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”!  😕

 

The girl who loves to draw!

 

It is an understatement to say that Aadya loves drawing. When it comes to Aadya and her penchant for drawing, I am always reminded of a movie quote from the 90’s American movie “Sister Act 2 - Back in the habit” which goes like  “When you wake up in the morning, and you cant think of anything but singing, then you should be a singer, girl” ….. this couldn’t be any more truer with Aadya and her drive to draw that is uppermost in her mind as she wakes up every morning!   

 

What began as simple doodling has now blossomed into a creative, engaging, and sometimes all-consuming form of expression for Aadya. Initially, Aadya was stuck on drawing princesses and all their trappings, and then she moved on (phew!) to depicting her thoughts, state of mind, her wishes, or her understanding of a story or a book onto her drawing board!  (quite literally! 😊)  Drawing is not only Aadya’s favourite pastime or her hobby but also a form of solace on days that she is upset over something…. as she pulls out two sheets from the big pile of one-sided printed sheets (a very useful recycling method for my office waste!) and starts to draw………all is forgotten!  It’s not unusual to find her suddenly disappear to her desk in the middle of watching a family movie and reappear with an image she has sketched, drawing inspiration from something she’d seen on screen just a few minutes ago, like drawing two children playing tennis as were all watching “King Richard”! 

 It’s not uncommon to find her immediately turn out a replica of an image pasted on a new piece of clothing that we just brought home from shopping! 

It’s not out of the ordinary for our unstoppable little one to churn out 10-12 drawings every day! It’s not odd to find our house cluttered with one-sided printed sheets of all sizes, with Aadya’s drawings on the other side, lying everywhere around the house! It's not easy to swallow your guilt as she doodles out this workaholic image of yours as she waits for you to wind up at work! 

It’s not a birthday celebration at all,  without Aadya’s colourful, vibrant and imaginative birthday cards that make for wonderful keepsakes for everyone in the family!

So much so that a recent visit to the planetarium and the Indira Gandhi park had us unexpectedly and serendipitously gate crash into the Sunday meet up of an art group called “Pencil scratchers” where Aadya found  herself most at home with a paper and pencil, rubbing shoulder to shoulder with fellow pencil artists and attempting to sketch a live model!

 

For someone who brightens our days with her brilliant drawings, we decided to preserve all her creations bound into books – and we already have over fourteen bound volumes of over 100 pages each, comprising of her drawings over last year and a half! Let’s hope she draws her way into filling an entire cupboard in the near future!

 So this year as she turned seven (almost two months ago and its another thing that I manage to write about it only now!), Aadya was insistent on having her birthday cake reflect her artistic quotient and Viola! ….we did celebrate her birthday in a rather artsy-craftsy way at “Firefly terrace” with a few friends and cousins who joined in the celebrations by way of a creative activity  planned for both kids and adults….and we all got our little artsy keepsakes to take home, that we can always remember Aadya and her seventh birthday celebration!

 

As Aadya explores her artistic side more, we revisited the book “ " I gotta draw"” by Bruce Degan that I had read to her brother almost 8 years ago! That apart, we also got a few books that she could relate to and thanks to the wonderful library   “Kahaani box”  we had a decent line up of books related to art and love for expressing oneself through drawings. From Fancy Nancy’s “Aspiring Artist” , where Nancy is inspired to into being an artiste in her characteristic fancy style to  “Tell us a story Papa Chagall” by Laurence Anholt , which is a delightful introduction to the dream-like style of painting of Marc Chagall and “Prince with a Paintbrush” by Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan and illustrated by Ravika Sen which is a charming read on the “Leonardo-Da-Vinci of India”- Raja Ravi Varma!

 

But Aadya most of all related to “Bea Garcia - My Life in Pictures” written and illustrated by Deborah Zemke, an early reader series brought out by Puffin books. We couldn’t have found a similar book, which revolves around a little girl named Beatrice Holmes Garcia aka Bea who has a penchant for drawing and expressing herself through pictures of everything about her life as it is and as she wishes it to be! It was almost as if we were looking at a reflection of our little aspiring artist as we read about how Bea navigates through her school and social life after her best friend Yvonne moves to Australia, all expressed through her magnificent drawings! . Read on as the teacher confiscates Bea’s book “My life in pictures” that almost threatens to expose her quirky view of her classmates only to have the circumspect teacher realise the power of her pencil! So… draw on…. my aspiring little artist …..the world is your canvas! :-) 

 

 

Travelling to the Land of the Lepchas!

