Books for kids

By now this is becoming a familiar theme on this blog. But the good news - my son has started reading. Of course, like the lazy bum he is, he starts out by protesting that the words are too hard but when I refuse to budge and read to him, he starts off and has read a whole Reading Level 2 book about Lions, and started on the Ladybird edition of Wizard of Oz.

One of the books I rediscovered recently and that we both love reading together is a series called Amelia Bedelia. It's about a young housekeeper named Amelia, who always manages to misunderstand the instructions she is given. For instance, when she is asked to separate the eggs, she carefully puts the 6 eggs in the basket at different corners of the room. When she is told to baste the chicken, she whips out her needle and thread. And when she plays baseball, she is funnier than ever - she runs all the way to her house, when told to take a home run, and argues that stealing is wrong when told to steal a base.

The books are easy reading and loads of fun but they also help build vocabulary and are a great introduction to synonyms and homonyms as well as colloquialisms. I'd recommend them to any beginning reader since the stories are so interesting it keeps kids engaged and wanting to read more.

Cross-posted at The Hungry Bookworm

Puddi's Report Card

I realise a lot of recent posts have been about Chubbocks so I want to redress the balance a little bit. She's been doing a lot of growing up too in the past few weeks. Actually, every minute spent with her is such a delight that it always feels like weekends and evenings are too short.

She has been learning to speak at an amazing pace. I was trying to remember when she actually started talking. I guess she has been communicating through a single word for quite some time now, but she is now at the sentence forming stage. She absorbs everything we tell her, and we can see the little microprocessor chip working at warp speed each time she sees or does something new.

At mom's house last week, she spotted a bowl of flower petals and leapt to the conclusion that it must be a religious object, since we usually keep flower petals ready next to the mandir. Having bowed and genuflected several times in 'Jota', she then grabbed at the bowl, "Gimme this". Last week she had trotted out one of Chubbocks's story books in the morning when we were all riding the early-morning-get-ready rollercoaster. "Kahani Shunai" ( tell me a story), she asks plaintively. Then, on getting no attention from anyone, she flips open the first page and starts off, "One day..." In the evenings, she too has started demanding her share of stories at bedtime. She always wants Kannada stories then, "Ondooyalli...in a town".

She has passed the toddler stage of falling about when she walks and now can never just walk from one place to the other. She either runs at top speed, blindly dashing into multifarious objects enroute, or walks swaying from side to side, for the sheer fun of it.

She has developed a sense of humour and has learned to tease. She loves water and grabs any glass of water she can lay her hands on. Then she'll sidle up to me and threaten to spill it on the sofa, watching me from the side of her eyes to see if I react. She makes potty faces - you know, face tight and straining, reddening. Then when I ask her, "Have you done potty?" since we're trying to toilet-train her, she says with an earsplitting grin, "Nahi, gas choda!"

She has finally agreed and deigned to kiss me and A too, not just Chubbocks. She lands a big, wet smackeroo but only on demand and then too, only when Her Imperiousness feels like it.

In imitation of Chubbocks, her other passion apart from reading is drawing. She catches hold of any pen, pencil, sketch pen or crayon, God knows from where, picks out pieces of paper from the stash I bring home for Chubs, and spends ages poring over it, holding her pencil correctly between index finger and thumb, sticking her tongue out, doing her 'drawing'. As yet she doesn't understand how to put pressure on the pen so all we see are faint marks on the paper, but she's as proud as a peacock, and insistently tells us, "See this. Mamma see me."

Honestly, I would never have understood how these simple things make us feel and how the littlest thing kids do can add magic to an ordinary day if I hadn't had kids of my own. Thank you God for giving me kids, and for giving me Chubs and Puddi as my kids!

Dog Days, good days...

Ever have one of those days when you wake up and feel a year's worth of PMS coursing through your system? I woke up like that today. It's quite unusual. I may wake up still sleepy or tired or bright and bushy-tailed but rarely grumpy. So from the time I woke up, I was at it with the kids ( they hadn't helped by waking up twice during the night, then we had no power and the inverter conked off so no fan - it's already 33 degrees C here - then they woke up early...) - yelled at Chubbocks to drink up his milk in a hurry since we had to go in to school for his end-of-year PTA meeting, yelled at him when he accidentally ran his tricycle over Puddi's foot ( to his credit I must say she was behind him when he was reversing). Puddi was fractious because she hadn't slept well, with the mosquitoes and the heat, I was snapping A's head off, we got caught in baad traffic on the way to school and negotiated a 5 km distance in half hour, almost late for the meeting and I'm anal about punctuality...Chubbocks picked this morning, when A and I were dog-tired since A had an early morning flight yesterday morning and had woken up at 4am and gotten back at 11pm, to decide that he had to have our help to make a giraffe out of his new Lego set before we went to schoool...Let's just say it wasn't pretty!

Then we got to school and had our rendezvous with his teachers. Both of them always break into big grins the minute we discuss Chubbocks. They told us how he had become a meticulous and neat worker - a change from his first report. They commented that in every session where they discussed sounds and words, they always got the most interesting and unusual words from him. They said he loves performing...well, we could see that on form morning. They said they had almost nothing to 'discuss' since he was doing so incredibly well and that we should be really proud of him. If I had been wearing a hat this morning when I went to the school, it would be several sizes too small for me by now. Whenever I think of the meeting and the report card they gave him, I have the biggest grin on my face.

