Saw TZP over the weekend ( review on We are like this only) which led us to reminisce about the teachers we had through school. It was a mixed bag - there were some who were truly inspiring, there were some who were lazy or boring or just plain cruel, and there were some who made you feel ten feet tall...
There was Mrs. Bhattacharya, who used to teach science or something. Quite the sadist, if she found that someone hadn't done their homework, she used to bang their head against the wall. Her nephew was in my section and used to come in for this treatment quite regularly. The Hindi teachers, way back in primary school, would give you poor marks if you expressed an honest opinion, as opposed to the 'ratta' answers they had dictated to each question.
Pankaj Sir - who taught maths - was known as Paan Chabau because of his habit of chewing paan, and woe betide you if you sat next to a window. Streams of paan would come flying past at any point of time during his class, and you were easily liable to get some red flecks on your white uniform. Our PE teacher, in line with the general trend in Delhi schools, had trouble with his English. Like an 'angrezon ke zamaane ke jailor', he used to divide the class into three halves. If you ever interrupted him in the middle of a conversation, he'd say, "I talk she talk, why you coming middle middle?" He also used to ask for windows to be opened so the climate could come in. He frequently made us do something which I still haven't figured out the real name for - 'Table cards' exercises!
Our maths teacher, Mrs. Kharbanda, loomed large in her stern glasses, plaited greying hair and rather colourful clothes. If you ever asked her a question, she would turn to the class toppers in Maths and ask them if they had understood. As soon as these toadies nodded yes, she'd turn back and say, "If they can understand, why can't you?", and rap you on the knuckles with a wooden ruler. I have a feeling that she was responsible not only for my fear of maths but my feeling, throughout my educational career, that I was not capable of understanding maths.
Mrs. Raman was our chemistry teacher from class 6. An extroverted, fast-talking Tam-Brahm, she really got us all excited about chemistry. She had a way of talking which would make the subject come alive. One of the weird things I remember from her class was a ghost story she narrated about someone who was driving down Purana Quila Road late at night in the winter and suddenly found a white film on the windscreen. When the wipers couldn't wipe it away, the chap got out to wipe it off himself and found it was just not going. Then he realised it was a supernatural presence and started reciting the Gayatri Mantra. The thing vanished and he drove home at a terrific speed. Funny mix of the arcane and the prove-able, eh?
Our English teacher in class 6 was Mrs. Chawla. She used to be stern, with cat-shaped glasses and her salt and pepper hair always in an immaculate French roll. She was no-nonsense and all of us used to be scared of her. One day, right after the exams, she called me up to the board and asked me tio wipe it clean. As I was doing so, she turned to the class and said, "This girl has done something I didn't think any of you were capable of." I froze in place, wondering what terrible thing I had done. She went on, "She has come first in all four sections in English, and scored over 70%." I was so relieved I hadn't committed any sacrilege that it took a while for the news to sink in. Our English teachers always used to be fun - young, excited about the subject and thrilled if they found someone who showed any signs of prowess.
I continued my love affair with English teachers through my years at American school too. There was Mrs. Morano - one of the original flower children, and I wouldn't be surprised if she'd gone to Woodstock. She taught Advanced English, and made us read Romeo and Juliet and A Separate Peace, The Catcher in the Rye and the Bible. She gave me a special assignment once to read and interpret part of Milton's Paradise Lost. Mrs. Banck was more easy-going and lots of fun, and again, passionate about her subject. She took us through Beowulf and Macbeth, Shakespearean sonnets and the Romantic poets. As a result of the English teachers I have had, I have always loved reading and writing and the analysis of literature - it seems like something that is necessary for a full life.
So much of who we become and what we enjoy gets shaped by our school days. The attitude of teachers towards each and every student is so important in shaping that person's view of himself or herself, in their self-esteem and how they perceive their own abilities. The impact of the school days and school teachers is lifelong. If only we as a society would recognise the criticality of the function they perform, and pay them fittingly for the influence they have on our children...
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Promises, promises...
The end of the year is an interesting time for me. Typically your work-related appraisals happen now - where you appraise your team and get appraised by your boss. Together you review what you set out to do or accomplish in the past year, and what you have managed. You also look at a SWOT - strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats - and chart out a growth and development plan for the next year. Most people hate this time of year, but I personally like this process. I feel that you can't plan where you're going unless you know where you've been. Doing this at work is one thing, but I have never done it on a personal level. I never got into the hoopla of New year resolutions either.
