Who am I ?

After a gap of three years, we’ve come back to live in a full house and as Abhay is fascinated by how people are connected, he couldn’t have asked for more! In fact, he is obsessed with relations and family patterns to the point that it gets embarrassing when he asks long widowed grannies where their husbands are or newlyweds if they’ve had kids yet! He is quick to notice the different roles people play- his paternal grandmother is his father’s mother who in turn is my mother-in- law; His great grandmother is his father’s grandmother who in turn is his grandmother’s mother- in- law! (When I put it this way…it certainly sounds confusing right?)This led him to the conclusion that his mother will be mother-in-law to his wife!! As it is, it took me a while to get comfortable with the idea of being a mom, even after I became a mom and here I find my son already setting the stage for the next role!

After this kind of deduction, I couldn’t let matters be….I looked for a book to explain the different identities he needs to be concerned with. “Who am I” by Sakshi Jain is a bilingual book that highlights different identities and roles a boy or a girl plays in the world, at home and the social set up– as a human being amongst all living creatures, as a child amongst humans, as a son, in case of a boy, as a grandson, as a brother to his sister, as a friend to his pal and finally as a student in the outside world! Though not a story, it conveys the message pure and simple with appropriate illustrations. Im not sure if Abhay got the inner meaning that the author tries to bring out when the book begins from the front and the back with a boy and a girl respectively, displaying their differences as you turn the page only to narrow down as they converge in the center of the book. So a son, grandson, friend and a student – That’s all you need to worry about, I told Abhay! To which my futuristic five year old….asked me “Amma, you will be a grandmother to my son, right?”!!!