It just feels so nice to have someone else appreciate the special qualities that you think your child has. And what's nice about Chubbocks's school performance is that it's not as if we've been either pushing him or been all that involved in exactly what he's doing in school. We're actually quite lax, as you will see if you read this. But we do try and encourage him to learn just through simple every day activities - reading him a story or encouraging him to read or paint or build lego models. Most of all, I think it's his own enthusiasm and curiosity that has ended up motivating him to do well and to learn, experiment and enjoy the process. That's actually the most proud-making fact of all.

I wish more schools were like the one we chose, in their teaching methods, in their faculty and in their values. Philosophers have always maintained that formal education should actrually just be the conduit to teaching people how to educate themselves throughout life. If we think back to TZP or remember our own schooldays, I'm sure we can remember those strict teachers - the ones who frowned when you smiled or got sarcastic if you asked a question. There is simply so much emphasis on rote-learning and regurgitation in the average Indian school - as if we were a herd of cows who needed to chew the cud.

I still remember way back in nursery or first grade, that I would get poor marks in some subjects because I had not reproduced the answer exactly from the books but explained in my own words. How thankful I am that my parents realised why this was happening and instead of asking me to 'come first' encouraged me to express myself. Rote learning, particularly in a new and changing world, may be good for some things like the multiplication tables or the atomic table, but for almost anything else, what is needed most of all is a healthy sense of curiosity. No discovery in any age could have been made if not for that.

A recent global study of patents found that of course, as expected, Japan and then the US led in number of patents. The third country on the list was China - yes, the same China which also believes in rote learning and has people mugging up thousands of words rather than alphabets because that's how their language is structured. Even China has realised that in this day and age, innovation and inventiveness is the only way for a country to get and to stay ahead. India had an amazingly low number of patents filed, and I'm not sure why. Our daily life is so chaotic, that I'm sure all of us should have an incredible degree of mental nimbleness in order to cope and survive. But our education system really doesn't encourage asking questions, having doubts or deviating from the beaten path.

Not just from an economic point of view but the fact is, a good education broadens the mind, instills a natural sense of curiosity and makes life more interesting and possibly better, in the long run. I only wish more children in our country had access to this kind of education.

Milestones...

Today is Chubbocks's last day in nursery. The next time he goes to his school, he'll be a Kinder-gartener. I can't believe how fast the year has gone by. It seems like yesterday that we sent him off to school, a boy who looked way too little to be going off to spend half his day in a structured environment.

I still remember his playschool days, where he started out as a shy little thing who would rarely participate, to begin with, but sit back and relish each and every activity intensely. Then by and by he came out of his shell and began talking and contributing...until, towards the end of his first term, during the music sessions, all the other mothers and teachers would groan in advance, knowing he was going to request for his favourite Monkey song again!

He goes off so confidently to school now, and has been begging me to let him go by bus like many of his friends, instead of by car. The same boy who, when shifted from Jimmy's class to one where the parent did not accompany the child, spent the entire first month crying heart-rendingly and ceaselessly. It used to tear me apart to sit outside the classroom and hear him screaming, "I want mamma...", his voice breaking. After a month of this, where we tried all options, from me dropping him off to his dad dropping him off to the maid dropping him off and sitting outside, we finally decided we couldn't take it and moved him back to Jimmy's class for another term, using the rest of the 2 months there to slowly habituate him to the concept of not having a parent in class. Even when he made the shift, for the first couple of weeks we had to make his maid stay outside the classroom just in case, so he could come out and come home whenever he wanted to.

This was the shy kid who hated performing in playschool and used to hang about at the back of his class whenever they put on a show. Once he started crying after a show because A had to leave for office and all his teachers thought I had been scolding him for not performing! I'm not sure they ever believed my explanation. And today, this kid is one of the most confident performers on stage. Whether he is making music with beans in a plastic jar, being a roaring lion in a circus or singing at the top of his sweet little voice, he's absolutely at home on stage and looks like he's having the time of his life up there. His teachers often point him out to each other while he's on stage, because his enthusiasm is so evident.

The phonetic method they were teaching at playschool and continued at big school have paid off. Yesterday he read aloud the headline of the cover story in the latest India Today magazine in seconds. This morning he wrote out a series of words on his doodlepad just because he wanted to see how they looked, and got most of them correct. Of course, there are times when the phonetic method creates peculiar scenarios - like when he proudly informed us that we were reading the Mint luun-jee one Saturday morning. But he's managed to read an entire book about lions by himself, even managing long words like 'dangerous'.

It's amazing to see how far he's come in just one year, and it's encouraging and a bit scary to think about the changes this next year will bring with it. Each time he does something independently, I feel a thrill of pride and a pang of separation. As he keeps growing and learning, I thoroughly enjoy his company all the more and yet wish he would remain my baby for a little longer. Ah, well, at least he's still only five.

Got the poem below as a forward from a friend. It is supposedly by a kid with leukemia...the usual email story which us cynical folks have learned to treat with rocks of salt...but the message is nice.

We figured part of the lesson out a couple of years ago when we realised we wouldn't have the time, with the kind of work we do, to do something another time. Since then, our rule has been - if you think of something, do it right away - be it buying that shirt or taking the kids to the zoo. We did just that last weekend, though both of us were dog-tired after a crazy week and running around for Chubs' birthday party. But I figured the weather was already so hot that another week would make it uninviting for us and the animals would have retired to their nice, cool lairs.

