Bojji’s growing up

It constantly amazes me to think back to this time last year and remember that Bojjandi and his antics were barely a mote in our eyes. He's now 6 months old and growing fast in personality and activity. He finally learnt to roll over about 10 days ago and now we can't put him down on his tummy for tummytime any more. The instant his tum-tum touches the ground, he rolls right over onto his back and chuckles up at us with a goofy grin. He also seems to have a real sense of humour because he just waits to catch our eyes before unleashing incredibly good-humoured looking smiles. And it takes very little to make him giggle – tickling, pretending we can't see him while calling his name, threatening to come grab him, nuzzling his fat little neck…

He's also at that incredibly cute stage when babies discover their limbs. So he carefully extends his chubby little hands into the air and opens and closes his fists, making little stars out of his hands and watches them with intense concentration. It's like he's telling himself, "Hey, see what I can do". And when we put him into his bouncer, he keeps reaching out to rattle all the toys purposefully and you can almost hear a Calvin-like, "I'm the Master of the Universe" cackle. We have a lovely kannada poem for this phase: Taarammaiyya, which we sing to him when he's busy making his little stars.

And now that he's 6 months old, we've introduced two major lifestyle changes. First of all, he's now having about 2 ounces of formula before being put to bed for the night, in the thus-far forlorn hope that he'll sleep longer that way. At present he goes off to sleep around 8:30 pm and wakes up around 4:00 am for a feed and then again at 6:00 am, which it turns out doesn't make me a happy camper – my dark circles have dark circles from lack of sleep! And the second change – we did his annaprashna ceremony last Friday, which was Ugadi, so now he has minute quantities of rice every day.

I love the ceremonial transition from phase to phase. Earlier, particularly in my teens, I used to be impatient of rituals, but now I enjoy the feeling of continuity and tradition that I get from following them. I never want to be a slave to rituals and tradition but following them out of choice is a different matter. I also feel it adds a feeling of special-ness to many things which are otherwise just a matter of routine. Even the naming ceremony is one of my favourite rituals, and we have my dad on tape explaining each aspect of the ritual so it's not some meaningless mumbo-jumbo spouted by a priest, but something deep and meaningful which is a way of passing on our culture to the new generation.

Our annaprashna has a set ritual: we make at least 5 different kinds of traditional sweets. Typically I don't like to buy sweets from the market for this ceremony because I like the food to be made of pure ingredients (i.e. no dalda / food colouring). So this time mom had to do most of the work since I was at work. She made sajjige ( sooji halwa), payasa of saamey ka chaawal, red carrot halwa and hayagriva, which is a rich halwa-type sweet made with gasegase, moong dal, jaggery and lots of ghee. I contributed a black carrot halwa to the feast.

Bojji was still just barely recovered from his chest infection so we gave him a quick sponge bath and dressed him in a new outfit. After the Ugadi pooje, we laid out the feast in a silver thali, in 5 silver bowls. Silver is supposed to be the metal used for children's eating utensils because it immediately kills any bacteria in the food and renders it safe. A took Bojjandi on his lap, and then fed him tiny little licks of each item by dipping a silver ring into each cup. Bojjandi seemed to enjoy the payasa the most. After A, I, then Chubbocks, Puddi and my parents and grandma all took turns helping Bojjandi taste the goodies. Then we mixed a small quantity of plain arhar dal, rice and ghee and fed Bojjandi a tiny little ball of it. The little hero hated the bland taste of this, since we don't add salt for a baby, and spat it out or tried to. This of course was followed by all of us feasting on the goodies!

The Little Professor

Yesterday we had a PTA meeting at Chubbocks' school. He's going into Class I. I can't believe he's so grown up already that he's been at 'big' school for 2 whole years. As usual, his teachers were all smiles and giggles during our interaction and they said Chubbocks is known as 'the little encyclopaedia' since he always knows something about each topic they discuss and always wants to share what he knows.

A and I are feeling as proud as peacocks. i guess we did something right, besides the lack of birth control :)!

Why I Hate Lawyers

We've never had a good experience with lawyers. Way back there was the one whom we had contacted when we wanted to get married – we wanted to get her to register the marriage. She quoted a cost of some Rs. 25000, of which she claimed the bulk would be bribes paid to sundry people. We decided we weren't that rich and went for the direct route and accomplished it in the grand sum of Rs. 650 or so. Then last year there was a shocking incident in which some high-falutin partner in a legal firm's car hit our car from behind and he tried to bluster and bamboozle us into paying for his damages, threatening that he was going to keep us tied up in a court case for years so we could neither repair nor sell our car if we didn't pay up. And now, last Thursday's incident.