But this year, with two kids and a busy life, it occurs to me that I should learn something from the process and apply it to myself as a mother, wife and daughter. I need to appraise what I have been doing all year versus what I should be doing ( as defined by the kind of human being I want to become), and to set goals for the next year. I need to make certain promises to myself, to my husband and to my kids and then see over the course of the year whether or not I have managed to keep them. And I need to make promises to myself too. The Bible has a lovely story called the Parable of Talents, whose message is that each of us is given a certain talent by God. If we do not make the best use of it that we can, it is the same as not having been gifted that talent in the first place - which is not only a disrespect to God but a disrespect to oneself. So keeping that in mind, let me think about the good and bad and sort out the things I need to do.
Things to change:
1. I need to listen more and worry about clean hands less. When Chubbocks and his little sister are busy trying to tell me about their day, I need to stop looking at their mud-encrusted hands in shock and horror and open my mind to their words and expressions. Soap and a cast-iron digestion will take care of the rest.
2. I need to spend more active time with them, teaching them things. I used to be more active about it when I worked part time and of late have played a much more passive role.
3. I need to be less impatient, especially with Chubbocks. He really is a pretty good kid and extremely well-behaved for the most part. (NB - that applies to A also).
4. I need to worry less about Chubbocks's eating. He won't eat more if I worry more, and worrying less will certainly aid my digestion.
5. I need to be more strict with Chubbocks about his TV watching.
6. I need to be more regular with ensuring Chubbocks takes things to school for show and tell. I also need to help him with his developmental needs as set out by his teachers - not getting distracted, completing work on time...
7. We need to take Puddi about with us more. It is a problem stage because she loves running about and picks up the most inappropriate things, but she needs it.
8. We need to be more organised about our mountain of family photographs, and they need to be labelled and to be taken out and enjoyed at frequent intervals.
9. I need to try and be more organised about paperwork, especially financially related, and about my clothes.
10. I need to spend less...money.
11. I need to - every now and then - just put down everything I'm in a frenzy over and try to answer one fundamental question - Will this matter to me three years from now? And take a deep breath.
12. I need to get on that treadmill and get ready to participate in the 2008 Delhi Marathon.
Things to continue:
11. Laughing and playing with my kids, husband and parents.
12. Spending time in and effort on the garden. It really nourishes the parts other things can't reach.
13. Experimenting in the kitchen - that gives me both mental and heart satisfaction - mental because it's creative, heart because for all the feminist vibe, it warms the cockles of my heart to see my family relish something I have cooked with my own two hands.
14. Writing - it's something I stopped doing a while back and rediscovered a couple of years ago. It satisfies a deep-rooted need in me, and the creative urge to write has only gotten stronger with each blog or page of story that I write.
15. Saying I love you to the most improtant people in my life regularly. Even if they know it. Even if I forget it.
But this year, with two kids and a busy life, it occurs to me that I should learn something from the process and apply it to myself as a mother, wife and daughter. I need to appraise what I have been doing all year versus what I should be doing ( as defined by the kind of human being I want to become), and to set goals for the next year. I need to make certain promises to myself, to my husband and to my kids and then see over the course of the year whether or not I have managed to keep them. And I need to make promises to myself too. The Bible has a lovely story called the Parable of Talents, whose message is that each of us is given a certain talent by God. If we do not make the best use of it that we can, it is the same as not having been gifted that talent in the first place - which is not only a disrespect to God but a disrespect to oneself. So keeping that in mind, let me think about the good and bad and sort out the things I need to do.
Things to change:
1. I need to listen more and worry about clean hands less. When Chubbocks and his little sister are busy trying to tell me about their day, I need to stop looking at their mud-encrusted hands in shock and horror and open my mind to their words and expressions. Soap and a cast-iron digestion will take care of the rest.
2. I need to spend more active time with them, teaching them things. I used to be more active about it when I worked part time and of late have played a much more passive role.
3. I need to be less impatient, especially with Chubbocks. He really is a pretty good kid and extremely well-behaved for the most part. (NB - that applies to A also).
4. I need to worry less about Chubbocks's eating. He won't eat more if I worry more, and worrying less will certainly aid my digestion.
5. I need to be more strict with Chubbocks about his TV watching.
6. I need to be more regular with ensuring Chubbocks takes things to school for show and tell. I also need to help him with his developmental needs as set out by his teachers - not getting distracted, completing work on time...
7. We need to take Puddi about with us more. It is a problem stage because she loves running about and picks up the most inappropriate things, but she needs it.
8. We need to be more organised about our mountain of family photographs, and they need to be labelled and to be taken out and enjoyed at frequent intervals.
9. I need to try and be more organised about paperwork, especially financially related, and about my clothes.
10. I need to spend less...money.
11. I need to - every now and then - just put down everything I'm in a frenzy over and try to answer one fundamental question - Will this matter to me three years from now? And take a deep breath.
