The Tie That Binds

We never celebrated Raksha Bandhan when we were little. Once when I was around 8-10 years of age, I suggested to my brother that we should, but he quickly shot down the idea. I suspected then that it was the gift he was afraid of. To be fair to him, I must add that the gift alone was the incentive which had motivated me to proffer the suggestion.

Even though we never actually marked Raksha Bandhan in our childhood home, I always remained solidly conscious of my brother’s love for me.


I still recall how he returned home triumphantly, his first career bonus in his pocket, only to find that celebrations were not the mood of the season as I was burning with a hot fever, while shivering with malaria. He quickly said that I should be rushed to a hospital, brushing aside the funds issue. Eventually he ended up spending almost all his bonus money on me.


As children, we were as close as twins. We used to read, study and play together. We could finish each other’s sentences, knowing with an unerring instinct what the other was thinking. We’ve laughed without stopping at the most trivial and nonsensical things as if we were both struck by laughing gas.


And we shared. It was a habit inculcated by our mother. She would break up anything that we both enjoyed eating and divide it equally between us. Whether it was chocolate or cake, it would be broken up into two and given to both of us. So well was this concept of sharing ingrained in our minds that even if a friend’s mother offered me something to eat, I would ask her, “Has A eaten?” and he would ask the same question with reference to me.


Once a neighbour answered my question with a No, and I staunchly refused to take whatever she was offering. Helpless in the face of my stubbornness, the poor lady responded that she would make sure that A got his equal share.


Sometimes, of course, I would try to irritate him by calling him Bhaiyya or I would sing one of the Hindi film rakhi songs. These songs are very cheesy expressions of brother-sister love. Taken out of the context of the accompanying visuals, and sometimes within them too, they have the gift of sounding totally inane.


Mercifully, he didn’t hold these cheesy songs against me. In spite of those songs, and in spite of the lack of a rakhi to bind us together, we remained bound up in each other.


Today decades later, I have the comfort of knowing that even though other relationships now make greater demands on us, and in some ways, have taken precedence, we remain conscious of and deeply grateful for each other. His phone calls home are always punctuated by questions on how my family and I are doing.


While Hindi film songs spoke of how the hero-brother would go to any lengths to help his supporting actress of a little sister, including devoting the rest of his life to restoring her honour or avenging it, she too would often come racing into the path of a speeding bullet meant for him. Real life, however, doesn’t work that way. Over the years, I have had my illusions destroyed.


I have seen brothers and sisters cut off the bonds of the rakhi themselves, and fight fiercely and deviously over money and property matters. In an infamous case that hit the headlines many decades ago, three sisters got together to hire an assassin to shoot their brother in order to wrest control of a family-owned restaurant in downtown Bombay.


That case and many other instances of sibling love gone sour are a reminder that a rakhi’s threads are delicate indeed, powerless on their own, and thoroughly incapable of holding two people with different personalities and opposing interests together. Shared histories can hold people together, but only if we adorn those histories, and the people who shared those histories with us, with significance.


Today El Niño and La Niña celebrated Raksha Bandhan together. It is a happy time for them. The spotlight was on them. There were fun things to eat, and the Husband bought gifts for them. They are, of course, much too young to understand the meaning of the ritual they will undertake.


I watch them, and think how sweet they are to each other. They are just beginning to understand the concept of a family, of parents and how they are both equally important in the scheme of things. I hope that at some point, they begin to see the festival of Raksha Bandhan as something that goes beyond the ritual of gifting and tying rakhis.

I hope that their relationship grows stronger as the years go by and that they realise that the rakhi is a slender thread, but they must make sure that it is tied well. 


They must be the glue that holds it together.

This post was originally written for Parentous.com, an online community for parenting related issues.

Matching wits with a 5th grader

One post every day in August

One of my favourite little people, my nephew A, became a 5^th grader this year. Suddenly all the factual knowledge that I have accumulated over the years seems inadequate in the face of his voracious appetite for facts as well as trivia, for learning, for tidbits to store away in his mind and memory.

As a reader, I am proud of A. He reads voraciously. He reads children’s books, general knowledge books, children’s encyclopaedias, newspapers etc. During a recent family vacation that the family went on, A could identify every fish in an extremely well stocked and well maintained aquarium, even before his parents had time to read the name on the plaque. When my sister-in-law mentioned this to me, I was filled with pride and admiration for him.

Over the years, A and I have formed a nice tradition of learning between ourselves. “Do you recognize this car, Aunta?” he asks me, thrusting his dad’s well-thumbed copy of Autocar under my nose. The copy is his dad’s but the thumbs and fingers that have given the magazine that well-worn look within a week of its arrival in their house are his. 

The result of this careful study is that while I can identify only a few cars on sight, many of which are no longer even visible on our streets, he can identify cars just by looking at them, and can name cars just by a mere glance at a tyre, radial, dashboard, logo etc. These days, one of his favourite impromptu games is hiding the caption beneath the image of the car and getting me to identify the make.

He gets the answer right about 95 times out of 100. Me? I get a 100% score. Wrong every time.

When A was a little child, I had devised a simple tactic to keep him interested in his meals. We would play Question, Question. I would ask him questions such as “Where is the so-and-so” and he would point at that object, by way of answer. And I would clap and keep score.

When he grew a little older, the questions changed to, “Without looking, tell me the colour of the walls in the kitchen,” or the colour of the bedsheet in the bedroom or even the colour of Mickey Mouse’s shirt on his brother’s T-shirt. His answer would be spot on and I would always be amazed at his powers of observation and retention.

Of course, I would always discourage him from asking me questions, fearing that I would end up displaying my lack of observation skills.