 

Over the last few days, we have been at Sikkim, the Northern eastern Himalayan state nestled in between Nepal and Bhutan. Known for its pristine beauty of glacial lakes, breathtaking valleys, gushing waterfalls at every corner of the mountain drive, panoramic view of the snow-capped Himalayas, and the precarious mountain passes. Mind you… exploring Sikkim is not for the faint hearted or one with a sensitive stomach - it involves fortifying yourself for  freezing temperatures, being prepared for anytime down pour, and enduring through winding and meandering drives through changing landscapes, bracing yourself  for breathlessness at high altitude points and of course grappling with motion sickness even when you  have never ever got sick during travel!  

But all such discomfort dissolves into delight with one look at the mist covered calm waters of Tsomgo lake, or the chance to snowball each other even in summertime at the “Zero point”, or the awe-inspiring views of the majestic Himalayas on the way to Yumthang valley, or experiencing the roar of the “Amitabh Bacchan” waterfalls on the way to Lachung, or taking in some cool refreshing  mountain air while on the pine forest trail to Rabtanse ruins at Pelling, or waking up after quick shut-eye during a long drive  to a spectacular sunset coloured sky over the silhouetted valleys… truly …travelling around Sikkim is all about enjoying the journey as much as the destination … more like life itself…isn’t it!! 

 

It’s after almost two and half years that we’ve donned on our travelling pants (even literally!) and our trip was wedged in between Abhay finishing his class 10 board exams and the reopening of courts in Bangalore after summer vacation and amidst incessant rains, and peak-season rush through out Sikkim and Darjeeling, Aadya’s terrible motion sickness (we had polythene bags tucked in at every compartment of the vehicle only to find them missing when we most needed them!) and Abhay’s annoying obsession with uploading stories on his instagram handle (now that his exams are over we had to keep our promise of letting him resume his social media activity!) …. we did manage to make it one of the most memorable trips ever! 

 

Our last stop was the West Bengal’s queen of hill stations - misty Darjeeling which was more of a reality check and reminder of the traffic jams back home in Bangalore!  Since we were nursing a minor stomach upset and were also exhausted from our Sikkim adventures, we avoided the usual touristy spots and chose to take it slow and indulged in some retail therapy on the Mall road, while enjoying some live jazz at one of its famous eateries - Glenary’s and stopping by Oxford Bookstore. 

 

One of the sure ways of avoiding  the crowds is to either travel during off-season or visit off-beat places within popular destinations. While it’s nearly impossible  to travel  during off season with school going-exam-writing kids, and  it’s not always possible to have the entire trip comprise of off-beat places, but it’s always possible to be a discerning traveller and look out for not-so-oft visited places like museums, quaint cafeterias and bookstores that are storehouses of local history and culture. For instance, while there were serpentine queues at the ropeway ride,  there was not a single soul at Gangtok’s Black cat museum - which we pleasantly discovered to be a wonderful state-of the art museum showcasing Sikkim’s history and the trajectory of the Army's Black Cat Regiment stationed in Gangtok. While none of the localities were even aware of this museum, the administrator of the museum himself appeared to be  curious about how we discovered this place. So much so, that even the taxi driver whom we hailed to go to our next destination was even more inquisitive about our visit and wondered  what interesting things possibly lay therein! 

 

 

 ….which leads me to our next destination….bookstores. As always in all our travels, one of the mini highlights of our trip is to visit a local bookstore and by now our entire family looks forward to it and given a chance Aadya would have spent an entire day at two of Gangtok’s famous bookstores - Good Books centrally located at Gangtok’s MG Marg and Cafe Fiction or Rachna Books (as it’s listed on Google) located opposite Gangtok’s Secretariat Office. 

 

Just off one of the busiest parts of MG market and near Baker’s cafe (a famous cafeteria with charming and eclectic decor, offering delectable variety of baked goodies and eateries ), Good books houses a wonderful collection of mainstream books and many works by local authors  where we ended up buying a few regular Usborn Early Readers for Aadya and an interesting compilation of tales of the land of Lepchas (Sikkim’s aboriginals), aided by amiable and helpful  bookstore owner. Good Books is indeed a lovely place for book lovers to make a pit stop amidst their MG market shopping! 