12. I need to get on that treadmill and get ready to participate in the 2008 Delhi Marathon.
Things to continue:
11. Laughing and playing with my kids, husband and parents.
12. Spending time in and effort on the garden. It really nourishes the parts other things can't reach.
13. Experimenting in the kitchen - that gives me both mental and heart satisfaction - mental because it's creative, heart because for all the feminist vibe, it warms the cockles of my heart to see my family relish something I have cooked with my own two hands.
14. Writing - it's something I stopped doing a while back and rediscovered a couple of years ago. It satisfies a deep-rooted need in me, and the creative urge to write has only gotten stronger with each blog or page of story that I write.
15. Saying I love you to the most improtant people in my life regularly. Even if they know it. Even if I forget it.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Coloured thoughts
Yesterday was a Christmas fest at Chubbocks's school, with grandparents especially invited to attend. As usual Chubs insisted on wearing his uniform rather than dress up, and sure enough, when we got to school, everyone else was dressed up in red and green, and there was Chubs in his purple sweater...! I sure bought temporary peace in the morning by letting him have his way but later at school, I got an earful from him about how I had put him in his uniform. Can't win.
Of course, he did stand out from the sea of red. By the way, his new filling between his front teeth had fallen out day before when our friend butted his teak head into my parents' bed ( did I mention, the headboard has a 6 inch wide crack in it now?), so he was back to being known as hole-in-the-teeth by his friends.
Puddi had been tagged on to the jingbang since she loves going to his school. She was busy walking around the grounds with a proprietorial air as if to say, "This is my school".
After the carol singing ( cute but discordant), came the art activities - painting, colouring, making sparkly candles and such. Chubbocks picked up a lovely christmas tree to colour. He has a definite talent for art which we noticed a while back and encouraged by giving him water colour paints and crayons to work with. All the spare paper in office ( the wasted printouts etc) are commandeered by me as his art paper. Some months ago, when he was still in playschool, he had made a gorgeous painting, mixing up interesting combinations of colours and coming up with what he called 'Happy'. Yesterday, he painstaking coloured inside the lines of the christmas tree. He used some lovely colours and made sure he didn't leave any spots uncoloured, but somewhere the artist and freespirit in me was weeping when I saw how careful he was being to colour inside the lines. Even when I tried to tell him it was ok to colour anywhere he liked, he insisted that ma'am had said they were supposed to only colour inside the lines.
Part of me knows I'm overreacting and that it won't permanently kill his creativity if he learns to stick to the instructions. And a very small part of me, truly a very small part, is a little bit sad that ma'am is now his arbiter of behaviour and not mom. But mostly I'm wondering why they have to learn to colour inside the lines, and why they should get points for doing so, rather than for creativity and expressiveness and being their own, wonderfully quirky and different little selves. What do you think?
As an aside, later at home, he drew a grey-violet something which he said if you looked at right side up was a house on fire, and from the side, was a playground. So weird quirkiness seems to be alive and well.
Of course, he did stand out from the sea of red. By the way, his new filling between his front teeth had fallen out day before when our friend butted his teak head into my parents' bed ( did I mention, the headboard has a 6 inch wide crack in it now?), so he was back to being known as hole-in-the-teeth by his friends.
Puddi had been tagged on to the jingbang since she loves going to his school. She was busy walking around the grounds with a proprietorial air as if to say, "This is my school".
After the carol singing ( cute but discordant), came the art activities - painting, colouring, making sparkly candles and such. Chubbocks picked up a lovely christmas tree to colour. He has a definite talent for art which we noticed a while back and encouraged by giving him water colour paints and crayons to work with. All the spare paper in office ( the wasted printouts etc) are commandeered by me as his art paper. Some months ago, when he was still in playschool, he had made a gorgeous painting, mixing up interesting combinations of colours and coming up with what he called 'Happy'. Yesterday, he painstaking coloured inside the lines of the christmas tree. He used some lovely colours and made sure he didn't leave any spots uncoloured, but somewhere the artist and freespirit in me was weeping when I saw how careful he was being to colour inside the lines. Even when I tried to tell him it was ok to colour anywhere he liked, he insisted that ma'am had said they were supposed to only colour inside the lines.
Part of me knows I'm overreacting and that it won't permanently kill his creativity if he learns to stick to the instructions. And a very small part of me, truly a very small part, is a little bit sad that ma'am is now his arbiter of behaviour and not mom. But mostly I'm wondering why they have to learn to colour inside the lines, and why they should get points for doing so, rather than for creativity and expressiveness and being their own, wonderfully quirky and different little selves. What do you think?
As an aside, later at home, he drew a grey-violet something which he said if you looked at right side up was a house on fire, and from the side, was a playground. So weird quirkiness seems to be alive and well.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
An Interesting read
All about us - parents that blog - is an article in NY Times. Do you agree or disagree with the reasons as to why we blog?