Our driver was driving Chubbocks home from the gate of the colony after school. As a treat, Chubbocks was sitting in the front passenger seat, since this was a drive within the colony compound and the speed limit within our colony is 15 kmph. Suddenly a Maruti 800 came speeding out of nowhere, bang down the middle of the road. Our driver was alert enough to pull our car as far to the side of the road as possible, but even then the Maruti 800 banged our Baleno hard enough to make dents in the bumper and the side. If it hadn't been for our driver's presence of mind, both he and Chubbocks could have been badly hurt, if not worse. The 800 then went on to bang itself into a light pole and was quite badly smashed.

It turned out the 800 belonged to a resident of our colony, a Mr. Thakur who is a Supreme Court lawyer. The car was being driven by his 15 year old servant who had no training in driving. As soon as I heard of the incident I went across to this lawyer's house, and A visited him the next morning. Both times, his whole concern was to say that he has no liability since the liability is vicarious as he was not driving the car himself, and that the servant was underage so he could not be charged. There was no 'sorry about the incident', no 'I understand your concern, your child could have been killed', no acknowledgement of the fact that we had a right to be angry.

There's no human side to this man at all. Just constant bluster coupled with irrelevant information like the fact that his son is with KPMG and his daughter with Penguin. I mean, I wouldn't care if his daughter was a penguin, how is that germane to the issue that you first of all have an underage servant working in your home in defiance of labour laws, secondly that this servant got away with your car keys and caused what potentially could have been a fatal accident. Just the endless legalese about how he doesn't need to offer to pay a penny for repairs to our car because he has no liability. With lawyers like that I can totally understand how our legal system is so messed up.

And now, A and I are scared to have Chubbocks ride his new cycle around the colony or walk by himself to the park, because we don't know how many other neighbours have underage servant joyriding recklessly.

Teething troubles

Chubbocks has always had a lovely set of milk teeth. He was a cute baby pretty much from the start (or so other people say; I personally started finding him cute around 4-5 months of age), but when his teeth came in, he got elevated to another level of cuteness altogether. Even now when I see his baby pictures I am amazed by how good-looking he was. Yes, that's a fond mother speaking but I'm entitled to my opinion.

Unfortunately what we didn't know was that excellent milk teeth usually result in crooked permanent teeth. When his first tooth started wobbling, I was alarmed to see another one behind it, at almost right angles to the original tooth. The first one fell out, accompanied by a gift from the tooth fairy, and we rushed Chubbocks to the 'dentust' to get the crooked one checked out. The dentist said that in cases like this, the adjoining teeth need to be extracted as soon as they become loose, to try and ensure that other teeth don't come in crooked and so the crooked teeth can get the space they need to try and straighten out. So last week, Chubbocks was tortured by the dentist and his second tooth was extracted. What is alarming me is that the second permanent tooth is also coming in at a 45 degree angle to the original one. I'm guessing we'll eventually have to put the l'il guy in braces so his smile can beam out as beautiful as it is now. Luckily for me, he smiles with his eyes too, and that ain't gonna change!

Children and Illness

Dunno anything more heartrending than seeing your children ill. Suddenly that bubbly, full-of-beans child who used to drive you nuts by climbing up the furniture and running around the house like a loon has as much animation as a snuffed-out candle. Watching that small little body cough, and exert the whole body to get that cough out is enough to make a grown man or woman cry. And all of a sudden you feel so helpless. When your child gets hurt, falls down maybe or bangs himself or feels jealous of a sibling, there's always some small piece of magic you can pull off to get the smiles back on his or her face. But when he or she is ill, you can't do much besides run to the nearest doc and hope for a miracle cure.