So off we trekked, for Puddi's first zoo trip. We were so unprepared we hadn't even charged the digicam, but we figured the point of the trip was to see the delight on the kids faces, not to take pictures of it, so we went anyway. We didn't wind up seeing everything, since all the mini-cars in the zoo were full-up and Chubbocks got darn tired after a bit. But we did see the rhinos ( which Puddi referred to as Dinosaur), the giraffes, which were simply mesmerizing, moving with balletic grace as if they were swimming underwater; the zebras ( gee bha LA, as per Puds), one solitary lion and the heffalumps( elephants). And we had our first icecreams of the season.

Now if only we could act upon the rest of the lesson and have each day go by at a little slower pace...

SLOW DANCE

Have you ever watched kids

On a merry-go-round?

Or listened to the rain

Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight?

Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You better slow down.

Don't dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won't last.

Do you run through each day

On the fly?

When you ask How are you?

Do you hear the reply?

When the day is doneDo you lie in your bed

With the next hundred chores

Running through your head?

You'd better slow down

Don't dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won't last.

Ever told your child,

We'll do it tomorrow?

And in your haste,

Not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die

Cause you never had time

To call and say,'Hi'

You'd better slow down.

Don't dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won't last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere

You miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day,

It is like an unopened gift....Thrown away.

Life is not a race.

Do take it slower

Hear the music

Before the song is over

What my mom taught me

Got this as an email forward and had to put it up here.

I OWE MY MOTHER SO MUCH:
>>>
>>> 1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE
>>>
>>> 'If you're going to kill each other, do it outside.
>>> I just finished cleaning.'
>>>
>>> 2. My mother taught me RELIGION .
>>> 'You better pray that this will come out of the carpet.'
>>>
>>> 3. My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL .
>>> 'If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle
>>> of next week!'
>>>
>>> 4. My mother taught me LOGIC .
>>> ' Because I said so, that's why.'
>>>
>>> 5. My mother taught me MORE LOGIC .
>>> 'If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going
>>> to the store with me.'
>>>
>>> 6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT .
>>> 'Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident.'
>>>
>>> 7. My mother taught me IRONY .
>>> 'Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about.'
>>>
>>> 8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS .
>>> 'Shut your mouth and eat your supper.'
>>>
>>> 9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM .
>>> 'Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!'
>>>
>>> 10. My mother taught me about STAMINA 'You'll sit there until all
>>> that spinach is gone.'
>>>
>>> 11. My mother taught me about WEATHER .
>>> 'This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it.'
>>>
>>> 12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY 'If I told you once, I've
>>> told you a million times.
>>> Don't exaggerate!'
>>>
>>> 13. My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE .
>>> 'I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.'
>>>
>>> 14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION .
>>> 'Stop acting like your father!'
>>>
>>> 15. My mother taught me about ENVY .
>>> 'There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who
>>> don't have wonderful parents like you do.'
>>>
>>> 16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION .
>>> 'Just wait until we get home.'
>>>
>>> 17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING .
>>> 'You are going to get it when you get home!'
>>>
>>> 18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE .
>>> 'If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to get stuck
>>> that way.'
>>>
>>> 19. My mother taught me ESP .
>>> 'Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you are cold?'
>>>
>>> 20. My mother taught me HUMOR .
>>> 'When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me.'
>>>
>>> 21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT .
>>> 'If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up.'
>>>
>>> 22. My mother taught me GENETICS .
>>> 'You're just like your father.'
>>>
>>> 23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS .
>>> 'Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?'
>>>
>>> 24. My mother taught me WISDOM .
>>> 'When you get to be my age, you'll understand.'
>>>
>>> 25. And my favorite: My mother taught me about JUSTICE 'One day
>>> you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you '

Choosing the right school

Over the last couple of weeks, there have been so many anguished blogposts on this topic - from those who are frantically running from pillar to post trying to get their child into one school, anywhere ( by school I don't mean the Govt. schools without teachers, sanitation and teaching) to those who are unhappy with their current schools but can't find better options to those whose child has gotten into a reputed school but who aren't sure it's right for them. I can sympathise with all three types, which is why it's a great idea for Desimomz to take this on as the theme for the month. Please do go to their site over the month for more information than just my two cents.

A and I began thinking about playschool for Chubbocks when he was about 18 months old - just looking around at the options. I felt it was necessary for him as he was an extremely shy and sensitive child who refused to socialise with any other kids of his age in the park, and also wanted to do something structured in terms of his learning but not too much so. A 5-day program would be too much, I felt. We looked around at 2 or 3 playschools which were in our neighbourhood but some we felt were too big in class size, some had too much of an 'admission-focussed' approach, like teaching kids alphabets, spelling, numbers and 'Interview techniques', which almost made me gag. One of our friends happened to be working with a playschool group called Julia Gabriel. This is a Singapore-based chain of playschools and one of the first things that appealed to me was that their classes required the parent to accompany the child. There was no way I would have left an 18-month old Chubbocks alone anywhere.

We visited the school and spent nearly an hour observing the teachers, the classes and the school set-up. The school mission was to turn out 'confident communicators', and they explained they use the phonetic method to teach alphabets. Though the school was small, with a minuscule playground, they had a nice array of toys for kids including mock-hammers, a cookery counter and so on. The class-rooms were nice and roomy and each one had 3 teachers, along with one ayah on stand-by and they all had attached bathrooms which had been designed for little ones, with low-placed pots and steps leading up to the washbasins. The teaching really caught our fancy, consisting of a lot of fun and games, some running around and the way the teachers encouraged the kids to speak was wonderful. Most of all, we fell in love with the teacher who headed the beginner's class - a man called Jimmy. He had the most incredible level of patience we have ever seen, and the way he coaxed even the shyest of kids to speak or perform was amazing. We felt that our kiddo would be in good hands if Jimmy was to be his first transition to a school environment.