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Reluctant Romeo
Tharini's cute post finally made me get off my a and write about some little incidents which have been amusing us lately. Chubbocks, for some reason, has always been a favourite with the girls in his playschool or at the playground at home. He is a relatively gentle boy so maybe that has something to do with it. His proud dad was reporting to me some time back about how when Chubbocks was running around in the park, all the little girls would turn around and watch him, and some of them would bring their candy to share with him only. I think dad was a little j:)
Anyway, a few days ago, one of the little girls in the colony ( all of 3 years old) had gotten all dressed up to attend a wedding. Then this little girl insisted on coming over to our place to show off her finery to Chubbocks, because, "I'm going to marry him when I grow up!" ( Kids really start early these days).
Chubbocks is of course least interested and busy playing by himself. So the little girl comes up to our lady - and complains, saying, please make Chubbocks marry me.
I asked Chubbocks what he said and why. Chubbocks - I don't want to get married. I just want to stay home with you and dad and Puddi.
Grandma - But someday Puddi is going to get married and move away.
Chubbocks - Who's going to let her?
*************************************************************************************
In the same vein...
Many years ago, before A and I were married, we were chatting with some friends who had a little daughter. The husband says, when his daughter starts dating, he's going to follow her around. Ha ha ha.
Another friend says he's going to look for an orphan to marry his daughter so he can be a ghar jamai and the daughter never leaves home. Ha ha ha.
Some time later, after we've had Chubbocks and another couple have had a daughter, the husband says, when she grows up and goes away to hostel to study, I'm going to take up a job as the warden to the hostel. Ha ha ha.
Last year, after Puddi is born, A says, why do girls have to grow up? Why do they have to get married?
I ask - So are you also going to become the hostel warden?
A says - No. Who's going to let her go out of the house anyway?
Joke's on him!
Anyway, a few days ago, one of the little girls in the colony ( all of 3 years old) had gotten all dressed up to attend a wedding. Then this little girl insisted on coming over to our place to show off her finery to Chubbocks, because, "I'm going to marry him when I grow up!" ( Kids really start early these days).
Chubbocks is of course least interested and busy playing by himself. So the little girl comes up to our lady - and complains, saying, please make Chubbocks marry me.
I asked Chubbocks what he said and why. Chubbocks - I don't want to get married. I just want to stay home with you and dad and Puddi.
Grandma - But someday Puddi is going to get married and move away.
Chubbocks - Who's going to let her?
*************************************************************************************
In the same vein...
Many years ago, before A and I were married, we were chatting with some friends who had a little daughter. The husband says, when his daughter starts dating, he's going to follow her around. Ha ha ha.
Another friend says he's going to look for an orphan to marry his daughter so he can be a ghar jamai and the daughter never leaves home. Ha ha ha.
Some time later, after we've had Chubbocks and another couple have had a daughter, the husband says, when she grows up and goes away to hostel to study, I'm going to take up a job as the warden to the hostel. Ha ha ha.
Last year, after Puddi is born, A says, why do girls have to grow up? Why do they have to get married?
I ask - So are you also going to become the hostel warden?
A says - No. Who's going to let her go out of the house anyway?
Joke's on him!
Monday, December 10, 2007
Indian Born Confused Desi
There have been a lot of blog posts on the topic of culture and integration and all that so I thought I would put in my two paise on it.
I'm pretty familiar with the integration game, having been born and brought up in Delhi to Kannadiga parents. My parents were very clear that the mother tongue was kannada, and moreover they hated the 'hinglish' type of language, so we spoke in only one language at a time, which at home tended to be Kannada or English. Hindi was the language de rigueur everywhere else, though in those days, it was considered more hip to speak English with friends. We ate primarily Karnataka food and celebrated all the festivals with great enthusiasm, be it 'gombe koodasodu' for Dasara or Ganesh chathurthi. Mom would invite all her friends, which included a huge bunch of TamBrams for arshna-kumkuma - haldi-kumkum, as well as all our neighbours who were from all parts of the country - Bengalis, Gujaratis, Kashmiris and Punjabis. It was never a matter of either embarassment or superiority to be different from other people in some ways.
At the same time, Holi was celebrated with great gusto, and my parents made sure we had plenty of gulal and pichkaris at home, along with mithai. Christmas was something dad initiated us into, with Jim Reeves playing on the music system through December, and a little Christmas tree at home and presents being snuck under our pillows. Some years we just drew a Christmas tree on green art paper, decorated it with gold and silver foil from cigarette packets and pasted it up on a wall, with tinsel wreaths all over the house. Dad always used to bring home a Christmas Plum Cake, stuffed with nuts and raisins, and it always seemed as special a time of year as Diwali.