I've been on the other side of this very often in my childhood. I had asthma. I remember, as soon as I started getting the first inkling that an attack was on the way, I'd feel a shiver of fear and then do my best to live in denial and hope it'd get the hint and go away. Except it never did. Then the dreaded spectre would come back to haunt us – I and my parents. What bliss it was to the tired body to just lie down and rest the back. But then the lungs would close up and I'd have to sleep sitting up, if at all. I'd wheeze through the nights, back and chest hurting with just the effort to take in a breath and feel starved for a lungful of oxygen. I never wanted to wake up my parents and see that worried look on their faces so I'd try and wheeze quietly, even while one corner of my mind would wish they were up and with me, helping me in the struggle. They would always get up, with that sixth sense that parents of asthmatics have. Dad would get hot water bottles or move the pedestal fan so it would blow directly into my face, giving me the illusion of breathing fresh oxygen. Mom would rub my back and chest with Vicks and they'd get two and three pillows so I could sit leaning on them, which was easier on the lungs. I remember once in Singapore I was so badly off we needed to go to the emergency room. But the hospital was too close to our house and no cab would agree to take us there even though dad offered to pay whatever the guy wanted. Dad's face was drawn and grey as he raced up and down the road trying to flag down cabs or even passing motorists at some 5 in the morning.

Thankfully, at least so far none of my kids seem to have inherited the horrible disease. But it's been a tough week watching Puddi and Bojjandi go through a chest infection, with daily nebulization sessions and half a dozen medications. Made me realize how much harder it must be for those parents whose kids do have asthma and go through this on a regular basis. My heartfelt sympathies!

 

My work here is done

To think, just a short while ago I wondered where we had gone wrong and whether Chubbocks would ever be motivated to read on his own. Right from the beginning, Chubbocks has been exposed to lots of books – as I may have mentioned before we have a home library of over 5000 books, and with A's and my noses always in a book, I figured he'd find out pretty early that books were 'in' in our household. But though he had learnt to read quite some time back, the only things he wanted to make an effort to read were books much below his reading level from his class library. Though he had received some Enid Blytons as gifts, he never seemed to want to read them on his own.

It was pretty disheartening for a while. I felt I had failed as a parent ( yup, my idea of parenting is teaching them to read). And then one day he came home with a Scholastic book list from school. Scholastic often offers books at discounted rates to his school and so far A and I had been selecting the books along with him. This time A and I were busy so before we knew it, Chubbocks had ticked off three books and sent away for them, demanding a cool Rs. 300 or so. And one day they arrived. Chubbocks got down from the school bus clutching his precious new books to his chest, beaming from ear to ear. As soon as he tumbled down from the bus he opened the one he was most excited about and started reading 'Silly Poems' (poyums). He was so distracted he went about his washing up and post school meal in a kind of daze and by six that evening, he'd finished the book – about a 100 pages long.

Now he's reading it a second time, selecting his favourites to read over and again and I can see his reading gene kicking in. Whether he's at the breakfast table or at a friend's place, he's constantly reading – books, magazines, titles from newspapers, labels on food packaging…He's always happy to entertain the Puddi by reading a short story out to her. He's even gotten excited about the Secret Seven which is his bedtime reading along with dad. And when I jokingly told him his birthday gift this year from us would be two books, his face lit up!

Parent's Nightmares

I was horrified when I read this at my friend Kiran's blog. Horrified at the callousness, the arrogance which led the smalltime actor to assume that he was entitled to behave like this and get away with it. And horrified because this is my daily nightmare - that my two elder kids will get knocked down by a speeding motorcycle or car on their way to the park. We live in a gated community and the internal speed limit is 15 km, but very rarely do I see people following that, particularly the younger generation. I realise I sound like an old-time aunty, but that's ok - maybe I am in many ways. Because I do expect many things that now seem to belong to a bygone era - courtesy, discipline, apologizing when one is at fault, being concerned for other people...
A few years ago I was in hospital after Chubbocks' birth when I had a scary call from my mom. She and dad were driving back after visiting me, and dad was in the righthand lane, driving at the speed limit of 60 kmph. Some guy behind them kept honking but there were cars all around so dad couldn't move over. Finally, when he spotted a break in the traffic he moved to the left to allow the other car to pass. That sodding bully, instead of passing, overtook my parents and parked his car across the road, blocking their car. When dad got out to ask him what the problem was, he knocked dad down and then drove off saying, "I'm sparing him only because he's old". Thanks a bunch, that was so considerate...
There is a girl who rents a room in the house next to my parents. She's a terrible driver, and once while reversing, backed right into dad's parked car and dented it, then looked out and glared at his driver!
I also posted a while back about this visit to the supermarket with Chubbocks:
"...when I had to go do the grocery shopping for the month as A was laid up, I roped him in to push the second grocery cart around. I had to forewarn him that he wouldn't get to ride in the cart shaped like a car since I needed him to help me shop. He was amazingly good about it, steering his cart carefully all over the store, lugging packages back and forth to load it up and not once complaining about either being bored or tired. It was, on the other hand, shocking to see how rudely people in India treat kids. Forget anyone smiling at the plucky boy helping out, but people had no compunctions shoving their carts alongside, bumping into him and not even saying sorry, pushing his cart away and carrying on. At one point, he was coming out of an aisle, and an old gentleman was coming the other way. We had right of way since we were heading for the cash till, but this rude old guy, who must have been a sextagenarian at least, pushed his cart at Chubbocks' cart really hard, so the little guy almost fell, and pushed him all the way back into the aisle and rudely brushed on past. I've been brought up with a respect for the aged and a belief in being polite to them but in the past couple of weeks, this is the second instance when I've noticed that they aren't any more polite or well-mannered than the average Delhi-ite..."
I'm really not sure what is the cause of all this anger, this one-upmanship, this feeling that people from all generations seem to have that they have the right to push other people around. And that if they make a mistake the person who witnessed that mistake had better apologize for being there.