JG had 2 hour classes thrice a week, so I used to go on weekdays and A would go on Saturdays. It was always great fun to go, and Chubbocks, even though he didn't participate much at first, always enjoyed going there. Kids were taught about clean-up time - cleaning away their own toys and setting the stage for the next activity, to take off and put on their own shoes and the school served them a healthy snack, with juice, and fruit and vegetables. The phonetic method, I honestly couldn't appreciate until recently, because I didn't see it translating into reading skills, for example. But Jimmy really helped Chubbocks blossom from a shy kid who hung his head and clung to Mamma to one who fearlessly walks up to strangers and makes friends with them, be they kids or adults ( Come to think of it, Mamma now has to work to put a fear of strangers back), and has become an amazingly skillful communicator in three languages. When he graduated from his primary class to the next level, the first remark his new teacher made was about his communication skills. Granted some of that may be genetic, since not all the kids from Jimmy's class got that comment, but the ability to make him confident enough to state what he thinks is all thanks to Jimmy. Since Jimmy has now left JG, since the branch was shut down by the Gurgaon government ( who, by the way, are okay looking the other way when DLF encroaches on Panchayat land, builds glass and steel office buildings in a residential zone and bulldozes a main road for trucks and buses bang in a housing colony but can't let a playschool function in a residential area - do you get the logic? I sure don't!), we're actually looking around to find out where he is so Puddi can go to his new playschool for her initiation.

When it came to big school, however, contrary to playschool wherein we had been so foresighted, we were a bit too lazy. I was determined not to get all agitated and worked up like so many of our friends when it came to admissions and, as a result, completely missed seeing the ads schools put out about admissions deadlines, and so did A. All of a sudden, we were on the backfoot and scrambling and worried. Then A found that the local Delhi Public School admissions deadline was not over and we sent our factotum to fetch the forms. Unfortunately, there are 2 DPSs in the neighbourhood, one good and the other terrible, and our Man Friday had got the wrong form which we never figured out until much too late.

A somewhat experimental school, called Shikshantar, had extended admissions for more entrants so we decided to find out more about it. Two of my friends who had kids there praised it highly, calling it a school which helped kids become self-motivated and so on. The thing that worried A no end was that they have a completely unstructured curriculum for the first few years - kids just study what they feel like studying, so if you want your kids to be reading by a certain age and writing by another, that wasn't the best option. I still thought it sounded good and we sent off our application which, by the way, asked us lots of searching questions about our goals for the child and so on.

DPS had a formal interview process but we didn't want to put Chubbocks under any pressure, so we frankly didn't bother to 'prepare' him. He sailed through on his own( including singing 'Where's the party tonight' when asked to recite a poem) and we had to fork out a fortune ( Rs. 60,000, most of it non-refundable!!!) for the admission. I thought that that was too much money to throw away and we should wait for Shikshantar's decision before paying up but the deadlines didn't match and A panicked at the thought of Chubbocks not getting into any school at all due to our carelessness. So we paid through the nose, though I had no intention of sending him to an academic factory known for putting kids to the grindstone.

Then Shriram school, which had been dithering on admissions due to the Delhi government changes of rules finally decided to begin the process in Gurgaon at least. Most of our friends have their kids in Shriram and all of them are all praise for it. They all said it was a good, well-rounded school in the way it went about things and that academic pressure was quite low and they focussed more on turning out kids who were well-rounded human beings. True, the average kid there is from an upscale family and I had serious doubts about how well our middle-class mindset would fit in, but given the rave reviews, we plunged ahead.

Shriram thankfully didn't have an interview for kids. They like mixed-race or religion couples, so we were bang on. Plus they tend to like kids with working moms, so we got another bonus point. I seem to remember filling out a long and detailed form about our beliefs and so on, and we were on the list for the 'interaction'. At Shikshantar, while they had called parents and kids together, they let the kids run around and play in the playground and conducted their chats with the parents there itself, in a corner, which was nice and low-pressure.

At Shriram too, they had us in the same room, though a teacher led Chubbocks off to one corner where they had laid out all kinds of toys and pictures while A and I were being interviewed. We were happy to find a former colleague on the interview board too, and the questions were pretty innocuous, like how Chubbocks took to his sibling and so on. I was very confident afterwards that we would be in though A was still biting his nails until we got the letter confirming it. We were really happy about the way things had gone and felt we had had a really low pressure time of it, apart from losing some big bucks enroute.

A year down the line, and A and I still feel very happy and confident about our choice, the more so due to what the Director recently said about the competitive spirit. I think we got off pretty easy in the process of admissions, because I have known people who've gone round the bend running around to hundreds of schools. One of our friends didn't get admission for her son anywhere because they were out of the 5 km radius for all the good schools, and they had a son, which is 2 strikes down as per the Delhi Govt. rules. Finally they had to admit their son into a 'Convent' school on the Christian quota. Many of them opted for really expensive and brand new schools with no reputation as yet, because their kids didn't get in anywhere. I'm relieved not only that Chubc got into a good school but that he got into a school which has the kind of mix of academics and other skills that I wanted for him, and hopefully Puddi will make it there too.