My mom's family is a polyglot one - they speak Kannada with grandpa, Telugu with grandma and write to each other in Tamil! My mom was brought up in Delhi and has spent most of her life here - so what does that make her? Of course, when she lived here with her parents, they brought non-assimilation to a new high, mainly because ajji was extremely traditional and orthodox. They weren't allowed to have friends who weren't south indian, they weren't allowed to eat anything outside, with North Indian food a particular taboo, or even fruit and vegetables that ajji considered 'foreign', like watremelon, which looked 'too meaty'. Certainly, the only movies they ever saw was when they were on vacation in Salem, mostly religious ones. Mom rebelled to get her first salwar kameez when she was in post grad!
Now my family is a pretty heterogenous mix. My husband is from the North and Muslim to boot. So if we were to get all het up about identity and integration, I don't know if we'd survive. For us, in a way it's about remaining who we are and being inclusive simultaneously. So we celebrate all festivals that we can, in the ways that we're used to celebrating them. My husband's family is not very religious so on Id they just have an open house rather than go to the masjid. So that's what we do. And he's used to celebrating Diwali and Raksha Bandhan - my sis in law sends him a rakhi from Canada every year. So most of the Hindu festivals, we celebrate with my parents, where they do the puja and mom and I do the festive cooking together, if the festival is a holiday. I want my kids to grow up learning both sets of prayers and more. My favourite memory of school ( I went to Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan) was the Friday prayers which were called SarvaDharma prayers. We had a Sanskrit shloka, a parsi prayer, a Kalma and a hymn, one after the other, and everyone sang along. We still celebrate Christmas at home, with a tree, presents for the kids and a Christmas lunch. The custom in my family with newborns is that the first place you take them is a temple. In our case that just meant place of worship and we wanted to make sure we were neutral and inclsive. So we started out at the Baha'i temple, which is at the other end of town from us, moved down to a Masjid and finally alighted at a south indian temple in RK Puram.
When A and I were in France, I admit there was a huge sense of missing home and therefore we found that all the desis spoke to each other more in Hindi. We got together more often. At the same time, all of us enjoyed our wine and cheese, A freaked on madeleines, we celebrated the Beaujolais nouveau and we loved wandering around the country. On the other hand, I remember back when I lived in Bangkok with my parents, we were the only family from the embassy to even try and learn Thai, while most others grumbled and cribbed that the Thais couldn't speak English.
To me identity is never about either-or, it's about both. A passport needn't mean one thing over another, because one of the things that makes the US interesting is the constant mix of new ideas and perspectives that immigrants supply. If all immigrants were to jettison who they were and what they believed before they came to the US and adopt a 'typically American' attitude, whatever that may be, I think the US would be the loser. It would lose the debates that keep the country thinking and democratic, it would lose the ability to look at itself objectively.
Just because you have a passport from a country doesn't mean you stop noticing the problems or issues. What it does mean though, is that you're part of the problem and need to help solve it. I find plenty to criticise about India though I live here and love my country passionately. I'm pretty vocal about the problems too. Just because an immigrant used to be from another country before he or she got his passport shouldn't mean that they have no right to criticise what they see. It just means that they have to see them as 'our' problems and not 'their' problems.
We know family friends who live and work in Singapore and are citizens of that country.Yet, when their sons turned 14, they sent them off to study elsewhere so their sons could avoid the mandatory 2 year army service. Of course, past that danger-point, the sons came right back and started their careers in Singapore. That, to my mind, is dishonest and unfair. You cannot take all the advantages a place gives you and not give back the basics that the place demands of all citizens.
As far as the rest goes - cultural assimilation and all that - I feel it's a highly individual choice. There are lots of Jewish people in the US who don't celebrate Christmas and that doesn't make them any less American. Celebrating Halloween, on the other hand, doesn't make you any more American. As long as you don't use your different customs as a point of superiority or inferiority, and as long as you see issues as 'ours' and not 'theirs', you're assimilated.
I'm pretty familiar with the integration game, having been born and brought up in Delhi to Kannadiga parents. My parents were very clear that the mother tongue was kannada, and moreover they hated the 'hinglish' type of language, so we spoke in only one language at a time, which at home tended to be Kannada or English. Hindi was the language de rigueur everywhere else, though in those days, it was considered more hip to speak English with friends. We ate primarily Karnataka food and celebrated all the festivals with great enthusiasm, be it 'gombe koodasodu' for Dasara or Ganesh chathurthi. Mom would invite all her friends, which included a huge bunch of TamBrams for arshna-kumkuma - haldi-kumkum, as well as all our neighbours who were from all parts of the country - Bengalis, Gujaratis, Kashmiris and Punjabis. It was never a matter of either embarassment or superiority to be different from other people in some ways.
