I Remember Ajji

If you saw her, she would look nothing out of the ordinary. Your average south Indian, traditional, religious-minded old lady. Short – barely 5 feet tall, all skin and bone thanks to her constant fasts for the wellbeing of someone or other in the family but with gorgeous bone structure that kept her looking lovely and graceful well into her eighties. Clad in a traditional cotton saree, usually in a faded colour, with the typical diamond nosepin and earrings adding their discreet sheen to her face. Thrifty to the core, someone who’d walk two miles rather than spend the money on bus or auto fare. She looked like your average south Indian grandmother, and for many years, that’s all I thought she was, my loving but somewhat boring, somewhat distant granny.

As a child, I never understood how affectionate she was inside, though one takes for granted that one is loved by the family in general. I used to find it very boring to go to her place, where there were no kids around and not much to do apart from read. There were always cats and kittens around her house, and she used to feed then kitchen scraps – the cream skimmed off the milk, curd rice, bits of bread left over from grandpa’s breakfast…She used to love those old cats and when I was a child, I saw her petting them till they purred with satisfaction but hugs and kisses to me and my sister or our other cousins were rare. Her south Indian upbringing didn’t allow for lavish gestures and hugs and ‘I love you’s, so she showed her love for us by cooking the most incredible dishes – simple and yet deliciously laced with her affection so that they tasted extraordinary.

I didn’t have a lot to speak with her about as I grew to be a teenager – her usual advice at the end of my stay used to be ‘be good and obey your parents’ – not very conducive to the rebel in the family! Her love of fun used to show itself in muted ways – the way her eyes would light up when she saw a nice garden, or her shy laugh when I cracked a joke. She had this old-fashioned thing about laughing or smiling so hard that her teeth showed J so she would part-cover her mouth when she laughed. I still cringe at the memory of my 18^th summer – my mom told her I was a good dancer so ajji wanted to see that. The trouble was that I am good at dancing at parties – you know, completely unstructured, arms flailing, but it looks alright in a dimly lit room with loud music. In the cold harsh light of a Bangalore afternoon, with no music (no music system) except for my discordant humming, no one except a doting grandmom would have appreciated it – and she did!

She came from an extremely traditional, orthodox family – family legend has it she once fainted while passing by a butcher’s shop, and she used to refuse to buy watermelon because it was red like meat. She never ate ‘outside’ food except at family weddings, she never had anything but a lemonade or coffee when she visited anyone because travelling to their place had defiled her ‘madi’ state. Whenever she and grandpa cam and stayed with us, I used to get a little tense because I was never sure about all the rules to be followed, though she’d never have dreamt of telling me anything – it wasn’t her style to complain or try to change other people, she just followed her rules as best she could.

Given that background, it is incredible to what extent she adapted with changing times. When I and A were getting married, after her initial reluctance, she came around and later her biggest regret was that she had not attended the wedding. Despite her aversion to eating out anywhere, especially in a home that cooks eggs and occasionally non-veg, she would come over and eat whatever I had cooked with relish. She’d come out with us to a restaurant and enjoy sipping some juice and being part of the occasion. I remember watching Taare Zameen Par and the colorized Mughal-e-Azam with her – she loved them both. She enjoyed celebrating festivals with us whenever she visited Delhi, and one of my cherished photos of her is one where she is cuddling my two year old son and both of them are watching Deepavali fireworks with identical looks of wonder on their faces. I had written a blog post about her cooking, especially her Uppittu – self-effacing to the core, she felt shy instead of proud and wondered how I had found so much to say about this everyday dish, and managed to even leave a comment on my blog.

She and grandpa came to stay with my parents when my eldest son was born, and she was just incredible. From bathing the baby or helping mom to bathe him to helping whip up all the special food that a new mother has to eat, from giving me the world’s best oil massages to rocking the baby to sleep for hours, she did it all with enthusiasm. Chubbocks was a very cranky baby and would barely sleep. One afternoon, I woke up after a rare nap of almost three hours wondering where the baby was. I found him fast asleep on ajji’s lap – he’d been sleeping there the entire time, and she hadn’t even moved a muscle, intent on letting me get my rest.