Chubbock's Birthday

After all the weekends spent planning and all the worry about whether we were over or under doing it by comparison with his school friends, Chubbocks's birthday party is over. I find it hard to believe this little guy is already five and, according to Hindu tradition, no longer in the baby stage but the boy stage - Kaumarya. I was looking through our hundreds of digi-photos of him as a toddler and wishing I had pressed the freeze-frame button.

It was a slightly bizarre day. He woke up all cranky for some reason - usually he and Puddi wake up with a smile on their faces - and continued to be not his usual self all day. He was less full of beans than usual and less talkative, and for the life of us we haven't managed to figure out why.


The mood lasted all weekend, and we're wondering if perhaps he had been anticipating the party for too long, or whether he expected to look or feel different now that he had reached this mature stage. He did respond with his own bizarre logic, later, that he thought all his friends would turn 5 that day (???).

Anyway, since I was determined to make it a home-grown party, we were hosting it in a big park within our residential community. The people manning the Columbus came by 8 am, because it apparently takes them a few hours to get it assembled. I decided that not only did I have to cook the food for the party but that we also had to have a traditional birthday meal at home, with Chubs's favourite things, so I was in the kitchen from early on, churning out saaru ( his favourite) and lemon rice, while mom offered to make the payasa and the sabzi. I also had to churn out Bhaaji enough for about 50 people, as well as macaroni with veggies. Chubs had asked for Bhelpuri, so we had to keep the ingredients ready so that it could be made in the nick of time. We decided to order in some food to make it a little easier, so dhoklas and rasbhari ( mini-rasgullas soaked in sugar syrup) were ordered. My in-laws turned up, lugging the return gifts for the boys - a simple but fun toy that shoots discs into the air, like a modern-day Sudarshan Chakra, and we ran around packing those.

Let's just say it was a hectic day, between the powercuts and scheduling baths when we had hot water to the cooking and cleaning...we never got the time to run down to the park until it was almost time for the party, and I was horrified to find: a. A bunch of boys playing cricket in the middle of the park and having torn a nice, muddy, dusty strip out of the grass; b. The balloons still being put up; c. No chairs having been placed for the adults and d. Tons of dust from the commercial buildings surrounding the colony, which seem to have sprung up out of nowhere in the last couple of months. I like having things ready in plenty of time, so my BP must have rushed to all kinds of levels as I ran around waking up A and hustling chairs and tables out of our house and into the park. Thankfully, things just about fell into place by the time our guests arrived.

All in all, the party went well. The Columbus was not a sophisticated piece of equipment as I had feared, but more like something commandeered from a village fair,
but all the kids loved it and sat on it all together, which was just heart-warming. I wonder what it is, about the swing, that gets everyone hooked on. Of course, the people manning it had faulty wires and half the time there was no power so they were manually swinging it but the kids had fun. The puppet show guy was pretty good too, as he was really funny, rather than go all traditional, and we had a horse riding poor Amar Singh Rathod and a snake which used to get the more violent as the madaari played his been so the kids were screaming with laughter.

Eventually, despite the expense of the Columbus and tattoo artist et al, just the simple fact that we were holding the party in a neighbourhood park, without a fancy tent and that none of the chairs for the adults matched ( 6 of our dining chairs, 6 of my parents', our 8 garden chairs and assorted moodahs) made the atmosphere of the party just what I wanted - unsophisticated and ( that most hateful word used to describe marriageable women) homely. Of course, next year I want to invite more work upon myself by hosting it at home, by which time we'll hopefully have a larger home, to make it completely middle class. Everyone loved the food and wiped out most of it, including a rather large Spiderman cake.
As for Chubbocks, after a weekend full of silence, he has more or less reverted to his normal self. Puddi had lots of fun and danced more than the puppets, when the puppeteer sang and played his dholak, and looked too cute with braids and beads in her hair.


I think it's true that kids grow to expect that which we lead them to expect. I could see the kids having a good time chasing each other around the park and swinging away. They don't necessarily need expensive props and 'amusements' in order to have a good time - all they need is each other and some space. So that's going to be my aim for birthday parties from now on.

Ps. Will try and put up some pics later.

Pics added, as well as anti-jinx!

Dreams for my Children

I love making lists, don't you? Of course, I rarely so much as write down a grocery list (which may explain why we're running to the store for something or other every third day), but I do make'em. And long ago, on the list of things I promised my children, was an item that read - I will not force my expectations down their throats. Well, that seems to have gone by the wayside, given I'm ranting about how privileged they are and various other things. But what I do feel strongly about is that while I want to be planting values in their heads and hearts, I don't want to force my dreams on them.

I feel particularly strongly about this, because I had it done to me, and I resented it and it has imposed various burdens on me over the years, though it may have been 'for my own good' at the time, because obviously that's all parents ever want. When I was in college, I wanted to study history or English Lit. But dad was adamant that I study Economics, even though I showed neither interest nor aptitude. Back in high school, during my economics course, I thought Keynesian was a term for a kind of Islander, like Polynesian, and it has taken decades for me to outgrow that little misunderstanding, so you can imagine how suited I was for this course. All through high school too, dad used to keep pushing me to focus on my education, that there'd be plenty of time for 'extracurriculars' later. I managed to get away with quite a few activities regardless, but never to the fullest extent of my longing.