Baby - Boy

Sometimes I think Chubbocks is really growing up. He's already six years old and many a time he displays more wisdom than his mom. Like last night, for instance, or should I say early this morning, when for the nth night in a row Bojjandi was creating a ruckus and preventing me from getting more than 5 seconds of sleep at a time. I couldn't help but burst out, "Keep quiet, you stupid baby!" A sleepy Chubbocks pipes up from his bed on the mattress on our floor, "He's not stupid!"

And then there are other times when I realize he's still a small little boy, even though he's a big brother who sticks up for his siblings. Like when he goes to a friend's house for a playdate, starts missing us and calls us with tears in his voice to check when we're picking him up. Or Rusky…
His school has this cute thing where each class has a stuffed toy for a mascot and each child in the class gets to bring the mascot home for an overnight stay and write about his/ her adventures with Rusky. Chubbocks had turned out to be quite attached to Rusky. I recently made a donation to WWF and in return got 3 stuffed pandas, one for each child. Chubbocks promptly named his Rusky and now can't be parted from him at any price at night. Before going to sleep, he makes sure that Rusky is curled up in his arms and well-covered by the quilt. Even when he accidentally wakes up at night, he has a quick look to make sure Rusky's okay before he settles back to sleep…

Creating Beauty

A and I often discuss what are the things that are really important in life - not the big car or the big, swanky, over done-up house, not the brand name bags or jewels - but being able to add and create beauty in your life every single day. To that end, our efforts with the garden are quite interesting. I am pretty poor at being able to visualise a garden landscape, though I can perfectly well visualise interiors of a home. But we set out to create a sand garden in one part of our lawn that gets almost no sun due to a beautiful but large jacaranda tree that blocks out the sunlight. It's still a work in progress - the bottlebrush tree has to grow, all the poppies aren't yet in bloom - but I think it's getting there. What do you think?

And this is how our entrance looks - quirky, don't you think?
And how do you like our tea guests...
... curled up in the breakfast nook?

Poyums

Chubbocks has been addicted to Oh Say Can You Say for the past couple of months as his favourite bedtime reading. So now he has decided that he has to start composing what he calls 'po-yums'. Here's a sample:

There was a girl who ate a butterfly

Then she ate a bun

And there behind her

There was a gun

 

Don't like that? Here's another one:

Run across the street

And eat, eat, eat

And Burst

 

Eulogy for my favourite aunt

I can't believe we lost you yesterday, forever. I saw you in my mind's eye as I woke up this morning, looking as elegant as ever with your hair in its French roll and your brightly coloured saree with a sleeveless blouse. I don't know if you know how much I admired so many things about you: your energy, your eagerness to learn new things and to teach other people, your youthful zest for life, that bright smile. How feisty and independent you were and how proud, no matter what circumstances you were living in. How much confidence you had in your ability to do things. How much courage you had to live life all on your own. What lovely taste you had in jewelry, in clothing and how chic you were, how stylishly you wore your clothes. What a beautiful name you had - Champakamalini, though we always shortened it to Champa - and how much it suited you, that fragrant, elegant, strong flower.
I can't believe I'm not going to hear your youthful voice, making me roll my eyes at one more piece of advice doled out in your high, lively voice. I can't believe I hadn't met you in so long and that now I'll never meet you again. I can't believe that you never met Puddi - the two of you would have bonded about the manic energy you share. Or that you never saw Bojjandi.
I still have the beautiful frock you got me for Chubbocks' first birthday - what a pretty girl he made - and I remember how much I liked it that you had taken the trouble to travel all this way for his birthday.
I hope you know how much I loved you and respected you and how integral a part you played in shaping me to be who I am today. I will always miss you. XXX

Home is where the heart is...