Even later, the questions changed to vocabulary and general knowledge. “Which vehicle has only one wheel?” “A unicycle,” he would shout excitedly. “Which vehicle does Santa Claus ride?” “A sleigh.” “What are the colours of the national flag?” and so on.

There came a time when I no longer trusted in my ability to think up questions on the spot. At one of our mealtime Question, Question sessions, I told my sister-in-law, A’s mother, that A was answering questions faster than I was able to ask them, and that soon I would have to work out a written question paper prior to visiting them.

Back home I am at the receiving end of a barrage of questions. At this point in time, La Niña, my daughter, is old enough to ask me questions. And she has so many of them. Some of the questions are so mind-bogglingly penetrating that I am tempted to leave the question unanswered, so that I can leave their beauty intact, not mar it by seeking to answer it. The questions are like a perfectly wrapped gift whose beauty comes undone the moment one peels away at the wrapping.

These days when I ask A questions, I am no longer the easy questioner I used to be. My senses are on high alert. I am a picture of the utmost concentration as I seek to come up with the perfect question, one that will stump him at least for a little while. But he answers my questions effortlessly, and says, “Aunta, I want a more difficult question.” 

I try desperately to keep up, but always it elicits the same response. "Aunta, I said, difficult question. That one was too easy." I struggle to come up with a tough one. I am afraid that if his attention flags, he might want to turn the tables and ask me a question instead.

Who’s afraid of a 5th grader? I think I am.



Maybe I should get La Niña to ask him questions next time.

(This post was originally written for Parentous, an online community for parenting-related issues).

All Work And All Play

One post every day in August

Being a Work-At-Home-Mother sounded like a win-win proposition until I was forced to stay at home to look after my own kids while ensuring that it remained business as usual as far as the office was concerned.

It all started when my in-laws expressed a desire to go to their native village for the summer. They’ve always been the de facto carers of my little ones while the Husband and I chase corporate dreams. It’s a job they really enjoy, one that they see as both their duty and their right. This attitude and concern of theirs has been a tremendous support to me and I am able to tackle the pressures at work, knowing that the home front is in two pairs of very capable hands.

And so when the in-laws said that they would like to go on their annual vacation, it led to some frantic thinking and frenetic activity on my part. My senior at work very categorically informed me that working from home as an option could not be offered to me for a variety of reasons. I could, however, apply for leave in order to look after my little La Niña and El Niño. But I would have to take work home and keep to the deadlines that had been set for me at least a month before.

Moving to my parents’ house for the three weeks in question was not an option. My dad was out-of-town right then and my mother has not been too well for a while now. We were all worried about her health. I could not entrust upon her the responsibility of looking after two very hyperactive children, even though she had graciously volunteered to do so, knowing that I would not ask.

A colleague suggested that I leave them at a crèche. I wasn’t sure how well that would work out, considering that they’ve always grown up in the home environment and have not spent so much as a moment in a crèche.

And so I proceeded on leave, with a difference. Work would continue as usual. The advantage of the system was that at least I would be with the children. I would just have to manage my time better, multi-task as best as I could and figure out ways to keep the children occupied and ‘engaged,’ a very popular word with corporates in today’s times.

And so began the task of managing the responsibility. I knew at the outset that it wasn’t going to be easy, but the three weeks I spent chasing the twin goals of children’s welfare and deadline adherence often left me tearing my hair out in frustration.

Every time I switched on my laptop, my children would gather around me, wanting to watch me work. El Niño would threaten to bawl unless I let him sit on my lap while I worked. This forced me to be a one-handed typist and considerably slowed me down. Then La Niña would insist on typing out the names of the whole family in Microsoft Word. She has known the spellings since she was four and is quite proud of her achievement.

To be fair to them, I’ve always been hands-on whenever I have been home. So they naturally expected me to spend as much time with them as possible, to take them out to the park every day, to read to them, play impromptu games with them and generally make maximum use of our time together until Aaji and Baba returned.

Add to that, the fact of my being the only adult interaction that they had throughout the day until the Husband returned home, and you will understand how hard it must have been for them to compete with Mamma’s work ‘distraction’ when once they have had the loving attention of both grandparents.

Suddenly they found Mamma far more amenable to suggestion if they wanted to watch Tom and Jerry or Taarak Mehta ka Ooltah Chashmah on TV or their much-loved DVDs of nursery rhymes and The Adventures of Dora the Explorer. It wasn’t easy, but I learned to understand when their energy levels were at their peak and when they needed winding down. Afternoons were for lazy siestas, sometimes forced, but at least they offered me the opportunity to catch up on work.

At other times, they would try to play by themselves, but they would quickly insist on me participating in their games. I got the feeling that perhaps Baba, their paternal grandfather, is an active playmate of theirs.

The challenge honed my time management skills. It also taught me the benefits of waking up early and sitting up late after the kids were put to bed. It meant sleep deprivation, but once you’re a mother, you are used to the lack of sleep. So what’s new?

The most important thing was that my kids and I enjoyed being together so much. I must do this again, but without the pressure of work hanging on my head.

(This post was originally written for Parentous, an online community for parenting related issues.)

The Warmth of My Un-cool Mother

When I was in high school, I would often hear girls rave about how cool their mothers were. How they shared wardrobes and shoes with their mothers, how their mothers trusted them completely. How their friends loved to hang out with their mothers. I could never relate to such conversations.

In those days, I never thought of my mother as cool. She had strict rules governing the complex business of raising little ones and she watched us just as a hawk watches over her young.