It was with my children that I saw her really unwind and have fun, with all the playfulness of her nature. She would hug and kiss them, play games, tell them stories, listen to their prattle with unfeigned enthusiasm, chatter away with them, bathe them and generally revel in being with them. Since she no longer had to be the grandmother, she could be this delightful older playmate for them, and she loved seeing their photos, watching videos of them…It was during these times, after I too had become a mother that I got to know her as a person, not just grandma, and she was truly an amazing woman.

Her sense of fun and enjoyment that became apparent to me only as I grew older and able to look past the image. Through her reminisces about her childhood, I learnt that she had been quite a tomboy in her youth, climbing trees and sneaking off to learn how to cycle. Carrying that streak to her adulthood, adventurous and enterprising, she had gone off on bus trips, crisscrossing the entire south and all the pilgrimage places of the north all by herself in the 1950s, when her kids were still quite young. She had climbed up to Vaishnodevi on foot at the age of 68, gone to Tezpur by herself to visit my uncle when his first child was expected. Though she was extremely religious, she had a sense of humour and didn’t mind me poking fun at her ‘ekadasi’ fasts by calling them bhukadasi. She kept herself well-informed about current events by watching TV and reading the newspaper cover to cover. Watching a cricket match with her was hilarious – you didn’t know whom to watch and whose commentary to listen to – the TV one or hers. She was so extremely ticklish that I could make her scream just by pretending to tickle her from a distance! She never forgot an anniversary or birthday and would always call me up on those days, speaking hurriedly to save money on the long distance call.

Her frail physique and mild manner hid a very independent and self-reliant nature. She and grandpa lived on their own, and even after grandpa passed away, she lived on her own until last year when she developed a back problem, doing her banking, going to the doctor and the temple and market by herself. When grandpa became increasingly difficult to handle with Azheimer’s, she insisted on looking after him till his last day, though she herself was in her 80s. Mom remembers that two years ago, when they were staying in Bangalore, they mentioned to grandma that they were going to come pick her up that evening to come stay with them as there was a music programme she would enjoy in their neighbourhood. Thrifty and independent, she packed her bag and criss-crossed Bangalore in two buses to land up at their place by afternoon by herself, at the age of 86! She really was one of the last few of the old, hardy stock that South Indians used to be from – I don’t know if any of my generation would count among that.

I can’t believe she’s gone forever and that she won’t be around almost like a benediction in my life. I hope she knew that I admired her enormously, though she would self-deprecatingly say “I don’t see why’. I hope she knew how much I loved her and enjoyed having her in my life. I hope she’s at peace wherever she is now – I don’t know anyone who deserves that more.

 

 

Parenting Styles

I didn’t really know how hard this parenting gig was going to be when I blithely signed up for it. I mean, I’ve raised puppies and survived a younger sister, how hard could it be, right? And then, the serial hobbyist in me woke up to the possibilities of this new project in my life, and I bought all the books from What to expect when expecting, the toddler years and Dr Spock to Dr Miriam Stoppard, How to talk so kids will listen. Later, Po Bronson’s Nurture Shock and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers were added to my bursting child-rearing library and there was a wealth of information and recommendations, though some of them clashed with others, and even more of them clashed with my desire or vision of myself as a parent.

Frankly, I came to parenthood reluctantly. I wasn’t ready to give up my inner (or outer) child and become a calm, rational adult at all times, especially one who was expected to be a role model of the kind of behavior I wanted from kids. I wanted to continue having my tantrums as and when required. But there were some things I was clear on from the start. I have a horror of spoilt kids – right from Duryodhana in the Mahabharata who’s like the poster boy of kid-spoilage. I can’t bear the specimens of desi kids I see running amuck in fastfood restaurants and dashing into you as you carefully stagger to your table juggling overfull glasses of liquids and ill-balanced dishes full of stain-prone food, making the two yard course to the table like the hurdles at the Olympics. I hate seeing a family of 1 or 2 kids eternally accompanied by the nanny whose unfortunate job it is to keep the wailing baby outside the restaurant while the parents and left-over, non-weepy kid gorge inside. By and large, I disapprove of the very rambly routine followed by many desi parents at social events, where kids stay up all hours while getting crankier and crankier, until everyone is silently pleading with themselves for the kids and their keepers to leave. And the countless late-night or age-inappropriate movies where I see parents filing in with kids – don’t get me started. Really, is watching that movie so damn important that you have to subject the rest of us to the incessant popcorn, Pepsi and loo demands of your child, or that you have to subject a 6 year old to a movie about fratricide (Race)???