 

We also dropped into Cafe Fiction, an award winning bookstore cum cafeteria that has a beautiful display of a wide variety of mainstream and independent publications that one can pull out from the aesthetically placed bookshelves and curl into their super-comfy chairs reading them…while sipping a hot cuppa coffee, by the giant windows offering beautiful views of the street below. I wish “Namma Bengaluru” too had our very own Cafe Fiction! 

 

Anyways.. thanks to Make-my-trip, we now return to Bangalore glad that our Sikkim trip was by and large uneventful (though there were scares of landslides at certain places owing to heavy rains) refreshed and rejuvenated for our routine grind back home, our social media accounts full of stories and posts to put up and our minds full of happy memories and  four bags full of laundry! :-) 

 

Well… as my colleague was intrigued to notice books even in my travel DPs .. I must say that a travel without books is no travel at all! Despite long road trips during the day.. reading to Aadya was never given a miss (not that she would herself or let us go to bed without a book) and thanks to “Good Books” and “Cafe Fiction”, we were never short of interesting reads.  But to commemorate our Sikkim trip, we read from “The Legends of the Land of Lepchas Folk Tales from Sikkim” by Yishey Doma and Pankaj Thapa. 

A beautiful collection of folklores on various aspects Sikkim’s environment, history and culture. We were delighted to make some connections of what we saw, felt and experienced from some of the stories. From story of “ The Race between Teesta and Rangeet” that gives a mythical side to the confluence of the rivers of Rangeet and Teesta river that we came across on our way from Bagdogra to Gangtok to “A tale of two trees” being the story of Lali Guras, Sikkim’s Rhododendron that we saw aplenty at the Yumthang valley, or the “The Cave of Occult Fairies”, the story of Guru Padmasambhava or Guru Rimpoche who subjugated the demons and saved his devotees from evil, that reminded us of giant statues of Guru Padmasambhava  at Sandrupse hill and at Pelling skywalk, and the fact that Mount Khangchendzonga is a constant presence in all the stories just as the view of the mountain  Khangchendzonga  was our constant quest throughout our trip! While we are set to get back to pavilion from now on, this book serves as a wonderful parting shot for our minds and hearts still hung over the land of Lepchas! 

Aadya hits a six!

The only advantage in having a huge gap between your two kids is that as parents, you can still enjoy the endearing years of early childhood of your little one while suffering through the awkward adolescent years of your older one! You can still hold on to the innocent and tender moments with your little one  just as you try to let go of your older one asserting his own way of doing things. Just like your return from work earlier than usual is sure to be a pleasant surprise for your little one and probably an unpleasant one for your older one! 😊  Well……I’m not sure how long can we rely on this contrasting relationship between our older one and younger one, as our daughter is sure catching up with her older brother …. having turned six a couple of days back! As we were made to relive her last five years through a heart-warming video put together by the older brother…we couldn’t help wondering……..where did those six years go…really!!!

This was Aadya’s second birthday celebration during lockdown except that we switched places since the last time,  as we continue to operate  from Dharmasthala. Centred around a Disney princess and Frozen-II theme (I know… so predictably boring!), led by a birthday treasure hunt of gifts  which has now become a family tradition, albeit with many more places to hide this time, followed by a cake-cutting celebration with a few of our closest relatives living in the neighbouring farms, who were all sportive enough to participate in an outdoor super-minute game organised by the older brother turned perfect host….and this time, it was Aadya’s paternal  grandparents to join in through video call! 😊

No celebration in Shristi is complete without the farm workers joining in …. more so when it is the birthday of their most loyal follower in the literal sense, accompanying them to the plantation, entertaining them  (unknowingly) during their lunchtime and constantly buzzing around them all day! So amidst our close family and  our farm family, Aadya’s sixth birthday was truly a memorable one!  

A birthday post deserves a special book and this is by our all-time favourite author who recently celebrated his eighty seventh birthday a little earlier this month. Though  I haven’t read many stories by Ruskin Bond to my little one, she best remembers Ruskin Bond from the cover of his autobiography “Lone Fox dancing” she'd  seen me read  sometime ago. This time we read an adaptation of Ruskin Bond’s writing into a picture book format in “Happy Birthday World” brought out by Red Panda publications illustrated by Maya Ramaswamy. Celebrating nature’s wonders narrated through the medium of a little girl and a boy, this book makes an earnest attempt to impress upon young minds to be mindful of the environment around them and to appreciate its various facets- from the sun that shines from dawn to dusk renewing each day as if it’s born again, the flora and fauna being nature’s gifts, shores swept by mighty seas that abound great mysteries, freezing ice on the extreme north and the south that may be a million years old but can be discovered as new. Our mother earth is full of surprises which the author likens to birthday gifts for everyone in the world who is willing to share, also stressing the importance of conserving nature for only then, would we be taken care of  here, there and everywhere - Happy Birthday World!   Happy Birthday, little one…you mean the world to us!  