I knew girls who would go out for parties and stay overnight at their friends’ homes. Mine would be out in the balcony, eyes peeled, if I didn’t show up five minutes after the time by which I should have been home, down to the minute. If I remembered to call and tell her the reason for my delay with a revised time of return, I would be let off. If not…

Like all teenagers, I used to think of myself as something of a rebel, and would wonder why I was being tethered down when other girls of my age wore what they wanted, spoke to and hung around with anyone and did whatever took their fancy.

During my brief stint in a newspaper, we often had to work the late night shift which would end at 1 am. Female employees would then get dropped home by the office car. Since it was one car dropping five or six of us home, I, who stayed the furthest, would reach home no earlier than 3 or 3.30 am. My colleagues often told me about how they would let themselves in, with their own latch keys, mind you, into their quiet, sleeping homes.

When I asked my mother for a key, she told me there was no need for it; she would open the door for me. And sure enough, whenever the office car came to a halt outside our building gate, I would see her sitting in the balcony, unwilling to go to bed until her daughter was safe home.

I asked her once why she took the trouble to sit up and lose precious sleep, waiting for me, she told me that she couldn’t possibly sleep until all her dear ones were safely home. Then she smiled and added that the day I got married, she would stop worrying about me. She added, “Your husband and in-laws can worry about where and how you are. I shan’t bother at all.”

I was too immature to understand the import of her words then. It was only much later that I realized the comfort of knowing that someone at home loved you enough to worry about you not being home.

Behind the relieved laughter in her voice, I still recall the worry in her eyes, the fear that something might happen to someone she loved. When nightmares like these assailed her waking thoughts, she would pray with all the strength of her simple faith that her fears may not come to pass.

Having returned home in the early hours of the morning, I would go to bed and not wake up until hours later. She, of course, would be up by 6, getting breakfast ready for the whole family and generally preparing for the day.

In today’s day, she would have been considered a Work-at-Home-Mother, every bit of the work she does calibrated and recognised. Back then, she was only considered a housewife. The label was derogatory, at least I thought so. When asked what she did, she would cheerfully reply, “I’m a housewife,” omitting to mention the successful sewing enterprise that she ran from the confines of our tiny home, while simultaneously managing the household, cooking, washing and cleaning, looking after the family and playing an active role in our home education. She had also nursed to health an old relative who had suffered two separate accidents and become bedridden for more than eight months each time.

During Diwali and Christmas especially, she would have so many orders that often she would end up working until 1 or even 2 am, then waking up at 4.30 am to literally pick up the thread where she had left it. In spite of having so much to do, she managed to do justice to every task she undertook. Food was always on the table at meal times. The pantry was always stocked. We never ran out of anything. She was always in control of every situation.

All through my growing years, I was blissfully unaware of the many sacrifices that she must have had to make to ensure that the household ran smoothly.

These included the tiny things she gave up, a little sweet something she had prepared that my brothers and me wanted more helpings of, that she suddenly didn’t seem to be in the mood to have. In fact, for a long time, I didn’t even know what her favourite foods were.

And then there were the big sacrifices, the dreams that she must have put on the back burner as she dreamed great things for us. Rejoiced in our victories. Grieved over our losses.

Today I am a mother of two kids, and yet I dutifully call her once every day. It is a comfort to know that in a world where so much goes wrong every day, there is one little corner where I continue to be loved as I always have been. She waits for my call and worries if I don’t call. I guess, you don’t ever retire from a calling as a mother.

Such big shoes I have to fit into. I wonder if my little La Niña will think of me as un-cool someday.



‘I am writing a Tribute to Mom in association with Parentous.com‘

Playing Roughhouse

There is a small but elaborate ritual that is played out in our house every time La Niña or El Niño hurt themselves. Perfected by Mamma dearest, this little exercise builds on the kiss-all-booboos-away philosophy that mothers everywhere employ with such telling effect.


In my case, once I hug the children and comfort them, I turn with ferocious anger on the space on the floor where they have fallen or the thing they have tripped over or the piece of furniture that they have grazed their knee against.

Letting out the full force of my anger, I shout at the offending party, “How dare you hurt my baby? You better not try your stunts ever again. Mamma’s watching and if you try something funny, I’ll come back to get you. Now say sorry to El Niño/La Niña.” This done, I say sorry as squeakily as possible and my baby is satisfied that justice has not been denied.

Sometimes as a variation, I survey the room, intently scanning the furniture and warn it not to stray into my children’s path when they are playing or face dire consequences from Angry Mamma.

So much does this game please them that they rush into my arms claiming they are in pain even when they are not really hurt. You would think that children who take such delight in being mollycoddled would shy away from any rough play. But it is quite the contrary.

The moment the Husband returns from work, he rushes to the bathroom for a quick shower in preparation for a session of roughhousing with the kids. It is a time that all three of them enjoy. The Husband lies down on his back, with his knees bent over. Then La Niña and El Niño take turns sitting on his feet, facing him, for the pleasure of being hoisted up into the air, as though they are sitting on a one-sided see-saw. All the while, the Husband mumbles some nonsensical song that goes, “Keeka, batate,” while the kids shout for more.

When the Husband is tired out with the horseplay, all three of them wrestle one another. The Husband tickles them, while they get hoarse laughing. I hover on the fringes, cautioning them to be careful, afraid that the children might get hurt. But I can see how much fun they are having.

Sometimes the Husband carries the children in his arms, their belly down and arms extended above the head, and carries them all around the house while shouting, “Spiderman, Spiderman, Does whatever a spider can. Spins a web, any size, Catches thieves just like flies. Look out! Here comes the Spiderman.” I remind the Husband that this kind of flying pattern is more Superman’s style but no one pays attention to me.

