Skip to main content

Packed Lunches


Mimi's photoblog of lunches she packs for her school going kids had been inspirational for me when I first saw it. I pack J's lunch for her every morning, try to make it aesthetically pleasing but come nowhere close to Mimi. She is gifted. But the idea of packing a lunch that looks different each day, getting children excited about what they might discover in their lunch box is definitely worth emulating.

The act of preparing and packing a lunch for J, takes me back to my own childhood. I thought then that my mother had the perfect life, that I was at its epicenter and her universe revolved around me.

Most of those illusions were dispelled with time and maturity. I learnt how she overcame the challenges of her circumstances to preserve the illusion of harmony amid chaos and create things of beauty mainly using her imagination. I may not have always been the focal point of her existence like I thought but I was always abundantly loved.

There is to me a certain Zen about arranging baby carrots, grapes and broccoli and make it all look like a smiley face; just like a sand Mandala blown away, the ride on the school bus will undo your efforts completely.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
You should also check out Vegan Lunch Box:
http://veganlunchbox.blogspot.com/
7:28 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...
25 comments
Read more