Mother's day in lockdown 2.0

Just as we had begun to let our guard down in the assumption of a safer and pandemic-free 2021, it seems like we are back to square one again, with the onset of a deadly second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Apart from the concerns of health and safety, every day we are confronted with doomsday-spelling local television channels, horror stories of suffering and the difficulty in finding hospital beds or shocking casualties on account of shortage of oxygen, and countless WhatsApp forwards by self-anointed gurus and life coaches on “what to do and what not to do” during what now seems like a time-warp, with a repeat of the 2020 lockdown era! Amidst all the surrounding doom and being surrounded by the constant fear of falling sick, while being confined indoors with continuous domestic responsibilities, this may hardly be a time a to celebrate Mother’s day…right? 

In fact, it didn’t occur to me until I saw our favourite Independent Book store, Funky Rainbow's FB post on the upcoming “Saturday morning live” Buzzaar with Mother’s day theme, titled “Mum’s the word”! Having moved to my parents’ farm in Dharmasthala over two weeks ago, I got to watch the weekly book recommendations revolving around mothers at the Book Buzzaar with my mother on the eve of mother’s day, and this was indeed special. As is the norm, the second half of Book Buzzaar featured a chat with Dr. Tanu Shree Singh, author, psychology professor, founder of FB group Reading Raccoons, a bibliophile who owns and supports many libraries in Faridabad and Himachal Pradesh (How we would love to visit a library in the hills!) Dr. Tanu Shree Singh drew out words of wisdom from her experience and her book “Keep calm and Mommy on” which was felt like a soothing balm on the harried and hassled minds of mothers who are trying hard to keep it together and retain their sanity especially in these troubled times, and frankly, we couldn’t have asked for a better mothers’ day present! There were a lot of takeaways from the interesting conversation between the unstoppable Vidya Mani of Funky Rainbow who is fondly known as Editoramma and Dr Tanu Shree Singh who was spoke from her professional and personal experience as a mother of two, including how it is impossible and unreal to live up to the expectation of a “supermom” and not to stress too much on excelling as parents as it is an evolving journey with its own highs and lows, laughs and cries, and the key being keeping the line of communication open. No matter what, its never too late to sit back, reset and reboot….and to mommy on..! 

Its also true that we end up empathising with our mothers a lot more than before after having becomes moms ourselves. There may have been times during my own turbulent teen years, (which I swear, was nothing compared to what I am going through now with my teenage son) when I’d sworn never to follow my mom on certain irritant aspects of her parenting approach, only to realise that I have unknowingly turned into my mom on those very aspects! So no matter how old you are…..moms always get to say with glee “I told you so!” 😊 

This year’s mother’s day has been special in the sense that I have been able to spend quality time with her in her unhurried world of nature walks, gardening, reading, online shopping, chanting of shlokas in the evening and of course dishing out delicious ‘oota from our thota” not only for our brood but also for our large farm family (including our farm workers!) Thank you amma for having us over!

On the occasion of Mother’s day, amongst various recommendations from Funky Rainbow, we read “A Saree for Ammi” a Tulika publication by Mamta Nainy and pictures by Sandhya Prabhat. As always, Tulika brings wonderfully nuanced stories from various corners of India showcasing the unique cultural milieu of the place and it people brought out in the story and its characters. This vibrantly illustrated Tulika story comes from a family of weavers in Kota, Rajasthan. Narrated in first person, a little girl watches her mother weave the most beautiful sarees and sell them in the local haat (marketplace) but never don any of them and decides to find out why. The innocent little girl that she is, she is left puzzled with her mother’s reply “If we keep sarees, how will we eat?” So she persuades her sister Sadaf to help her gift their Ammi a sari which had taken Ammi almost a month to weave. From breaking open their gullaks (piggy-banks) to doing odd jobs for Amina Khala, read on as the siblings embark on their heart-warming adventure to fund their special gesture for their loving Ammi! A touching tribute to a child’s love for their hard working mother, beautifully complemented by the illustrations that bring alive the bright hues and designs of the handloom weaves, and vividly portray the environment, community life and culture of the traditional weaving community life in Rajasthan ...... making it a delightful read on Mother’s day! Happy Mother’s day to all the mothers!

