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Showing posts from March, 2018
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           Grandparents. There are many emotions and memories this word or combination of words evoke. But mostly the association is with warmth, care, indulgence, great food and innumerable stories. My brother and I had the good fortune of having both sets of our grandparents around till 2013. I spent the first ten years of my life in a joint family with my paternal grandparents and as the only granddaughter, I was my Ajoba's pet. We visited my mother's parents only once a year since during the summer vacations but the time we spent with them was precious. My Dada (maternal grandfather)was an extremely intelligent and well-read man and he used to keep his two pesky grandchildren occupied with stories of Mirza the magician, a man and his adventures he made up on an everyday basis. I understand now that this was also to make sure my mother could perhaps take a shower or eat her breakfast in peace. My grandfathers were both adventurous men. They moved out of their
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Dear Aadu, Next week will mark a year since I lost what I thought was going to be my dream job. Over the past six years in Singapore, I have struggled immensely to find and keep jobs, and after a long period of struggle, I thought that this was finally going to be the pot of ‘honey’ at the end of a rather dark tunnel. After all, it was a writing job, it was a small expat company, my colleagues were mostly women and mothers who were open to working with some flexibility. But unfortunately, about five weeks after I went through two rounds of interviews and one written test, I was told that I wasn’t good enough, and had to leave. I am aware of my shortcomings. It was a completely new environment, I was returning after a long maternity break and perhaps it took me longer than allowed to settle in. I was overwhelmed with the work, the new technology; I made typos and spelling mistakes, but never missed a deadline. Ironically, just when I was doing things right I was told that