Even as the Husband is engrossed in playing these rough-and-tumble games with the kids, he keeps his head. It is his responsibility as an adult to make sure that the tickling and the tumbling always stay within limits. That they end with the kids asking for more, not with them crying.

When the games get competitive as they sometimes do, with the children competing with their father, he sometimes lets them pin him down. At other times, he declares himself winner. While La Niña and El Niño cheer wildly when they win, celebrating their victory by vigorously punching the air, it heartens me to see the graciousness with which they accept defeat. Most importantly, it is thrilling to see the bond of affection that is forged between the children and their father through the medium of roughhousing.

The Husband never excludes La Niña from the fun, insisting that it is as beneficial for her as it is for El Niño. He’s right. Studies have shown that kids who play at roughhousing with their dads grow up to be more confident. It also helps to release children’s pent-up energy in a controlled environment where having fun is the priority but Safety still comes first.

To ensure safety, there are some unwritten rules that are emphasized: No biting, scratching or kicking, no hitting the eyes or the head, and stopping instantly when the child (or the parent) says, “Stop,” or any other word previously agreed upon as the signal to cease and desist instantly. Also, playing on the carpet or bed, with lots of cushions and pillows around, helps protect the child from any hurts and falls.

Before embarking on these games, parents would do well to keep family heirlooms, Ming vases etc, out of harm’s way. This will ensure that the children have a good time without leaving the house looking like Hurricane Katrina has swept through it.

The advantages of roughhousing is that it teaches kids to have fun but in a sensible manner, reminding them that if they are not careful, it could result in pain. Roughhousing has been known to unleash the creative force in children, enabling them to feel sheer exuberance. It also helps children to understand that each person has the right to set his/her own boundaries, which others must respect.

Proper roughhousing enables young children up to the age of 10 or 11 to perceive physical contact in a positive manner. It teaches children to understand concepts like how best to balance oneself, how to judge spaces between two individuals, how to coordinate, how much force to exert etc. It makes kids more resilient and tells them that they have to keep their wits about them as they counter the challenges that come their way.

Kids learn to think on their feet, in the throes of the action. They learn to interpret and decipher non-verbal gestures, read body language and attune their responses to external stimuli, all in quick time. Roughhousing also promotes brain development, by triggering activity in multiple areas of the brain, including the cerebellum, the area responsible for motor development, and the cortex, which is in charge of problem solving, memory, language- and number-based skills, and houses memories.

While roughhousing is good for children, it is especially good for dads too. Nature has designed nurturing in such a way as to make the mother the primary care-giver for her little ones. Roughhousing allows dads to get a piece of the nurturing action. It allows both adults and children to get a hormonal rush. Not only do you experience the endorphin rush that athletes get, you also get a rush of oxytocin, better known as the love hormone, the one that is released when a child is nursed or made to feel loved.

For best results, it is better to start slow, then do some vigorous yet enjoyable roughhousing, then begin to go easy. The Husband often winds down by assisting the children with some building block activity or chatting with La Niña about her day.

That’s all there is to it. The important thing to remember is that children should never get an impression that they are not safe. Nor should the hahaheehee ever turn into a cry of pain.

There are times when I see them having so much fun, that I almost feel tempted to join them. But then I change my mind. If I start playing rough-and-tumble too, who will mollycoddle them?

After all, La Niña and El Niño need someone to turn to when the furniture needs to be forced to apologise.

This article was written for Parentous, an online community for parenting-related issues. You can read the original HERE.




    

Get Up And Dance

I’ve always been a wallflower by choice. At Catholic weddings and parties, I’d hope and pray that no one would ask me to dance. Uncles and cousins would try to pull me into the fun, but I would politely and, when required, even tearfully decline. If someone tried to pull me to the dance floor forcefully, I would stiffen up as though I were made of lead, refusing to part from the chair.

Once a childhood friend of mine, who had perhaps let Bollywood do the thinking for her, asked me, “How can you not enjoy dancing? All Catholics dance; Helen dances.”

Often I was asked, “You don’t dance? But you’re a Catholic, no?” As if Thou shalt dance was one of the Ten Commandments handed by God to Moses.


How could I explain to them? That I was a great dancer – in my head. That when I heard a great piece of music, I always stood up and swayed to its rhythm, performing the most intricate and elaborate steps, leaving watchers spellbound – all in my imagination.


In real life, I would stiffen and freeze, my movements would get jerky and wobbly. I would stress about how stupid I would look dancing. I would worry that I was not as good as the others on the floor, that I would make mistakes and that my two left feet would become the laughing stock of the gathering.



I was like Johnny Depp that way. At the premiere of Dark Shadows, a gothic horror film in which he starred, a reporter asked Depp to reveal what scared him the most. Was it witches, vampires or werewolves? Dancing, he replied, I’d rather fight a buzzsaw than dance.


And then the children came along and changed me. Now I jiggle and swivel, under their guidance. And what great guides they’ve turned out to be!

  No matter what music is playing on TV, whether it is a music video or the jingle of an ad, or even if I make up an impromptu song or their grandfather claps to the beat of some rhythm of his own, they both get into action. To them, everything is music worth dancing to. They get to their feet, shaking their bodies with abandon. It is the best way to dance, I’ve realised, not caring who’s watching. They take over the living room, and I hasten to pick up any stray toys, or other odds and ends, strewn around, lest they trip over them.


Sometimes we waltz, La Niña and I. She, standing on the bed or the sofa, in order to account for the difference in height, me on the floor. And we twirl. As we dance, we lose the grasp of our hands, and we crumble in helpless laughter.


I wonder where my children’s dancing talent comes from. It isn’t the TV, the usual suspect in such cases, since they don’t watch so much TV anyway. It can’t be inherited, because the Husband is as shy about shaking a leg, unless he is with friends with whom he might let down his guard.