5-power!

“I’m growing bigger…my birthday is coming!” is how my little one shoots back at her brother when teased about being a baby! While we can’t believe how time has flown ever since she arrived five years ago, our little princess (I know it’s a cliched term but she loves it and sure acts like one!) has grown bolder, naughtier and definitely more assertive in her sibling skirmishes with her older brother! The eight-year age gap hardly matters as she regularly spars with her older brother in their territorial wars, so much so that we are left bemused (and a little nervous) at how confident she is about her own ability to take on her big brother! That said, she can turn into a baby the next moment, wanting to be fed and cuddled to sleep like one, when one of her parents walks in!  While she is definitely a lot more independent than Abhay was at her age, open to trying out on her own and excited to experiment with new experiences, Aadya however still latches on to certain activities that strictly qualifies as being only for babies, like being fed dinner or refusing to go to bed on her own and its more to do with wanting to be around her mommy or daddy all the time than about her own capability  …….and our 24/7 presence at home owing to the lock-down has certainly not helped the situation!  Aadya turned five last week and no doubt she has gotten bigger, but she can no longer hold on to “my birthday is coming” anymore…..for at least while now and will have to think of another way to smart mouth her brother! 😊

Since her birthday falls during the school vacation, we always lament over how she never gets to celebrate the day feeling special at school and this year we had decided to have her don her birthday special dress on the school reopening day in the first week of June. Alas!…. It turns out that it’s not just Aadya but many are to miss celebrating their birthdays in school this year!

Anyway, it was very much a birthday in Covid-19 times,  with a home celebration amidst the members of only our household with her maternal grandparents joining in through a video-call, and  splash of pink and a smattering of a few princess cut outs available at home, home-made savouries, and a “princess/doll cake” custom baked by “Bake_mon_reve ” run by a pastry chef who is also a relative followed by the customary birthday treasure hunt organised by her “Anna” and the piece de resistance being his part-hand-sketched-part-printed birthday card for his sister making it even mores special!  

While we revisited an old book, "Its Hard to Be Five" by Jamie Lee Curtis  and Laura Cornell, that I had read to the big brother on his fifth birthday back in 2011, it didn’t enthuse her much and I’m not sure if it’s a ‘girl thing’ not to be impressed by a whiny five year old boy annoyed about turning five…but when I happened to stumble upon this wonderful online story at “Storyweaver – Pratham books” ..I knew I had found the perfect book for Aadya’s fifth birthday! In fact, “With you, Ma” by Adith A K and illustrated by Amalendu Kaushik is too good to be true! I must say Pratham publications have been pioneers, in so far as stories that deal with simple growing-up quirks of children. No matter how usual or unusual is your child's tendency, ..there's bound to be a Pratham book about it and I'm always amazed at how they manage to put out such good content at such an affordable price! 

Anyway, in keeping with the Covid-19 times, we went online too, and found this gem of a  book online at storyweaver.org.in.  My little one always relates to the girl in the book and what are the odds that the little girl in this book is named Aadya too?! Little Aadya is almost like an extended attachment to her mother and neither lets her mother out of sight nor wants to venture anywhere without her ma (I’m sailing in the same boat too!) On a trip to Majuli, where she is seen literally clinging to her mom through-out the flight-train-ferry journey, Aadya is introduced to another girl her age, Kim-Kim and her young sister. Though hesitant at first, Aadya enjoys playing with her new friend Kim Kim, and soon she is off to tiny little adventures with Kim Kim and her friends, playing in the rain, splashing water by the river and picking and munching on bugories….all on her own without having her mother tag along and this experience pushes Aadya to take baby steps towards the path of self-reliance, much to her mother’s delight!  A great book to nudge your little one into doing things independently!   So here’s wishing more 5-power to my just-turned-five year old who no matter what and much to her chagrin, will always be the baby of our family! 😊

Mother's day in lock down!

