The odd woman out

"You must check out this great store on this road! What wonderful collection!" says one. I smile wanly.

"Hey! I picked this from this place... Just out of the world," another says. I nod, trying to note down the name for future use.

"I always go to this place" enthuses one (in addition to 10 other places, I note mentally) .

"They always have exclusive stuff" gushes yet another (which others also seem to be visiting with equal frequency and picking up similar stuff, I can't help thinking).

Where do I fit in? Shopping - I enjoy having new stuff, but would definitely prefer going back to the days when my mom did it for me. Is it the lack of oxygen, the need to go from shop to shop at a painful pace before picking up one or just wrong wiring. This is just about clothes...handbags, shoes, accessories fare worse as the criticality - and therefore the motivation - to buy is even less.

Some birth defect?

God give me patience...

...but please hurry. Summer vacations start today.

When I love my children the most:

1) They are asleep and it is not time yet for them to wake up.
2) They are in school and there is still time for them to return.
2) They are out playing and it is still too early for them to be home.
3) They are engrossed watching TV and not trying to kill each other...and it is not time for them to switch it off yet.
4) They are petting each other oblivious to mommy dear screaming her head off for their having fought just a second before.

The Super "Eye"

She had learnt to make do with what she had. It was lucky that this planet had water and supported life. But in the quiet corner she was stranded in, she and her 6 year old were the only ones. Sometimes it was lonely. At other times, very scary. But something made her stay on.

She looked over at her son, contentedly playing with the makeshift ball. Sometimes it rained food packets, sometimes, it was a heavier shower of clothes and other necessities. There were times when they were completely forgotten.

The soil let her grow some food that she had planted on landing here. The space shuttle was their living quarters. She was grateful for that. So grateful that she did not want to go back home. When she realised that the accidentally sown seed in her womb just before she travelled to this planet had borne fruition and she successfully delivered the baby, she saw no reason to go back.

She looked at her son again but didn't find him there. She ambled to the telescope and caught him staring at one of the planets billions of light years away. It looked like any other planet - shaped like a star but not twinkling. She always set the telescope such that he could zero in on it, see the green, the blue and the brown, and then zoom closer.

He was looking at his microbes. "Mom! Come, see them," he shouted out excitedly.

She went to him and ruffled his hair fondly. The first time he had detected them, she had tried to explain that those microbes were her size or bigger. That they were god's greatest creation on planet earth. That they had been responsible for sending her on this mission. But she had somehow not wanted to go back when her space shuttle conked. With air to breath, a roof on their head and food and water...it seemed blissful here.

"But why, mom!" he had exclaimed when he heard the story first.

Thoughtfully, she said, "I don't know... The "I am great" business was getting to me I suppose. People have a super I."

"Super Eye!" her son had exclaimed. She could see his mind ticking, trying to imagine those insignificant dots made up entirely of the eye. She laughed. "Not eye, like this," she had tried explaining, pointing to her eye, "but AI...me!"

He had frowned, not comprehending anything. He was more excited by the fact that in some places, the "microbes" were clustered together, and in some others, sparse and in smaller pockets.

She had looked up at the sky once again. God was there somewhere... probably. Is this how they looked to him? Small, miniscule, insignificant microbes, living out their common destiny, battling in the belief that only their I mattered?

She sighed, glad of the quiet. Wondering if in this solitude, she were not living out her I completely?