These days, I find myself giving in to their pleas that I join them. Just two days ago, when La Niña and El Niño reached out their arms to me, mid-step, I jumped in as though I’d only been waiting to be asked. My mother-in-law was sitting on the sofa watching TV. I don’t know if she was surprised to see me dance with the kids. I know I was. Surprised. And deliriously happy.

  There is nothing adult about the way La Niña dances. I see little children shimmying and strutting about for the benefit of the camera on dance-based reality shows on TV. The children are clearly playing to the gallery, egged on by parents who want their 15 seconds of fame at the cost of their children’s childhoods. The kids themselves gyrate and do pelvic thrusts and other obscene gestures, while looking smoulderingly into the camera the way they’ve seen Chikni Chameli or the Zandu Balm and Fevicol item ladies do. They thrive on the hoots and catcalls that the audience bestows on their every move.


La Niña is in a world of her own. Sometimes she takes your breath away with a particularly beautiful flourish, but for the most part, it is a child’s dance. Childlike in its imperfections.


There’s more than a hint of silliness in her dance, as though all she’s doing is goofing off, having a great time, but doing it with a seriousness of purpose that suggests that dancing this way is the most significant thing that she can do under the circumstances.

  As for El Niño, he didn’t have far to traverse from the tottering steps he took as he learned to walk to the shaky steps he took as he sought to dance. He seemed to realise that either way, he was going to fall once in a while, so why not have fun anyway. Sometimes he would stumble, but he would pick himself up and laugh uproariously as though it wasn’t a mistake, but part of his delicate choreography. Today, his feet are sure of themselves, and he apes his big sister as far as he can, and improvises where he can’t.


Together, their dancing is nothing short of poetry in motion. The free verse of dance it is. It follows no set rhythms. There is no coordination between the two. But what matters is that just looking at them fills me with an overwhelming joy.


At the beginning of this year, we attended the First Holy Communion of my nephew. At the party later in the afternoon, La Niña and El Niño, and another child, continued to dance, long after everyone else sat down to eat.


La Niña and El Niño were at their dancing best, oblivious to those of us who were watching them. If La Niña happened to notice us watching, she would suddenly get bashful. Those of us in the audience quickly learned that the best way to keep her going was to pretend to ignore her. We watched her in delight and quickly looked away nonchalantly if she happened to glance in our direction.


In the midst of the dance, a child came running into the dance area, chased by another. They were playing a game of their own, and as they ran, they knocked El Niño down. He plonked on the floor, in a sitting position. He bawled for a minute or two, protesting at the unexpectedness of the disturbance. His Baba (paternal grandfather) picked him up and tried to soothe him, walking away from the dance floor as he did so.

The DJ who had stopped the music for a while, out of sympathy for the mishap that had befallen one of the three little people who were responding so enthusiastically to his brand of music, got going again once Baba walked away with El Niño. Hearing the music, El Niño immediately wriggled out of Baba’s arms in his haste to hit the dance floor again.


Watching them that day and every time they dance, I have learned some valuable lessons. Do what you enjoy doing. Who cares what the spectators think? And so what if you make a fool of yourself or they think you are an embarrassment? Why should their views matter to you?

  My children remind me, by their actions, that dancing is all about trusting your instincts, about letting go, about not needing to look at the ground below before taking your next step, about giving in to the joy of the moment.


American country music singer Lee Ann Womack once sang, When you get the choice to sit out or dance, I hope you dance.


Thank you, my darling children, for teaching your too-structured mother to get up and dance.

This article was written for Parentous, an online community for parenting-related issues. You can read the original HERE.

Three Little Words

My parents never told us that they loved us. I don’t remember a single occasion when they said, I love you, to me or my brothers. Neither in English, nor in our mother tongue Konkani, which we spoke at home.


And yet I grew up feeling solidly confident about my abilities and realistically sensible about my weaknesses. There was an air of affection that cocooned and sheltered us, even in the absence of those three words.

After La Niña was born, I suddenly metamorphosed into someone who wanted the comfort of saying those words out loud, not caring who heard them. I won’t say it was an overnight transformation, because that wouldn’t be true. It was more instantaneous.

It was after we had brought La Niña home from the hospital. I had just nursed her and she had fallen asleep mid-feed. I looked at her sweet, wrinkly five-day-old face and said, “I love you, my darling” to her, willing her to respond. She smiled in her sleep, as newborns do. Emboldened, I repeated the words. I remember still how refreshingly liberated I felt.

Over the next month or two, I invented a new method of reinforcing those words, hoping for some reciprocity. I would hold my hand to my heart and say, “I,” then touch my lips while saying, “love” and finally touch her chest, while saying a resounding “you.”

When she was about 9 or 10 months old, she began to mimic my actions, whenever we performed our little ritual which was twice or thrice a day. When she grew old enough to speak small sentences, she began to participate more fully. My mother-heart would swell with pride when she would do the gestures, and add, “I yove oo.”

El Niño was equally responsive to the declaration of love. “Avoo” surfaced concurrently with words such as Mamma, mum-mum and paa (short for paani or water). To demystify Avoo, the A comes from the ‘a’ sound that precedes the I and the ‘v’ from the tail end of love, followed by ‘oo.’ No matter how many times I say, I love you, to him, I am always rewarded by the reciprocal declaration, Avoo. Repeated hearings have not dulled the charm and sentiment of all that is contained in that one word.