On the other hand, I didn’t want a routine so strict that I would feel stifled by it. I didn’t want to be like a strict parent of a school classmate whose usual rejoinder to anything that sounded even the least bit fun was ‘Ye hamare ghar mein not allowed hai’! I didn’t want kids so bound by routine that their routine would ball-and-chain us either to the house, the same routine wherever we were, or a set of things central to the routine that we would be doomed to lug around the world. I wanted kids who were adaptable, fun, curious, independent and yet well-behaved, well-mannered. Yes, I dreamed of puppets who had buttons for ‘sleep’, ‘eat’, ‘behave’ and ‘be charming’. Well, that was a good daydream while it lasted!

Over the years, I realized that the advice in the books was mostly being disregarded by me as I went my way, for my convenience. I figured that I was really not the most maternal person in the world. In fact, sometime last year, I told A that I’m a bad mother. And then I started to wonder, if I think of myself as a bad mother, that means I have certain expectations of my role as a mother that I’m not fulfilling. What are those?

I wasn’t being an active parent, I was quite happy to let them play by themselves, use the kitchen utensils as toys or musical instruments while I got on with cooking or whatever. I was really at peace curled up with a book while they banged their toys around or raced through the house on their tricycles. Worse, my life doesn’t revolve around my kids – I have no qualms telling them to pipe down if I’m on the phone and they want to start a conversation at that moment. I have a reasonably active social life which involves them staying at home, and frankly I enjoy working full time, traveling out of the city on work or even just to get away from home for a break, all by myself. I don’t spend all my time away from them thinking or worrying about them. While they have a schedule, it's not iron-clad, especially on weekends or holidays. Speaking on the defensive, I do quite a few things with them, from bedtime stories and sing-alongs to picnics in the park, cooking together and so on. But my entire being isn’t taken up by my role as a parent, and that seemed to be the fundamental difference between a good and bad parent. At some level, the fact that I no longer even felt guilty about those things made me feel worse about my ability as a parent.

Then, very recently, I came across this book called Bringing up bebe. It’s an account of an American mom who lives in France and catalogues the very different approach to parenting that she sees there. As per the book, French parents first and foremost do not believe in feeling guilty about every activity they perform that does not revolve around kids – the recognize that parents continue to be people, first and foremost, and they need other activities apart from child rearing in their lives. So whether it’s work, socializing or a break and time away from the kids, there’s no guilt or need to feel guilt about it. Secondly, their approach to parenting is about integrating the children into their life and socializing them, rather than create a separate social milieu built around the children’s convenience and fancies. They teach their kids to adjust, rather than adjusting themselves to fit the child’s worldview. They have no problem telling a child to wait for attention, if they’re busy, rather than springing to attention like a toy soldier. They don’t believe everything a child says or does is worthy of a response, applause or praise…Third, they don’t believe in ‘spoiling’ their child – they inculcate manners and courtesy from the beginning, don’t overload them with toys and what-have-you, do not make special menus for children but teach them to appreciate good food like any adult would. Most importantly, they do believe in a healthy sense of independence, responsibility and freedom. So once the rules are set, there’s plenty of room for free play, curiosity; the kids are taught to play by themselves and amuse themselves…

Suddenly, a light switched on in my brain. I thought – all the parenting books I have so far are from America, by American authors! They have a very different approach to parenting, and that’s why I have been thinking of myself as a bad parent. When I looked at the French style of parenting, suddenly it all clicked into place for me. It was a complete epiphany. It also made me think a little bit about how we new-gen parents approach the whole parenting thing – a little too seriously, sometimes, and perhaps a little too much reliance one external wisdom, at the beginning. It’s become like a project or a sense of purpose for which we were seeking, and suddenly, in our quest to excel, we become hyper, start reading parenting books from other cultures, and adopting them blindly. Anthropologist Meredith Small says, "The cultural milieu, then, is a powerful and barely studied force that molds how we parent." Transplanting those parenting codes to a different cultural mileu, without understanding the cultural context, is like learning a foreign language from the dictionary! That was true of me at least – while I didn’t adopt the parenting style, I certainly started judging myself by those styles and finding myself lacking.