At college admissions time, the fight over Economics became so furious that dad threatened to disown me, at one point, if I didn't tow the line. Fight though I did, I wound up being press-ganged into BA Hons. The only thing I enjoyed about college was the friends I made. The rest was a total waste for me, because I didn't understand the concepts, didn't emotionally connect with them, found the exam system completely horrendous as I wasn't used to it, did terribly poorly throughout my BA and wound up doubting my IQ and possession of basic intelligence by the end of the three years. Even when I understood and enjoyed some of the subjects and did well in internal evaluations, I wound up as a non-starter in the exams. I got through to one of the IIMs but with such a damaged sense of self-esteem and confidence...And it took me years to start believing in my own capability, literally years.

I understand where dad was coming from, of course. He was from a poor though well-educated family and for him, education was the only way to climb out of poverty. He saw his brothers and sisters who, though intelligent, just didn't either possess the application or got distracted with extracurriculars and who therefore didn't end up as secure financially as he did, and he was the youngest. Even today, he is the person the whole family looks to for financial support, when required, and he was the one who wound up the most successful career-wise, with the highest rank possible in the civil service. Yet when he wanted to study Economics in Mysore University, they did not open admission for the course, though he was a school topper, until he had already joined an alternate course - simply because he was Brahmin.

What do I really want for my children? Well, first of all I do want them to have a fine education, and by that I mean one which teaches them to open their minds, to question, to dream and to unlock all of their talents, big or small. The thing that would shock or dismay me as a parent would be if either of my kids decided to drop out - yes, I am a firmly middle class person that way. Then, I want them to do something in life which is a vocation and not a career, something that makes their hearts sing every morning and get out of bed with a spring in their step, something which enables them to be quirky and individualistic and to set their own pace in life, rather than be pressed through a cookie-cutter. (Oh god, I can hear my husband saying, she wants them to be hippies). Hopefully we'll have set a financial base that is adequate but not rich ( I don't really approve of inherited wealth; inherited middle-classness is fine :)) and enables them to do just that. And hopefully, they'll be smart enough to realise that money is never good enough as an objective, only as a by-product.

Long ago, when I thought about my life goals and career goals and companies asked that ridiculous question during interviews : Where do you see yourself in 5/ 10 years time? I never knew what to answer. Because I never had a set career goal or ambition ( e.g. CEO by 30), unlike so many people one meets today. I had a life goal - to have an interesting, varied career in which I enjoyed what I did every day; to become an interesting person who has fun and doesn't take herself too seriously; to have a loving family; to have a balanced life between family and work and self; to laugh a lot and learn a lot; to write a few books hopefully; and to have a handful of people that would be genuinely sorry when I died. Even today, I think those are my goals, and the markers by which I make decisions about life. It may not make me rich in the long run but it sure makes life fun.

Privileged Kids

Remember how simple and how fun birthday parties used to be back in our growing up years? You'd go around and invite all the neighbourhood kids - no fancy schmancy invitation cards. I can't remember ever inviting a school pal who wasn't also a neighbourhood pal, because people came to school from all over Delhi, and it just wasn't practical or even the done thing to ask your parents to ferry you across the city for a birthday party. At school, you handed out one or two Ravalgaon or Parry's toffees - those hard ones that you sucked and sucked until they became brittle, sharp little things that you could crunch up in a jiffy - to everyone and that was that. Or, when you grew older and had a 'set' of friends, you would treat 5 or 6 of them to the stale samosa/ bread pakora that the school canteen offered.

My parents didn't believe in decking up the house with all manner of balloons or crepe paper - If I wanted crepe paper put up I had to do it, and I had better things to do with my time. The neighbourhood kids would troop in one by one, clutching a gift sometimes - I had a huge grouse against my dad because he had this thing against announcing that we were having a birthday party - he'd insist that I say it was just a general kids' party, so if I didn't dare to hint at least to some of my close pals that it was for my birthday, no one would come clutching gifts - and that's kind of the whole point of birthday parties, right? All the kids would be dressed neatly and tidily, the boys with hair well-oiled and sharply parted, looking like geeks, and the girls, as always for 'occasions' in frilly and hideous frocks, with socks and Mary Jane shoes. We would play games like passing the parcel or, as one grew older, Treasure hunt. I still remember making up the parcel that was passed around, carefully writing out the instructions for each layer. The return gifts for kids would be toffees and sometimes, those Flora pencils with the pink flowers on them which were always cherished, and erasers. Sometimes one would get 'scented rubbers' and all the kids would keep sniffing at the scent as if it were 'all the perfumes of Araby'. All the food would be cooked by hardworking mums who'd have worked through the day. One never had a store-bought cake, at best a home made one if at all. Biscuits, glasses of Rasna or Squash, homemade namkeens and some sweets. And one went home conscious of having had a riotously good time.

Today things are mighty different. My son has a birthday party every day this week, since his entire class at school has kids who have mid Feb - March birthdays. Today's party is at a farmhouse. All the party invites have come as formal cards, and some of the parties have had themes - Ben 10, Power Ranger, Superman and so on. They have been at exclusive clubs with puppet shows, toy train rides(!), magicians and so on. Mothers have swished up to the venue in their gleaming mercs, dropping Chanel bags and diamonds. One such invitation that we declined on the grounds of not being fancy enough ( us not them) was way back in playschool for a kid who was turning 3. His parents had organised his birthday party at a 5 star hotel in town, complete with a cocktail party on the side for the adults. Even the presents and return gifts are so elaborate - one of the presents he got last year was a toy robot, and return gifts include all kinds of merchandise from the latest cartoon craze to strike the kids, mugs painted with their photographs, fancy photoframes, clocks and the like.

