel is located right on a stunning section of vijaynagar beach much is made of radhanagar beach rated as one of the top10 baches in asia but visually this one is more beautiful white sands and crystal clear water in shimmering shades of turquoise the only problem the water is extremely shallow knee deep probably until 100m in and the seabed is covered with little to large holes made by crabs and or kelp that had been uprooted this means that you have to ignore the possibili...
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