If there’s anyone on the domestic front who is by far the worst affected by the lock down, it is the mom – be it stay-at-home or part-time/full-time professional – all are in fact working moms! With “stay home stay safe” being the ubiquitous mantra these days….home has turned into a workplace, day-care, summer camp, online-classroom, binge-watching-entertainment centre,  throwback-mythological-drama-driven-holy space, a 24/7 eatery all rolled into one – and who’s still responsible for keeping it together? “Amma..amma” is the constant chatter I hear from my soon to-be-five year old as I try to write this in between finishing up some pending drafts of petitions to be filed as soon as regular courts reopen at the end of the lock down (whenever that is!) As we try to grapple with household chores, cooking, tending to young kids, (with a little help from our spouses of course) while working full time/part time at our third party jobs (at jobs when working from home is possible), blurring the lines that separate work from home thus robbing us of our distinct identities, all of which now seem to merge into one – of that of a lock down mommy!  Personally, motherhood is certainly a joy to take on, but it is also true that motherhood isn’t all of me and I am pretty sure that I don’t want it to be! But I am also a little hesitant to admit it, as our culture elevates mothers to a Goddess-like stature, being the ultimate destination for an Indian woman.  Frankly, I don’t want to be a goddess!  I am only human and I want my own share of ‘bad’ and ‘good’ days as a mommy without having to feel especially guilty about the “bad’ days! On this mother’s day, apart from all the admiration and appreciation for the maternal bond, I wish we could be more tolerant and non-judgemental about the mommy-meltdowns too!

Apart from being moms, most of us women have our own little happy places untouched by our mommy-selves that we cherish – be it work or a certain me-time at home, or a class we enrol into, or a hobby or an activity we take up, or catching up with our own buddies or a yester-year serial /video/book/ dress we watch, read or wear just to feel if “that little girl’ is still in us…don’t we? Now suddenly, we find that the lockdown owing to the COVID-19 pandemic has suspended (albeit temporarily) everything and our own happy place seems to have been invaded by our all-pervading identity of being a “mom”!  I’m not sure if its only me or  is there anyone else who feels the same, if you do, please give a shout-out so that I know I’m not the only weird one! 😊

As I spend the first few hours of mother’s day with my mom at her farm Shristi at Dharmasthala where we travelled to on a two-way inter-district pass in order to pick up our son, Abhay who in his own words has had “the best summer ever” away from home, I now dread having to manage two kids for the rest of the lockdown! For mother’s day in advance, we picked an old favourite (from one of my own happy places Kutoohala) “I love my baby Because…..” a picture book by Paulina Simons and illustrated by Cassia Thomas,  which almost serves as a reminder for us moms as to why we are who we are! This delightfully endearing book beautifully describes the everyday adventures in mommy-hood, the light hearted humour depicted in the illustrations that are quite the opposite of the narration and a realistic portrayal of how things actually pan out when you involve young kids!  It is probably the mommy’s wishful thinking as she says “I Love by baby because ..she dresses herself. She feeds herself breakfast ..”… and as you can imagine, the little girl is shown doing her own version of  “dressing herself and eating breakfast”! The whole day goes by as the little girl “helps’ mommy with the household chores in her own way (Seriously, the mommy in the book is too good to be true!) and despite all the exhaustion, the mother can only feel unending love and warmth as she cuddles her daughter close at bedtime and ends up falling asleep herself! Feels familiar…doesn’t it? Happy mother’s day to all mommies!

Are you a WOCOTEEN?

I have always thought of parents of adolescent children from the perspective of a poem titled "Middle age" by Kamala Das that we had in our textbooks as a part of our high school syllabus. It's only now that I realize,  as I am one myself, with my older one turning thirteen two weeks ago....that it hardly feels like middle age for me! Of course adolescence lasts for over seven to eight years and this is only the beginning!  But I'm already dreading the words as the poem goes......"Middle age is when your children are no longer your friends, but critics, stern of face and severe with their tongue......they no longer need you except for serving tea and pressing clothes..." (Yikes!!)  While Abhay is still amenable to parental authority,  traces of that "I-know-what-I'm doing” and "leave-me-alone" adolescent attitude have already set in and I can't help feeling as if the worst is yet to come!!  Growing up in Bangalore in the nineties, I remember that one of the biggest questions confronting our parents as we turned teenagers was whether to subscribe to cable TV network (popularly known as Star TV that brought home American sitcoms for the very first time)  or stick to the our good old Doordarshan, and parents skeptical of the influence of "Beverly Hills 90210" or  even home grown serials like "Banegi Apni Baat" on what they believed to be our innocent minds! Cut to almost a quarter of a century later......the challenges faced by our parents now seem trivial and even innocuous, given the paradigm shift in technological-socio-economic-cultural conditions in which we raise our kids today.  At every juncture, we are constantly faced with the question of "How much is too much"  or "When does motivation turn into pressure" or "Is this a necessity as our kid feels or an indulgence as our parents will most probably think" and the ubiquitous nagging question "Should we let go or will it be considered lackadaisical" and so on and so forth.  For instance while the age thirteen is the official entry level for an online presence, be it on Facebook, Instagram or Gmail,  my husband and I are still old school and not yet very comfortable with him having an online social life that we are not a part of....and so it goes...as Abhay puts it....he is the only thirteen year old in the world not to have a cell phone of his own....and I cant help feeling "dejavu" as I remember sulking at being the only girl in class eight who didn't yet have " Star TV" at home !!  