Honestly, the level of action at these birthday parties makes me feel a little ill. I'm just not equipped in attitudinal terms to go with these flows. For Chubbocks' 1st birthday party, my folks hosted a party where they invited all their friends and ours. It was held at a club but pretty simple despite all that - just good food and a few balloons. Since then, until last year when he turned 4 and started to have friends of his own, I had simple family and close friends parties at home - up on our roof garden since his birthday conveniently comes just when all the spring flowers are in bloom. All the food was home made, there were no balloons and no hoopla, just a bunch of people who loved him and us and got together to celebrate his arrival. And we're pretty clear in our policy for birthday gifts - we always give books - either the classics, e.g. fairy tales type, or educational ones, and those too within a certain price range.

Last year we hosted in a Pizza Hut because I had my hands full with a fulltime job and a nursing baby, and while they did an ok job, I found the party lacking soul. This year, we're back to hosting it in a park within our colony. The only catch is that A has decided, in a fit of extravagance, to hire a Columbus ( the swing ride). Honestly, it's costing quite a bit and while we can afford it, I'd rather the money was put to better use. But I am making all the food, except the cake, at home. This year's party has gotten a little out of hand, to tell the truth, and I'm struggling to make my peace with it. For many reasons, including the wasteful expenditure, but most of all because I can't bring myself to imagine that kids would have that much more fun surrounded by all these organised amusements and doodads than simple games that involve running around mindlessly and tiring themselves out. And because I don't want my kids growing up with anything but middle class values like hard work, simplicity, perseverance and a healthy value for money even if our incomes have lifted us out of the middle class category.

I've already decided that next year for his birthday, I'm going to go right back to my roots and host a simple party at home, with home made food ( well, ok, we'll order the cake) and party games for indoors and outdoors which involve playing and not 'being amused' like so many little Lords and Ladies. And if his friends don't appreciate it tough luck - I'm pretty sure my kids will. And even if they don't and feel a little deprived, well, all it means is that I need to work harder at inculcating a sense of values into them.

Appreciating our heritage

Here's something I've been wanting to blog about for a long time but never got around to. A couple of months back, on January 25th, I asked a friend of mine what she was planning to do the next day. She looked absolutely blank and then said, the usual holiday stuff- wake up late, go out for lunch or watch a movie etc. I was actually quite surprised and then started wondering about how many people today do take the trouble of celebrating the day and putting it into context for their children, rather than just treating it as another break from the stress of work.

For me, from the time I was a child, the whole Indian Independence struggle story really resonated at a very deep emotional level. I knew my dad's whole family had been involved, many of my aunts and uncles had even gone to jail for it, my grandfather was one of the founder members of the Congress Party in Mysore, though I'm glad to say he eschewed politics after India became independent. Even dad, who was only a toddler at the time of the Quit India movement, played a role - he used to be the guard outside the house, along with their dog Jacky, and any time he saw a British solider, he's say loudly, "Down Down Union Jack, Up, up Indian Flag" as an alarm for the students involved in the movement who used to hide out at their house. My grandparents lived hand to mouth, but sheltered scores of such students in their home, putting them up on the roof where they could escape notice, and sharing the family's one meal of the day with them and helping them get away to safety.

I've always felt super charged-up about the days which celebrate India's Independence movement, be it Independence Day or 26th January. In our colony, we have a flag-hoisting ceremony on those days, at about 8:30 in the morning, and whoever wants to be there turns up, we all sing the National Anthem and Vande Mataram together and share a few sweets before disbursing. Sometimes it is a pain to force myself to get up that early, but I make sure we do it, all the more since we've had kids, because I feel it's important to them that they get a sense of their country's history and heritage. It only takes a few minutes but that's all one needs to reaffirm our connection with our past, and to feel, even for a few minutes, the same sense of idealism about how we can shape our country. What I find sad is that nowadays, only the older people living in the colony show up, hardly anyone with young kids bothers.

This year, I tuned in to the Republic Day Parade and as always, got goosebumps when I saw the various armed forces marching past. Some years back, when Dad was still in the Civil service, we used to go watch it live, and I always found it incredibly moving. Beating the Retreat is something I would love to take my kids to watch next year - there is nothing to beat that ceremony for its heart-stirring music and that poignant moment when the trumpets blow, the sun starts its descent and the camel troops perched on the ramparts of Rashtrapati Bhavan are silhouetted for one frozen moment of eternity against the orange-stained sky.

I don't necessarily think it's a proof of patriotism to be jingoistic or even to celebrate these events but I do feel that it is one way for us to always remember what we fought for, how far we have come and how far we have yet to go. It's a way to connect back to our own history, in which our fathers or grandfathers could have played a role, and to connect at a deeply emotional and visceral level with the idea of India. To treat it as just another holiday seems to me almost a betrayal of what they fought for; or well, betrayal is the wrong word - trivialising it. What do you think - am I being overemotional and senti?

Gender Equality?

Last week, when I wandered down to the park with my two terrors, Chubbocks immediately spotted some of his fellow cowboys and they were off, hooting and screaming, running, jumping, rampaging, climbing up the slide, trying to hang upside down from the swings, pushing each other up trees, racing...getting a good physical workout, coupled with a good one for their lungs, judging by all the hollering.

And there they were, a bunch of little princesses, little girls of between three and five, decorously and sedately perched on the grass, skirts carefully hitched up to prevent grass stains, gossiping. When Chubbocks asked them to come and play, they turned their noses up against these 'rough' boys.