At the same time, Holi was celebrated with great gusto, and my parents made sure we had plenty of gulal and pichkaris at home, along with mithai. Christmas was something dad initiated us into, with Jim Reeves playing on the music system through December, and a little Christmas tree at home and presents being snuck under our pillows. Some years we just drew a Christmas tree on green art paper, decorated it with gold and silver foil from cigarette packets and pasted it up on a wall, with tinsel wreaths all over the house. Dad always used to bring home a Christmas Plum Cake, stuffed with nuts and raisins, and it always seemed as special a time of year as Diwali.
My mom's family is a polyglot one - they speak Kannada with grandpa, Telugu with grandma and write to each other in Tamil! My mom was brought up in Delhi and has spent most of her life here - so what does that make her? Of course, when she lived here with her parents, they brought non-assimilation to a new high, mainly because ajji was extremely traditional and orthodox. They weren't allowed to have friends who weren't south indian, they weren't allowed to eat anything outside, with North Indian food a particular taboo, or even fruit and vegetables that ajji considered 'foreign', like watremelon, which looked 'too meaty'. Certainly, the only movies they ever saw was when they were on vacation in Salem, mostly religious ones. Mom rebelled to get her first salwar kameez when she was in post grad!
Now my family is a pretty heterogenous mix. My husband is from the North and Muslim to boot. So if we were to get all het up about identity and integration, I don't know if we'd survive. For us, in a way it's about remaining who we are and being inclusive simultaneously. So we celebrate all festivals that we can, in the ways that we're used to celebrating them. My husband's family is not very religious so on Id they just have an open house rather than go to the masjid. So that's what we do. And he's used to celebrating Diwali and Raksha Bandhan - my sis in law sends him a rakhi from Canada every year. So most of the Hindu festivals, we celebrate with my parents, where they do the puja and mom and I do the festive cooking together, if the festival is a holiday. I want my kids to grow up learning both sets of prayers and more. My favourite memory of school ( I went to Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan) was the Friday prayers which were called SarvaDharma prayers. We had a Sanskrit shloka, a parsi prayer, a Kalma and a hymn, one after the other, and everyone sang along. We still celebrate Christmas at home, with a tree, presents for the kids and a Christmas lunch. The custom in my family with newborns is that the first place you take them is a temple. In our case that just meant place of worship and we wanted to make sure we were neutral and inclsive. So we started out at the Baha'i temple, which is at the other end of town from us, moved down to a Masjid and finally alighted at a south indian temple in RK Puram.
When A and I were in France, I admit there was a huge sense of missing home and therefore we found that all the desis spoke to each other more in Hindi. We got together more often. At the same time, all of us enjoyed our wine and cheese, A freaked on madeleines, we celebrated the Beaujolais nouveau and we loved wandering around the country. On the other hand, I remember back when I lived in Bangkok with my parents, we were the only family from the embassy to even try and learn Thai, while most others grumbled and cribbed that the Thais couldn't speak English.
To me identity is never about either-or, it's about both. A passport needn't mean one thing over another, because one of the things that makes the US interesting is the constant mix of new ideas and perspectives that immigrants supply. If all immigrants were to jettison who they were and what they believed before they came to the US and adopt a 'typically American' attitude, whatever that may be, I think the US would be the loser. It would lose the debates that keep the country thinking and democratic, it would lose the ability to look at itself objectively.
Just because you have a passport from a country doesn't mean you stop noticing the problems or issues. What it does mean though, is that you're part of the problem and need to help solve it. I find plenty to criticise about India though I live here and love my country passionately. I'm pretty vocal about the problems too. Just because an immigrant used to be from another country before he or she got his passport shouldn't mean that they have no right to criticise what they see. It just means that they have to see them as 'our' problems and not 'their' problems.
We know family friends who live and work in Singapore and are citizens of that country.Yet, when their sons turned 14, they sent them off to study elsewhere so their sons could avoid the mandatory 2 year army service. Of course, past that danger-point, the sons came right back and started their careers in Singapore. That, to my mind, is dishonest and unfair. You cannot take all the advantages a place gives you and not give back the basics that the place demands of all citizens.
As far as the rest goes - cultural assimilation and all that - I feel it's a highly individual choice. There are lots of Jewish people in the US who don't celebrate Christmas and that doesn't make them any less American. Celebrating Halloween, on the other hand, doesn't make you any more American. As long as you don't use your different customs as a point of superiority or inferiority, and as long as you see issues as 'ours' and not 'theirs', you're assimilated.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Tough Question
You hear so much about poor, tiny little kids who are molested by a close family friend, a relative, or a parent, and very often you feel outraged that the other parent stood by and did nothing, or chose not to believe it. Recently, a small little experience proved to me why this is such a difficult thing for a parent to accept and act upon.