So as a true teenager, the center stage of this year's birthday celebration for Abhay has shifted from the usual mom-organised-cake and sandwich home parties with a few neighbourhood friends to dining  out with school friends  at a fancy restaurant .......and mom and dad required only for the cheque at the end!  So we had over six boisterous boys ride home in the school bus with Abhay, heading straight to a Wii match (again as Abhay puts it.....we are the only ones who don't own a play-station!)  and all the while huddled in his room with non-stop chatter-banter and subjecting the birthday boy to birthday bumps followed by cutting of the custom ordered cake with the icing of Abhay's favourite football club logo - FC Bayern Munchen and dinner at an unlimited all-you-can- eat pizza restaurant as a finale!

The best part for me in all this was the return gift and it goes without saying that the return gifts at Abhay's or Aadya's birthday parties have always been and will be books, books and more books! With all the boys having entered teens already, I couldn't find a better audience than anyone else for Roopa Pai's "Ready! 99 Must have skills for the World Conquering Teenager  (and Almost-Teenager)"! What's more..........their class even had the same author do a session with them for one of her other books in school recently. As the title goes, this book of non-fiction written by one of the most well known writers for children, young adults and parents alike  (one more non-fiction book of hers  is being launched somewhere in Bangalore as I write this! )  published  by Hachette India, and starts off as an Indianised and contemporized spin on the nineteenth century Robert and Agnes Baden-Powell's Scouts and Guides Movement but offers much more for the current  crop of teens to grow into  "World conquering teenagers" or as Roopa Pai cheerily puts it.. a "WOCOTEEN"!    

My first reaction to this book....was envy!!! I felt jealous of the kids today as I wish we had a book like this while growing up in the nineties. Of course we had the Scout/ Guide clubs in most schools then (unlike many schools today), but I felt as if the emphasis was more on the protocol rather than the substance of the scouts and guides philosophy!  

Anyway, packed with over 99 must-acquire life-skills for an overall development of your teenager, with focus on various aspects like personal development from the point of view of health, discipline, creative development (including pointers to pursuing a hobby that may not involve a device!) to being the family man/woman from the perspective of helping out and doing the chores  at home (including the unclog-the-sink challenge or even washing your own undies challenge!) to even bookkeeping or opening your own bank account challenge, etc, or the community awareness element from being a patriot (understanding the importance of the national anthem, national flag or the Indian currency or the explain-India to a foreigner challenge) to being an interpreter (learning a new language or build empathy challenge) or a volunteer for various kinds of community service and finally setting out for the challenges of the great outdoors! Of course the book comes with certain badges and shields at the end to be won by the WOCOTEEN wannabes on completion of all the challenges  but the focus is on the journey more than the destination and what those experiences can build your teen into and the life skills he or she acquires along the way that may shape his/her future path! It's a great book for shared reading and a joint activity for teens and parents of teens  and truly an earnest attempt to impress upon the Generation Z, certain fundamental life philosophies from self-reliance, self-control, self-assurance, motivation, empathy, leadership, and to being mindful and open-minded, all brought out in the quintessential easy-breezy-yet well researched and engaging style of Roopa Pai. Each skill-set comes with its own unique challenges or tests that can be attempted either individually or better in a group......called the WOCOTEEN squad......so  to Abhay and his friends ......are you guys in to form the WOCOTEEN squad of your own and ready to conquer the world...?? :-)

Dearest  Abhay .....enjoy your foray into your teen years  and go easy on your mommy!!!!