World's messiest room!

 

“World's Messiest Room Award” was an Archies’ poster put up on the door of my room when growing up… and frankly, it was more cosmetic than a reflection of reality. Being the obedient 90’s kid, I didn’t have the liberty to live up to the award…but it gave a “cool’ and a “bohemian” touch to an otherwise prim and proper state of things in my so-called room during an age when the concept of privacy was literally unheard of!

Little did I know that there was someone more deserving of the award than me and that too almost three decades later…a mini me of sorts …my daughter! My ten year old couldnt be bothered about the mess she creates and we are at our wit’s end with her dont-care attitude about the chaos in her room! Her table is perpetually cluttered with her stationery (which is and always will be her first love!), her innumerable diaries filled with her random sketches, books that she has been reading, or has already read and plans to read again, or the new books checked out from the library, origami craft works and the resultant craft waste, abandoned handcrafts kept as knick-knacks (passed on by another hoarder in our family!😊), half eaten fruit bowls, chocolate wrappers, crumpled paper with disregarded drawings….you name the waste and Aadya’s table will have it! Don’t even get me started on what she dumps on her bed, her mini drawing table and her mini trampoline that also doubles up as temporary stack for even more junk! So much so that the earlier inhabitant of her room (her older brother) is often appalled at what his erstwhile room has become! No wonder it became almost impossible for the siblings on the opposite sides of the spectrum on the point of neatness to share a room! With her older brother having moved to his own room, Aadya has the entire room to herself…… for making a mountain of a mess, while she couldn’t care less!

It's been a while since I picked up a picture book for my not-so-little-one owing to the fact that she now considers herself all too grown up for a picture book, and is miffed that it deprives her of a chapter book that she could have borrowed instead as per her 6-book plan of Kahaani box library. But I couldn’t resist picking out “Zippy Messes Up” by Anitha Balachandran and hoped it could instill the importance of cleaning up, in my untidy little devil. 

Part of the Zippy series, featuring an anthropomorphic Zebra named Zippy and her group of friends all belonging different species with distinct personalities. Zippy and her friends  are forced to shift their play indoors to Chikki, the monkey’s room, owing to the rains outside. As its time to wrap up their games of cars, carrom board, paper crafts, blocks, jigsaw puzzles all played over cookies and sandwiches, they finally acknowledge the mess in the room!  (That never happens in our case!) Reluctantly they pick up the toys one by one and put them back where they belong, whilst getting their feet stuck in the wet and gooey mess of food leftovers, wiping the walls clean of the paint stains, and exerting all their energies into pushing the carrom board across the floor and Chikki’s room is finally made livable after all the Shramdan!  A nice little book to goad your little ones to clean up after themselves. I was hoping that our little slob would take a cue from Zippy and her friends, only to find her smart-mouthing her way through her messiness with saying “An artist’s room will always be messy”!  😕

 

Aha! Its summer!

 

It’s that time of the year again when we are envious of our kids (if not always ......... that is) and turn nostalgic over those carefree days of summer of 80s’ or the 90s’, when time literally stood still! Juxtapose to the present, we have turned into anxious parents who are in the continuous quest of finding things to keep our kids constructively engaged and in a constant endeavor of devising ways and means to keep them off gadgets! 

There is no doubt that our parents had it easy during simpler times, lesser distractions, and fewer choices! There is also no denying the fact they are a lot more easy-going as grandparents than they were as parents! (But try and get them to admit it…you are reminded of the 80s’/90s’ kid that you are!)

In between packing the kids off to grandparents, enrolling them into summer camp, driving them to museums or children’s activity centers squeezing in a family vacation or two, before you know it, summer holidays are over and it’s time to scramble for uniforms and books for the new academic year! Well… I began writing this at the beginning of April,  only to be finishing it at almost the end of my daughter’s summer break! 

Anyway, Aadya rang in her summer vacations with AHA! Adventures with Asha Nehemiah at our favourite “ Kahaani Box”, J P Nagar in association with Funky Rainbow, another one of our favourite places,  for  a wonderful  session themed “Author Meet and Greet”, wherein the veteran author Asha Nehemiah took the children through her process of ideating, creating, writing and providing inputs to illustrating her books, in particular reference to the book that was recently launched titled “Ghosts, Thieves and Aha! Adventures” brought out by Puffin publications. While offering a sneak peek into her new book, the prolific writer engaged the children with “from-idea-to-print-story” of ten year old Ashish and run-ins at his mom’s workplace, a dream workplace for some viz. a Book store! The delightful session ended with a poster making activity which the kids enjoyed as they doodled their ideas into interesting pictures or taglines!

Here is ours…….

Part of the Puffin’s Silly Billy series,  “Ghosts, Thieves and Aha! Adventures” traces the eventful journey of a young Ashish from what he expects to be a painful torture to finding his own happy place at this “beautiful bookstore”, while making lasting friendships and other interesting connections along the way, and in the process solving the mystery of how the book “Success Sutras and Money Mantras” always finds its way onto to the top shelf of the revolving stand!  Aha! one can find adventure in the most unexpected of all places! Accompanied by strikingly realistic yet toon-style illustrations by Pankaj Saikia,  “Ghosts, thieves, and Aha! Adventures  is a summer potpourri -  from funny to wistful and tender, from suspenseful to comic,  full of GenX parenting to Gen Z growing up moments! As it goes in the book    “ Just being around and reading them will give you your own Ah! Moment when you least expect it"…….. so go find your own Aha! moment this summer!