Over the last 4+ years of motherhood, I have come to strongly believe that hearing the three words, “I love you,” and their equivalents in other languages, are important for a child’s growth and development. This is not to say that not hearing these words is detrimental to a child’s well being. Our parents’ generation did its parenting at a time when actions spoke louder than words, and parents were so busy raising multiple children on the strength of a few resources, that they rarely had the time or the inclination to speak their love. We turned out well, of course, and had happy childhoods, in spite of not hearing those words.

Saying, and repeating, those words, however, serves as positive reinforcement to a child that he/she is loved unconditionally. Of course, if we keep mouthing those words, without showing much for it, our children, who are equipped with a super-advanced radar for ferreting out any fake emotion, will call our bluff.

While it is easy to say, I love you, when my kids are gracious and well-behaved, I must admit I do struggle with feelings of anger and irritation when they aren’t. At such times I have to mentally shake myself in order to remember that I am correcting them because I love them. I also need to remind La Niña that just because I correct her does not mean I have stopped loving her. La Niña, of course, doesn’t see it quite that way, and is quick to tell me, “I don’t like/love you.”

I was devastated when she first put the word, don’t, before the word, love. Since then, I have rallied around, and have come to realise that children are too young to understand the full meaning of the words they bandy about so freely. The more-informed me no longer takes it as a personal affront now when La Niña shouts, I don’t like you. Instead, I counter back with the words, “But I love you.” Sometimes the corners of her mouth tilt downwards in a barely-there smile that she vainly struggles against. At other times, she gives way and we giggle wildly and hug each other.

Once she came to me and said, “Mamma, I know you don’t love me.” I began to protest at this, but she interrupted and re-phrased, “You’re just saying it. I know you love me very little, as much as the namak (salt) we put in our food.” I was reminded of that famous story, which incidentally La Niña does not know, in which a king asks his three daughters how much they love him. Often mistaken as the plot of Shakespeare’s King Lear, this story sees the older two speak of their love in glowing terms, while the youngest tells her father that she loves him as much as salt. Furious at being compared to a kitchen ingredient, the king disinherits her. It is only when the sympathetic cook stops adding salt to the food that the king understands the worth of his daughter’s love.

I replied to her, “That’s not true. I love you very, very much, and just to prove that, next time I will add 100-million-ek-lakh-one-thousand-and-twenty (La Niña’s understanding of an infinite number) grains of salt into your food.”

I love you isn’t the only thing our kids need to hear from us. They also need to hear from us that we are proud of them when they say or do something good. Approval is as intrinsic to a child’s sense of self-worth as love is.

With every positive expression, we are building up our children’s self-image. The easiest bricks available for this laudable task are the three little words that ought to be some of the most overused in every parent’s vocabulary.

This article was written for Parentous, an online community for parenting-related issues. You can read the original HERE. 

Our Toy Story

“Tell your family and friends not to gift us dolls,” the Husband said, soon after La Niña was born. “No child of mine will play with dolls.” I was quick to take offence at this unjust slight against my maayeka (Indian term for a married woman’s maiden home).

But the aggression was short-lived. I knew him enough to know that it wasn’t the garden-variety of dolls that he was so vehemently opposed to as that paragon of impossible perfections, Barbie. Since I hated Barbie too, the argument ended before it even began.


As a child growing up in a Single Income Multiple Kids family, my brothers and I never asked for toys, knowing that the moolah was in short supply. Nor were there any malls or big brands to tempt us. Besides back then, children had healthy outdoor playing habits. Few people really had toys. We had cricket bats, rubber balls, sock balls too, carrom boards, playing cards etc, but we never thought of them as toys, more like props for our games. And yet what fun we used to have.

I wanted that for my children. I wanted them to have fun, without having to rely on toys. I didn’t want them to feel bored if the batteries of some expensive remote-controlled racer car ran out. I wanted them to be able to rely on their own imaginations to rustle up a fun time. I didn’t want them to bawl when their toys broke.

In fact for much of my childhood, a little plastic doll, about a foot-tall, was my pride. She was nothing like the plastic dolls of today, with separate body parts and clothing and accessories. This one was fashioned out of a single sheet of plastic that was then moulded into the shape of a doll and painted over. Its inside was completely hollow. How I loved that doll! My love did not falter even when my older brother painted a moustache over her lip. Once someone stepped on her and her stomach was completely flattened. I still remember how Dad did some repair work and got her up and about again. She retained the dent, of course, but I loved my ‘dented and painted lady’ all the same.

Nor did the Husband have any toys of his own as a child. In fact, he told me (and I've noticed my younger brother do this too, so I know it is a boy habit), he used to pretend his pencil box, eraser, even books, were cars and drive them around, making appropriate engine sounds with his mouth.

The fact that we had had fun with almost no toys had convinced us that the world is a playground and that fewer toys are actually better for kids in the long run. There’s no question of siblings fighting over toys. In the absence of toys, children learn to be creative with the other objects around them.

La Niña and El Niño have enjoyed themselves enormously playing with odds and ends such as a discarded talcum powder container, cassette covers, steel and plastic spoons, pencil box, comb, a large brinjal (which was soon confiscated), an old broken telephone, a desk calendar etc. The plethora of objects around the house encouraged their creativity and imagination.

The kids learned to play together and often involved any parent/grandparent who looked suitably idle in their playtime sessions. They also learned to look after their toys. After playtime was over, they put their toys away. Sometimes.

When the toys ceased to entertain them, and Mamma was home, there was always time for a cuddle and a book reading. Or a drawing and colouring session on some used paper. Another advantage was that our home décor wasn’t overtaken by building blocks, stuffed bears, steel kitchenware, rubber and plastic balls and bats and plastic toys. And oh, the greatest joy, to be able to go to a mall without fearing a long list of demands or tantrums.