I’m feeling a lot more at ease with my parenting style  - I’ve always been a Francophile, so if my parenting style is a little French, good for me, non? Now if only I could emulate Parisian chic, my life would be – as zey say – fantastique!

PS. The new book I’m reading: How Eskimos keep their babies warm – Parenting wisdom from around the world. May as well expand my knowledge base, eh? Hasta la vista!!

Puddi - reading trouble

I'm getting a little worried about Puddi and her reading ability. To put it into context, she is a very bright child, very active, pretty articulate and enjoys writing long, long letters or stories. But put her in front of a book and it becomes a test of patience for both her and me. She doesn't seem to recognise words when they recur from one page to another, she struggles over what I would consider simple words and most worrying of all, she doesn't seem to enjoy the experience. Her resistance is very passive-aggressive but real for all that. he is distracted, doesn't remember from one moment to the next what line she is on...

I don't really know what to make of it. In our house, we are surrounded, not to say invaded, by books of all kinds. I pretty much always have my nose in half a dozen books, Chubbocks is a big reader and A used to be before work pressure got to him. We have a pretty huge selection of children's reading material of all levels too.

What psyches me more, is whether I'm making too big a deal out of it, because my scale is all wrenched out of shape. Chubbocks is an advanced reader for his age and started being a fluent reader by age 5, if I remember correctly - he's now finished all the Harry Potters, the Percy Jacksons and several of the classics and is way ahead of his reading age. Bojjandi too seems to be raching ahead and recently finished reading two full books. More, he is avidly into the experience and whatever he is doing, if there is any object with letters on it - newspaper, carton of juice, packet of tea - he is busy piecing the phonetic sounds of the letters together and making sense of them. he can even read words that I would consider rather advanced for his age, like favourite or dinosaur. At night when we read bedtime stories to the kids, he is often peering over our shoulders to try and read them by himself. My nephew R, too, is a very advanced reader - last summer when I visited him, he raced through The Magic Faraway tree in one afternoon, at just five and a half years old.

Given that, I don't know if I'm making a big deal out of nothing for poor Puddi - for all I know, she may be going at an average speed for her age? Or she may have some sort of learning disability when it comes to letters and needs to get help? Either way, I think it's time to stop worrying and take some action. Planning to meet her teacher next week at school and discuss the issue.

Jackie - Oh

Jackie appeared in our house quite by divine intervention. His mom Roohi was owned by our domestic help, and when she fell pregnant all too early, my sister decided to take charge of her health. Eventually after Roohi gave birth to Jackie and his 7 siblings, our help decided to gift us one of the pups and we picked the one living male of the litter. It still seems like yesterday that all of these tiny little bundles of fur and shrill yaps were crawling all over our house, piddling everywhere and attacking poor Roohi with ravenous cries any time she so much as stuck her nose out of doors. Jackie, though the eldest and biggest, was also the snooziest of the lot. He seemed to spend all of his time sleeping in the cloth-lined cardboard box that was his first home. There were Julie – eventually adopted by our other domestic help; Mooshi – thus named because her tail was bitten off by a rat when she was newborn, and several others whose names I can no longer recall. Liquid-eyed, soft, snowy-white, wriggly little creatures who could fit into our palm, and who spent the day perilously snoozing on top of each other.

Once Jackie moved into our house, he began demonstrating his personality despite his innate snooziness. He used to love to curl up in the scant space that my dad, staunchly south Indian, insisted on leaving between the bed and the wall. I used to worry lest someone should move the bed all the way back, squishing the poor guy – thankfully that didn’t happen. As he started teething, he also developed a bit of a temper and hated being left home alone. In revenge he bit off corners of our rubber slippers – for years we wore shoes ‘designed by Jackie Oh’ – and on one memorable occasion, ate through the leg of one of our sofa chairs and a rosewood whatnot. I discovered these depradations in horror, as the first one home, and quickly set to work with Cherry Blossom Brown so we could conceal the crime from our parents.