Tomorrow I head back to work full time. I find myself strangely apprehensive about whether I can pull it off, put my heart back into it and about whether I’ll enjoy this time spent away from the kids and A. It’s not a good time for me to be ambivalent because I have to have a job given A’s new gig as entrepreneur.

I’m incredibly glad for him and grateful to God who in one way or another paved the way for this to happen, because if it hadn’t been for a Deus ex Machina, A might have carried on working at a corporate job but with his heart and soul completely not into it. There are some people who’re good at that and who pull it off incredibly well but for A and I, we have to operate from our cores, otherwise we get dissatisfied and that spills over onto everything else. I’ve been lucky in that so far, whenever I felt that’s sense of dissociation , I had the freedom to quit and start looking for something I wanted to do, because I was either unmarried or A was working, and I’m glad that my being at work full time is giving me a chance to repay A by giving him that freedom.

But the last four months have really been rather idyllic. First I was on maternity leave and about 5 days into it, while A was on paternity leave, he quit and he didn’t even have to go back for too long to serve out his notice period. So we spent a cool two months hanging out together all day, along with Chubbocks, Puddi and Bojjandi. Then, even when I went back to work in December, I was only working half days so I’d be home for lunch and we’d both greet Chubbocks when he came home from school. We took leisurely siestas together and hung out with the kiddos the rest of the day. We read, lazed in the sun and got our house put back together to some extent. We had time to chill, have a conversation and an after dinner walk and watch friends and laugh late into the night.

From tomorrow I’m back to being gone for 9 and a half hours a day, from 8:15 am to 5:45 pm. It’s going to be even harder knowing A is at home and that if I was we could be spending time together. I’ve gotten spoilt, used to spending my whole day bounded up with him and the kids and it feels a little like I’m being exiled from the Magic Kingdom. I’m going to miss the way Chubbocks bounds into the house after school, excitedly chattering about his day at the top of his voice. I’m going to miss seeing Puddi do all the wonderfully kooky things she does, from her request-a-minutes to have anything, from pomegranates to ‘chandra’ ( santra – oranges) to toffees to namkeens, climbing on the furniture, riding Chubbocks’ old cycle and watching the cat that haunts our place bask in the sun. I’m going to miss Bojjandi’s gurgles and coos, his calls for attention, the bicycling movement of arms and legs as he pumps them up and down when he’s particularly happy or excited, miss feeding him so many times a day.

Sometimes I wish I could reverse mortgage my time, that the workplace worked in reverse. That I could have worked until I had Chubbocks and then taken time off till all my kids turn 18 and then get back to work till the end of my days. I’m so glad today’s Sunday and family sleepover night. We have all three kids in our bedroom on Sundays and though it’s kind of cramped, my heart just feels full on Sunday nights.

I guess right now there’s no real cure for it, unless I quickly write that best-selling potboiler. So I’ll just have to store up heaps of time and attention for the weekends and just wrap those memories around me the rest of the week…

My grin has changed!

Written on 27th January 2009

Seems like just yesterday that my baby had a gummy grin. Then came the beautification of Chubbocks with lovely even white milk teeth. Made a handsome devil out of him!

Then a few weeks ago, Chubbocks came home with a wide grin and told me with great excitement, "Mamma, my tooth is moving. I'm so happy!"

All his friends at school had one or two teeth either loose or fallen and he couldn't wait to join the gang.

His front tooth had been moving quite a bit since then and every day, Chubbocks would spend hours in front of the mirror, manoeuvering it back and forth and watching it intently as if he could will it to fall.

Today he burst into the house, his face a beam of pride and joy.

"Abba, my tooth fell in school! There was a mountain of blood in my mouth!" He held out a pearly little tooth for us to see.
It was true!

My baby is growing up!