Both of us agreed that we didn’t want our children to measure the worth of their childhood by the wealth of their toys. That sequence in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Jingle all the Way, where all the parents are at the toy store, ready to bite each other’s heads off and get killed in stampedes in an attempt to get that all-coveted Turbo-Man action figure was a nightmare we didn’t want to play a stellar role in.

Once children get bitten by the lust for new toys, a hunger that toy companies and big brands riding on the back of cartoon TV channels judiciously nurture, toys cease to be childish playthings. They become status symbols, much as gadgets become for adults. Cost no barrier. I am, therefore, I want.

On the few occasions when we set out to buy gifts, things didn’t really go well for us. We were once walking through the children’s section of a mall. The Husband insisted, “We must buy educational toys for our children,” all the while eyeing this huge remote-controlled child-scale model of a car, large enough for a toddler to sit in and pretend it was the real deal. I realised that if I wasn’t careful, we’d end up buying toys that my children’s Dadda never had when he was growing up.

Incidentally, both the Husband and I are against Chinese toys. The few times we have looked for toys either for our own kids or for other children, we painstakingly look for the Made in India tag. Naturally, there are not too many toys like that. So we buy books instead.

Even though we steered clear of toy purchases, our home got inundated by toys after the first birthday parties of La Niña and El Niño. We put the toys out of the kids’ reach, having decided that we would bring down a toy or two on infrequent occasions as a special treat, or when the kids weren’t well and needed special comfort.

The advantage of this method of offering toys selectively ensured that, aside from a few well-worn toys, they always had something new to look forward to, which would promptly be put away after playtime. This made the few toys appear endlessly new in their eyes.

Above all, both of us consciously admitted that we had to be our kids’ first toys. When I sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star or try to reproduce animal noises, the effort is likely to go further than a Chinese-made piano belting out nursery rhymes and Beethoven’s Fur Elise with equal felicity.

When the Husband goes down on his fours to be a donkey for the kids to ride on or when he playfully wrestles with them, he achieves far more than toys that promise to stimulate the synapses in their brain and enhance their cognitive abilities.

After all, the big toy corporation has always been stressing, Toys R Us. This is our way of showing we believe them.  



This article was written for Parentous, an online community for parenting-related issues. You can read the original HERE.  

Parenting – Then And Now

I’ve almost given up reading the newspapers these days. There’s just too much happening there that frightens the parent in me. I have been feeling completely overwhelmed.

When I look at my children, I feel a strong urge to protect them no matter what. To wrap them in my arms, so they feel secure.

It’s not that the world has suddenly become a more dangerous place to live in. Danger has always lurked around the corner. Parents have always warned their children not to talk to strangers.

But the definitions of stranger and danger were more clearly demarcated back when I was a kid. That apart, there are other problems. When we were kids,parents and kids alike weren’t running faster just to stay in the same place.

Today the challenges that confront us as parents are manifold. Stress, greater demands on our time, resulting from greater economic pressure, and fewer support systems have begun to tell on us. The strain is showing.

Of course, in the interests of fairness, I must admit that we have far more resources to help with parenting challenges today than our parents had.There are childcare books, magazines and websites, including Parentous.com, written by informed amateurs and professionals alike. Compare this with the lack of correct information and the over-enthusiasm of friends and family that our parents had to contend with as they struggled to listen to their own parenting instincts. Today we have more knowledge on our side, besides more support when it comes to our children’s needs, no matter what those needs may be.

The fact that there is less pressure on women to be perfect housewives is leaving us more freedom to achieve our own goals and dreams and grow as individuals. The learning and experience can only help us to become better mothers.

The fact that we are delaying marriage and parenthood is enabling us to bring in some more wisdom and maturity to our parenting struggles. Thanks to this maturity, we are able to establish a more equitable relationship with our children, one in which we can be parents, establishing rules and providing security, while being friends, enabling a higher degree of honesty and communication between us. Whether we’re up for the challenge or not, at least our children know that they can come to us for answers, even when the questions are tricky or uncomfortable.

Technology too has helped make our task easier. Today we have cell phones to help us keep in touch with our children when they are away. A delayed class, a cancelled train, they’ve lost the power to terrorize parents. I can still remember the stress my mother used to undergo if we were even five minutes later than the time we were supposed to be home. And that in a far safer age! And of course, if there was an emergency, she would be even more stressed out.

But on the flip side, we’ve lost far more than we’ve gained. Back then, we used to spend whole evenings playing with our friends. Raucous playtimes they used to be. At any given moment, our parents weren’t aware where we were.We may have been at one friend’s house watching TV, or at another friend’s playing carom or in the open ground outside playing outdoor games. Wherever we were, we were safe. The community was an extension of the family, and under its benign gaze, we thrived.

School itself was a safe zone. We studied the stuff in the syllabus, and competed with our classmates in a variety of areas. But we were not subject to the intense pressure that kids these days undergo.

Today we have doubts about our kids’ safety and security. Whether they are at home with a maid, or at school, or at a friend’s house, we can’t help feeling nagged by worry. When they are online, we have a new spectre to worry about. Cybercrime is real and dangerous, and we hope our children will be safe from its clutches.

Back in the day, my parents knew all my close friends, the ones I hung out with. They knew them all by Face and had their names, phone numbers, and addresses in their Book. When the time comes, I shudder to think of the “Friend” request I will have to send out to La Niña and El Niño, and of the other/alter life that kids assume online.

Television brings so much of sexuality and violence into the drawing-room long before children are capable of processing it sensibly. Thankfully, La Niña and El Niño barely watch any TV, except for Go, Diego, Go and Dora The Explorer whose content I heartily approve of.

