Chumi Lakshmi

As the rest of the family and I were wishing one of my aunt’s for her birthday on the family WhatsApp group today, one of them asked what presents she got from the husband and son. To which she said her husband himself is a gift. Well done on being noble mami. Too bad the rest of the world is not like that. My response to that was spontaneous, not that it would have been any different even if I thought first before speaking. What more could you expect from someone like me other than to have my way in it. Pls don’t spoil the market for the rest of the world, especially me. Here I am, 2 weeks after my birthday, still holding on to my husband’s amazon log in and adding things to his wish list which will ultimately head over to the order basket, while short listing the list of things I could possibly ask my mother as my birthday present. I genuinely started thinking why is it that I’m so obsessed with presents. I don’t remember when I first started this, but all I know is that...

 When my alarm woke me up at 7am yesterday morning, it was a reminder that I had made plans to go to a new place that morning and I was going to spend sometime with my G’ma after. I had hundreds of reasons to not go out that morning. I slept late, I was tired, it was too early in the morning to get out of bed (7am is early when you are not working or studying anymore), it’s a new place, I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to, I can surely sleep in on a Sunday, it’s ok if I don’t go today, I can meet them some other time, I am lazy …. Were some of the examples of that hundreds of reasons. The fact was that I was lazy and I was taking things for granted. I eventually decided not to play dead while lying there on bed and cheating myself and got out of bed at 8.15am, rushed to get ready and left home at 8.50am. During my 45 minutes journey, all I could think of was about bed and breakfast. It’s was a Sunday morning and the roads were free… obviously.. cos everyone was sleeping in exc...

“Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” Exodus 14:11 I couldn’t help but laugh when I read that. I didn’t laugh because I was mocking the Israelites, or at their unsteadiness and doubt. But it was because I heard God speak to me through those verses; “Oh you poor kid, have I not promised to you? Have I not told you? Have I not remind you for the umpteenth time, that with my mighty hands, I will deliver you? That I will have my way executed in your life because that’s what you chose from the beginning? Have you not already seen the things that I have done in your life? Have you forgotten the fulfilled promises in your life?“ As I lay in bed, I recalled the story of how Moses was leading the Israelites out of Egypt. What started off as 70 Israelites migrating to Egypt, ended up as 6 lakhs men (excluding women and children) after 430 year. They were slaves to Pharaoh over those years. The kind of slaves who were ill-t...

Giving and receiving dowry has been an age-old tradition. Age old as in really age old! Something that has been religiously followed for generation after generation and centuries after centuries surely cannot be changed. But there have been some changes in the very reason of asking/giving dowry and people’s attitude and mind-set about it. What I slowly came to realize was that the girls parents were giving so much money, household utensils, jewellery and clothes all in the name of dowry to make sure their girl is well dressed and well settled when she starts her new life with her new family. Its not that the groom’s family don’t have vessels or money, it’s that the girls parents take it as their responsibility to provide for the daughter initially. I only came to realize this when I was getting married myself. We were out and about doing shopping for the wedding and the reception, and I found myself looking at more clothes and sarees, which would be appropriate to be worn af...

I was about 16 when the Internet was very cautiously disclosed to me. I was personally tutored to create an email id, and taught about some safe sites such as yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail. Not a word about about Google or YouTube though. Come to think of it, I don’t think YouTube existed back then yet. And definitely nothing about what was then infamously known IRC chat, ICQ, MSN messenger and so on. But what are friends for if they don’t teach you the most important and useless things all at the same time right? My friends and I used to gather around the PC to ‘study’. By studying, I obviously mean chatting on that nonsensical IRC chat and ICQ. Our internet usage time was strictly monitored, not only for safety’s sake and for economical sake as well. Internet in my generation came along with a modem and it was charged according to usage. It was also hopelessly slow! Eventually, Malaysian telecoms grew some sense to quickly adapt to foreign countries’ fast speed Internet. There we...