Darn it, little girls of four and five have no business playing at princessy airs. They should be scrambling about just as much as the boys, running, playing, making mud pies and generally not caring two hoots about how they look and whether their skirts are rumpled. They should be out there developing their physical and gross and fine motor skills as well as the ability to be un-selfconscious, rather than worry about who's thinking what about whom.

I agree that some parts of this are hereditary - Chubbocks, whom we've always tried to bring up as gender neutral and even given lots of toys and dolls to in his babyhood just naturally veered towards the Hot Wheels the first time we took him into a toy store. And Puddi is already fascinated by my jewelry and prances about trying to put my earrings on her unpierced ears. But beyond that, Puddi is showing all the signs of becoming a rowdy little tomboy, imitating her brother by trying to climb up the slide, yelling at the full pitch of her well-developed lungs, playing with mud, jumping off the sofa and so on. While Chubs loves playing at cooking and helping me in the kitchen, helps to clean up around the house, dusting and so on. We have no girl jobs and boy jobs in the house, and that's the way it should be.

But I also remember my youth, when I was the tomboy, running around and wanting to play, wandering around the neighbourhood collecting stray props for a telematch I was organising, until some of the other girls' mothers protested that they didn't want the girls doing 'dangerous stunts'. The height of the proposed danger being to climb a frangipani tree which must have been all of 8 feet tall. I was out doing errands, walking down to Pandara or Khan market, climbing trees to build a treehouse, trying to learn how to turn somersaults ( never managed, sadly), splashing into puddles and being an explorer through the thick, unkempt garden that ran through the lane at the back. Most of the other girls were kept tethered on a short rope that extended as far as 6 houses away in either direction from their homes. What annoys me is, I thought this attitude would change with time, and that today's parents would be less apt to stereotype and that today's kids would be less led by gender, given all the different things that both men and women have learnt, accomplished and done.

I really got upset with the girls who were so prissy already and wondered how fast they would progress along that slippery slope to vanity, anorexia, dieting and all the rest that awaits princesses today. And even today, many parents aren't helping. My friend's daughter who is 11 years old told me that she loves playing games, but her friends just want to go for walks or sit around and chat, so very often she is hanging out by herself or playing with the boys which leads to further commenting and sniggering from her friends. Another friend who's planning to write about the few good female role models in children's media was telling me about a little girl she knew who wanted to join the school football team but was dissuaded by her mom who said it would make her thighs thick and unattractive.

It burns me up that right from a young age, so many parents still bring up their girls to believe that their appearance is their chief asset. That explains all the matrimonial ads, in which the girl is always beautiful, fair and homely, regardless of any other qualities she may or may not possess, while the boy is described only in terms of his education, career and earnings. I'm already worrying about where I'll find playmates for Puddi who're boisterous, unselfconscious and just out to play and have fun, rather than be little models of decorum...Maybe I could drink Alice's 'shrink me' potion?

Zzzz...

Ok, so when we blithely and thoughtlessly entered this adventurous phase of life known as parenthood, there were plenty of things our friends told us...like two of them were horrified at the amount of glass-type stuff in our living room - glass-topped tables, vases, Swarovski figurines et al...like all the women would tell me gory stories about delivery until my fantasy was that the baby would decide to stay inside forever...but truly, no one thought to tell us that sleep-deprivation was going to become a way of life forever.

And this is when we have good kids that actually learned to sleep through the night quite early on.

But then, no one told us that the only time we'd have the time for a conversation with just the two of us was after the munchkins were asleep...or that that'd be the only time we could read, pay bills, account for all my spending, fight, watch non-kiddie movies...or other stuff ( well, the other stuff we kind of guessed). And no one told us that munchkins would be diabolical enough to inherit my insomniac tendencies...

Friday night, Puddi decided she'd show me what she was capable of - and here's me, a career insomniac who's now so sleepy she just has to see a pillow and zzz...whassat?? Puddi went to bed like a good girl by 9 pm, woke up wailing at 10:30, woke up wailing at midnight...and then decided sleep was a nefarious plot cooked up by adults to deprive her of playtime. That kid was up, babbling, cooing and playing until 5 in the morning, walking all over my face and her dad's, pulling pill bottles and the towering stack of books on my bedside table down, asking me to 'kahani shunaiyye'. Taking her back to her room didn't help - their room has a jungle theme with giant pictures of animals so she was busy defining each of them, the noises they make and naming them...gee bha la ( zebra); aane ( elephant)...No amount of song-singing helped either, in fact that only served to stimulate her choreographic abilities. Finally, finally, at five, she asked to be taken back to her own bed in her own room and fell asleep in minutes.

Alas, by this time, not only was I too tired and hungry to sleep but the main road that DLF has thoughtfully made in the middle of a residential area ( for rants on this, turn to We are like this only) was throbbing with truck engines being revved up, cement mixers churning, assorted demented Delhi drivers honking as if they had forgotten how to take their fingers off the horn; in replacement of our formerly bucolic soundscape of birds chirping, doves cooing and the gentle hushing of the wind...

Then Chubbocks decided he'd show us what was what on Saturday night, by waking up at three in the morning and not going back to sleep; chatting incessantly as he always does...and finally Sunday night - first the Puddi finally shows the after-effects of her measles shot by developing fever and therefore whimpering all night...the husband is stressed out and snores merrily...and then wakes up at four am to catch a flight, thus jolting me out of nod-land...and Chubbocks decided summer is here by waking up at five am...

No wonder I need a fulltime job - the office is where I sleep...