Lately, I have banished myself to the kids' room, because A's snoring has been worse than ever and I really am a light sleeper. Chubbocks and Puddi have been sleeping in our bedroom.
The other day, Puds had a bad diaper rash since she's been spending more time than usual in diapers because of the weather, and was complaining about pain 'down there'. Then it occurred to me that that's what a kid complains of when she's been molested too.
The minute the thought came into my head, I started mentally apologising to A for even having such a thought...And then the realisation flashed - maybe this is what mothers go through ( or fathers) when they hear these statements from their kids. They think, "Oh no, my husband/ wife/ friend would never do this. How could I be such a terrible person to even think of something like this...?" and shut their mind on it. Because it is honestly mind-boggling to be able to bring oneself to think that the people one had known and loved for so long could even be capable of such behaviour. It just doesn't tally with the mental or heart-image of them that we carry around.
But sadly, every baby's dad is not like A. There are indeed some deeply disturbed and depraved people out there walking with 'mom and 'dad' and 'uncle' and 'aunty' tags on.
I don't even know if this is making any sense. Let me clarify - all Puds had was a diaper rash, I'm in no way saying anything else about A. Also, I'm not supporting parents/ carers who refuse to believe or perceive the evidence they see piling up year after year and turn their backs on it because they refuse to rock the boat. But I can understand how that might happen, unless they are overtly confronted with the evidence.
A - sorry for dragging you into this one.
Lately, I have banished myself to the kids' room, because A's snoring has been worse than ever and I really am a light sleeper. Chubbocks and Puddi have been sleeping in our bedroom.
The other day, Puds had a bad diaper rash since she's been spending more time than usual in diapers because of the weather, and was complaining about pain 'down there'. Then it occurred to me that that's what a kid complains of when she's been molested too.
The minute the thought came into my head, I started mentally apologising to A for even having such a thought...And then the realisation flashed - maybe this is what mothers go through ( or fathers) when they hear these statements from their kids. They think, "Oh no, my husband/ wife/ friend would never do this. How could I be such a terrible person to even think of something like this...?" and shut their mind on it. Because it is honestly mind-boggling to be able to bring oneself to think that the people one had known and loved for so long could even be capable of such behaviour. It just doesn't tally with the mental or heart-image of them that we carry around.
But sadly, every baby's dad is not like A. There are indeed some deeply disturbed and depraved people out there walking with 'mom and 'dad' and 'uncle' and 'aunty' tags on.
I don't even know if this is making any sense. Let me clarify - all Puds had was a diaper rash, I'm in no way saying anything else about A. Also, I'm not supporting parents/ carers who refuse to believe or perceive the evidence they see piling up year after year and turn their backs on it because they refuse to rock the boat. But I can understand how that might happen, unless they are overtly confronted with the evidence.
A - sorry for dragging you into this one.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
The answer to life's questions
I was thinking about all the various small and big factors that turn a life into what it is, and I came up with an interesting thought - people who're into literature ought to be better at figuring things out than people who're into maths.
Before the math fiends start pelting me with rotten tomatoes, hear me out...
It's because in math, everything has a logical, objective, right answer, and you're either right or wrong, no other ways about it.
In literature, things are more fuzzy - there are lots of greys, many subjective likes or dislikes and there's no correct answer per se ( except in grammer, which may explain why I hated it so) - it's how you explain it.
Isn't that how most of us go through life, especially as we get older and our eyesight dims a little bit and you realise it's not black and white, there are millions of shades of grey everywhere? You answer questions in your own subjective way, figuring things out, and eventually whatever answer you come up with, you figure out a way to justify it to yourself most of the time. Ambiguous. That's life.
Before the math fiends start pelting me with rotten tomatoes, hear me out...
It's because in math, everything has a logical, objective, right answer, and you're either right or wrong, no other ways about it.
In literature, things are more fuzzy - there are lots of greys, many subjective likes or dislikes and there's no correct answer per se ( except in grammer, which may explain why I hated it so) - it's how you explain it.
Isn't that how most of us go through life, especially as we get older and our eyesight dims a little bit and you realise it's not black and white, there are millions of shades of grey everywhere? You answer questions in your own subjective way, figuring things out, and eventually whatever answer you come up with, you figure out a way to justify it to yourself most of the time. Ambiguous. That's life.
Brave Boy
We noticed some time ago that chubbocks was getting a funny grey mark in between his two front teeth. His teeth are amongst the cutest things about him, so this came as a rude shock and we thought it might be caries, whatever they are. Hauled him off to the neighbourhood dentist, and lo and behold, the little guy had a cavity. The dentist was pretty surprised that he would get a cavity there, but he sure had'em, and the only solution was to clean them out and get them filled in.