Over time, Jackie grew bigger and bigger – 21 kilos at his peak, and 4 feet from tip to tail – quite a feat for a pup born of two Spitz parents. Our ex-army vet figured out that he was a Samoyed – go figure! He was also extremely emotional, though less demonstrative in his younger days. I still remember the hunger strike he went on when we left him behind at the old house for 3 days while we were busy settling the new one – we had to make an emergency rescue. He was also pretty smart, quite apart from learning tricks like shaking hands and ‘shitting down’ on command ( our domestic help was Bengali so his English pronunciation was a bit off; we discovered to our amusement that Jackie never understood it when we said ‘sit down’ but ‘shit down’ worked like a charm!). He was an amazing communicator, especially with Dad who grew to understand his myriad moods very well. Our vet who was very fond of him, used to call him a real gentleman – he would be super-patient whenever we took him to the vet for his checkups and so on.  He also rarely attacked a dog smaller than him even when he was attacked, but woe betide a large dog that got across him, Jackie wouldn’t give any quarter.

When Chubbocks was born, we went to stay at my parents house, as per custom. Jackie was supposed to stay in the living room, but no sooner had Chubbocks crossed the threshold, than Jackie adopted him. He insisted on sleeping in our room. If Chubbocks started crying, Jackie would stand worriedly by his crib, trying to figure out how to soothe the little guy. Chubbocks used to sleep in an old-fashion cloth sling, hung above our bed. Every night, before going to bed, Jackie made it a point to peep in, front paws resting on our bed so he could get the required height boost, and poke his nose in to check if Chubbocks was inside, before curling up to sleep himself. In fact, any time Jackie went out of the room, he would come back and check on Chubbocks like a mother hen. Once, my grandmother decided to keep Chubbocks with her since he was a cranky baby, and let me get some sleep in the afternoon. Jackie came into my room from somewhere, peeped into the sling and became frantic at not seeing the baby. He paced back and forth worriedly, until I realized what the matter was. I told him, “Chubbocks is with Ajji in her room.” Immediately, Jackie made a beeline for Ajji’s room, sniffed her lap to ensure the baby was there, and only then could he relax.

Not knowing very much about dogs, we had no clue about establishing hierarchy and so on. I’m not sure he ever thought of any of us as his master, more as his two-legged equals. He was incredibly protective of dad and my sister though. Once when dad was out walking him, I caught up to them from behind. Just as I was planning to pounce, yell and startle dad (yes, I’m still pretty juvenile that way), Jackie turned around and lunged for me with his teeth! Suffice it to say I got startled, not to mention a rent in my new jeans! Another time, Jackie, who was a big, strong specimen, was dragging dad along and dad tripped and fell. A passerby came up to try and help dad, but Jackie wasn’t about to allow any stranger near dad, so the passerby had to retire hurt.

He loved eating, that was his big vice. Sweets were an especial weakness, and whenever he heard a mithai box being opened, he would materialize instantly from wherever he was. In fact, once when wehad gotten up and gone to the door to see of diwali guests, we returned to find an entire plate of sweets swallowed up! Biscuits too were a favourite, though he was picky there – he would only eat Parle G – and Mum took to buying cheap local biscuits for my sister and I so she could afford his Parle G habit.

It was one of the worst days of my life when we had to take the decision to put him to sleep – he had multiorgan failure, and while not in a coma, he hadn’t eaten in four-five days. He could barely register our presence and his labored breathing was dreadful to hear. Dad and I were almost forced into it by our vet, who said it didn’t make sense to put it off any longer. He was well over 16 years old, after all. And so we bade farewell to this amazing large-hearted soul who had shared so much with us, unstinting with his love and affection, undemanding yet always there for comfort, to share all our moments happy and sad…I hope he always has someone to pet him wherever he is, and give him his daily ration of biscuits and lots of hugs…