Then again, most families back in my childhood were single-income families. The very word ‘disposable’ income had not yet come into vogue and parents were forced to make a rupee stretch as thin as possible in order to meet the family’s needs. Today double-income families have become the norm, and family times, once the high point of the dinner table, have become scarce. Children’s daily routines comprise so many activities today that they hardly have the time to be themselves and enjoy their childhoods blissfully.

When you think of it, the goals of parenting remain the same, even as the challenges and the contexts differ from one generation to another. As mothers and fathers, we have the responsibility of looking after our kids and raising them well, looking after their needs and wants, equipping them to be confident and secure, teaching them the difference between right and wrong and encouraging them to choose the right option every time, even when the choice is difficult. Even as we do so, we struggle against circumstances, the tedious business of earning a living, and the challenges that life and society throw at us.

I grew up in a very secure and loving family atmosphere. My parents, despite having very little, raised us well, giving us the comfort of knowing we were loved and the courage to go out and chase our dreams.

Looked at from my standpoint as a child, my parents were all-knowing. I knew I could rely upon them through any difficulty and my trust remains staunch to this day.

I hope the Husband and I can do the same for our children, so that at some long-distant point in the future, they will look back on us and see that despite the challenges we faced, we did our best. And that whatever we did, we did out of love.

This post was originally written for Parentous.com, on online community for parenting-related issues. You can read the original post HERE.

Much Ado About Milestones

Nothing, I am convinced, brings out the competitive spirit in new parents as does the clocking of milestones by their children.

Unfortunately for me, both La Niña and El Niño were late bloomers in the first fifteen months of their lives. They got their first tooth late. They started walking late. They didn’t sit up until much after they had turned seven months old.

The Husband remained calm in the face of the delays, and tried to relieve my anxieties. He insisted that all things would happen when they had to and that there never was a case of a child not having any teeth. He added that those who have a head start in the running department don’t necessarily become accomplished athletes. But I worried. And I prayed.

Both my children also skipped the crawling stage entirely. Instead, they preferred to move forward on their rears, using their hands to propel themselves forward. La Niña pitched camp at sitting position for a long time, then did the rear-onward act, and then finally began to cruise around using the furniture and the walls for support. She began to walk independently exactly one month after her first birthday. El Niño sat around for a long time, then moved forward exactly as his sister had done.

I agonized over it. There always seemed to be someone or the other waiting to remind me that their own children had started flipping over onto the belly at 3 months, sat up at 5 months and started running at 7 months of age. My futile attempts to remind them that there was a range of months, not one magical day, during which children could ‘normally’ attain milestones met with derision because their kids had clocked those positions at the beginning of the range. I even weaned myself off Facebook to avoid seeing the videos and photos of the exploits of other mothers’ super-endowed children.

Some people tried to be helpful. They ventured the suggestion that maybe La Niña and El Niño both had very heavy heads, making it difficult for them to bear the weight on their thin legs. The Husband, ever the optimist, beamed with pleasure, reminding me the way Sherlock Holmes had reminded Dr Watson in The Blue Carbuncle – “A man with so large a head must have something in it.”

Eventually El Niño skipped the intervening milestones to start walking. Of course, he would walk if we walked backwards, holding both his hands in ours, and led him on. But the confident walk came a week short of the day he completed 16 months of age.

The teething aspect also gave us a fair degree of trouble. La Niña got her first tooth at 11 months of age and El Niño at 13 months. But that didn’t stop either of them from enjoying a range of foods.

I wish doctors would play their part in relieving the anxieties of parents regarding the clocking of developmental milestones. Often kids don’t tick off all milestones in the order in which it appears they should. There is no guarantee that a child will first turn on its side, then on its tummy, then do some back and front movements, prop itself up into a sitting position, crawl, pull itself up into a standing position, cruise around with the help of furniture, and then walk.

As parents, we would do well to remember that no two babies are alike, not even siblings, when it comes to coursing the developmental path. Each baby develops at a different pace. To gauge the milestones of premature babies, paediatricians recommend the use of an ‘adjusted’ age to level the field. The adjusted age takes into account the difference between the baby’s birth date and the mother’s due date and deduct that difference from the baby’s age.

Having gone through my own concerns for my children, I have begun to understand that parents must keep themselves informed about the normal range for all milestones, and report their fears to their child’s doctor. Often the right kind of stimulation and encouragement can help a child to achieve the next milestone. And if a child does not attain the milestone by the time he/she should, it might be time for some medical intervention.

Through countless nighttime worries and readings of relevant websites, I have also begun to understand that growth and development from the perspective of babies is just like an elevator in a really tall building. Children will not get off at every floor, and some might spent inordinately more time on one floor than on another, and some others might skip a few floors and revisit them at a later date. It does not matter.

There are always some milestones that parents can enjoy and cherish. In my case, while my children took their own sweet time with regard to locomotion and teething, they were quick to reach their cognitive, emotional and linguistic milestones. Both La Niña and El Niño turned their heads to catch sounds pretty early. They made eye contact, turned their heads at the sound of their names, smiled, cooed, gurgled, laughed, grabbed things, extended arms and legs, waved, tried to feed themselves and babbled in response to conversation in four languages – all bang on schedule or in some cases, even earlier. Surely that is no mean feat, the Husband reminded me.

Fortunately for my peace of mind, eventually the milestones that had been in a stage of arrested development showed themselves. El Niño, having managed the putting-one-foot-before-another business spared no time in catching up with the running, jumping and climbing milestones. Today they both keep me on my toes with their naughty antics and their precociousness.

I’m certain my prayers helped.

This post was originally written for Parentous.com, on online community for parenting-related issues. You can read the original post HERE.