In our abysmal ignorance, we asked, "But those are milk teeth. Can't we just wait for them to fall off?" Nope - it turned out milk teeth last until age 7 or 8 so chubbocks had to go through the torture chamber all right.
A took him on the weekend for the cleaning, which left a nice cavity-and-lactobacillus-acidophilae-sized hole between the two teeth. Chubbocks's nice friends were calling him hole-in-the-teeth all of Monday at school Monday evening was my turn to take him to the dentist. I talked up a big game, 'Be brave', and 'it won't hurt a bit'. Chubbocks went smiling in to sit on the rack and I sat all trembly-faced in a corner, watching the goings on. Everey time the dental assistant came close to chubbocks, the little guy would protest and say, "I don't like it." So eventually the assistant was promoted to position of hanger-on and I was the de-facto assistant, which basically consisted of holding chubbocks upper lip off his teeth ( with a cotton pad) and cheerleading him through the process. At one point the dentist turned to me and said, "You should be a teacher or a counselor", as a compliment to my persuasive powers. I was mighty please, naturally, and chubbocks bravely underwent the ordeal so he now has two normal looking front teeth.
Of course, what I didn't tell chubbocks was just how much of a coward his mamma is. The last time I went to a dentist was some 8 years ago. Yes, yes, I know it's bad, but not as bad as having to sit in that chair. I needed a tooth drawn, so I sat in his chair while he prepared some fearsome looking anaesthetic injections. I heard the clacking of metal and saw all manner of sharp, pointy steel objects cluttering his chair. I was just contemplating runnign away to the wilds of the Amazon when the dentist poked his head inside my mouth - well, alright, not his whole head but something, and it hurt like crazy. I whimpered in pain, too scared to yell out loud.
"Is it hurting?" he asks gently.
"Yes", I nod.
"Where?"
"There, inside my jaw where you poked your needle in."
"I haven't touched your mouth with a needle yet - what I used just now was the mirror", said he caustically. Sure enough, that's all it was, the little rounded, bent-backed little dentist's mirror. You think I'm going to let my son know his mamma is such a wuss? How would it sound the next time I threaten to dismember him?
"If you don't finish you food I will rip you into shreds."
"If you rip me into shreds, I'll grow up and turn into a dentist!"
Ulp!!!
In our abysmal ignorance, we asked, "But those are milk teeth. Can't we just wait for them to fall off?" Nope - it turned out milk teeth last until age 7 or 8 so chubbocks had to go through the torture chamber all right.
A took him on the weekend for the cleaning, which left a nice cavity-and-lactobacillus-acidophilae-sized hole between the two teeth. Chubbocks's nice friends were calling him hole-in-the-teeth all of Monday at school Monday evening was my turn to take him to the dentist. I talked up a big game, 'Be brave', and 'it won't hurt a bit'. Chubbocks went smiling in to sit on the rack and I sat all trembly-faced in a corner, watching the goings on. Everey time the dental assistant came close to chubbocks, the little guy would protest and say, "I don't like it." So eventually the assistant was promoted to position of hanger-on and I was the de-facto assistant, which basically consisted of holding chubbocks upper lip off his teeth ( with a cotton pad) and cheerleading him through the process. At one point the dentist turned to me and said, "You should be a teacher or a counselor", as a compliment to my persuasive powers. I was mighty please, naturally, and chubbocks bravely underwent the ordeal so he now has two normal looking front teeth.
Of course, what I didn't tell chubbocks was just how much of a coward his mamma is. The last time I went to a dentist was some 8 years ago. Yes, yes, I know it's bad, but not as bad as having to sit in that chair. I needed a tooth drawn, so I sat in his chair while he prepared some fearsome looking anaesthetic injections. I heard the clacking of metal and saw all manner of sharp, pointy steel objects cluttering his chair. I was just contemplating runnign away to the wilds of the Amazon when the dentist poked his head inside my mouth - well, alright, not his whole head but something, and it hurt like crazy. I whimpered in pain, too scared to yell out loud.
"Is it hurting?" he asks gently.
"Yes", I nod.
"Where?"
"There, inside my jaw where you poked your needle in."
"I haven't touched your mouth with a needle yet - what I used just now was the mirror", said he caustically. Sure enough, that's all it was, the little rounded, bent-backed little dentist's mirror. You think I'm going to let my son know his mamma is such a wuss? How would it sound the next time I threaten to dismember him?
"If you don't finish you food I will rip you into shreds."
"If you rip me into shreds, I'll grow up and turn into a dentist!"
Ulp!!!
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