Hubby and self believe in introducing things that we value most dearly to our kids. Bringing up the kids in pardes, exposure to kids from families with different value systems, eating foods other than Indian food, celebrating typical American holidays, all this scared us that kids might loose their roots. We decided to start introduction to Indian Mythology, you know Gods, stories, slokhas…etc.

Our older child, who is only 2 years and four months, can already identify life letters in tamil, count till 50 in tamil, recite a few tamil rhymes, tell the names of the months in tamil, identify most of the Gods, recite a few slokhas and religiously puts viboodhi (the holy ash) and kum kum (sindoor) on her fore head every evening after she comes back from day care. As parents we are very proud of it, but hubby and self decide to take things to the next level.

So on our recent trip to India we picked up few amar chitra kathas, few animation movies that tells the stories of Hanuman, Shiva, Ganesha and Krishna. We started with the amar chitra katha about Krishna. This is how things proceeded.

Hubby started telling “Kamsa was a king, Kamsa’s baby sister Devaki and Vasudeva got married. At that time a voice told Kamsa that Devaki’s babies will kill Kamsa. So, Kamsa decides to kill all the babies”. At this point of time hubby realized that he had to use kill at least twice and he was still in the first page.He didn’t feel like telling a two year old about killing, that too killing of babies.So he decided to take a little poetic license and tells the child that Kamsa is giving all the babies a time out. Hubby and self look at each other and smile that we have evaded an uncomfortable reality of life for the time being. Then comes the part where Boothagi comes to Aayarpadi to nurse Krishna and kill him. This part, considering the fact that my children regard me as the Boothagi of Kaliyug, they have no problems relating to! When hubby tells child that Boothagi is trying to give Krishna milk, her eyes automatically turn in my direction and I can see that she is quite relieved that I don’t have anything edible in my possession or within my arms reach. We try telling her about Kalinga Nardhanam(how Krishna danced on a snake) and Govardhanagiri(How Krishna protected Aayarpadi by holding Govardhanagiri as an umbrella). We see bursts of interest as she hears familiar words like Aayarpadi, mountain, snake, dance, but we realize that we are slowly loosing her.

On another day we started with the story of Ganesha. She was quite enthused at the beginning. She was quite discouraged when we explained that Lord Shiva is not carrying a mop, but it is a thirisoolam (weapon with three sharp edges). When we showed her a picture of Ganesha with a normal human head as opposed to the elephant’s head, she refused to sit and listen any more. Anyways the story was already quite uninteresting because Parvathy was giving Shiva a time out and Shiva was giving Parvathy a double time out, then all the ganas jumped in to the scene and were giving each other time outs of their life times. We lost her again.

But we are very persistent parents. We introduced Hanuman. When a talking, flying monkey is the hero all other minor glitches are forgotten. After becoming familiar with Hanuman’s story, she started pointing to the characters and identifying them. All was fine, Hanuman was a super hit, but one day she pointed to Kesari (the monkey prince Anjani married) and said “Hanuman’s appa”, then she looked at Lord Pavan (the wind God) thought for a second and said, “Hanuman’s another appa”. Then she looked at hubby and said, “My appa. Where is another appa?”. We refrained from telling her that Hanuman is also considered as Shiva’s son as he was born with Lord Shiva’s blessings, because we didn’t want her to go looking in the garage for her third father.

More than the child we as parents were very confused how to tell her a mythological story without worrying too much about peripheral details. You all know what I mean right? When grand moms and aunts told us that Krishna stole butter, we some how accepted it because Krishna was a God, he can do anything he wants to do. We didn’t interpret that stealing is good because even Gods do it or Krishna cannot be considered as God because he steals. Now that I think about it I am not sure when that enlightenment came, but growing up in a place like India with grandparents and aunts, doing pooja every day, where every Tuesday and Friday was celebrated like a festival, where every day temple visits were a very common thing, listening to stories of Krishna or Rama while amma feeds her rasam sadham( rice and rasam ) and urulai kizhangu kari ( potato curry ), that enlightment, kind of enters your heart pretty quickly!

Here we are sitting in a foreign country or for that matter even in India where every day is becoming a rat race, I am really skeptical how long will it take for the enlightment to come?! In the mean while there are going to be lots of confusions and questions in the minds of our children. If we want our children to always remember their roots and if we want them to be proud of their lineage these are the few things I think we must do(at least this is what Iam doing right now. Whether it worked…we will know by 2020! ):

• Talk to the children about your childhood and how you did things as a family.
• Celebrate every small and big festival. India’s independence, diwali, ramajayanthi, hanuman jayanthi, (or what ever religiously appropriate festival there is, you know what I mean), don’t leave out anything. Celebration doesn’t have to be a grand affair. Plan it out in the weekend and do something small that signifies the occasion. Typically in our house hold we celebrate even ammavasai (no moon) day and karthigai every month. Though they are young to understand, I keep telling my kids that in India typically we go to the temple, we don’t eat leftovers and we do pooja at home. Though I don’t follow everything to the dot, due to practical difficulties, I make sure that I keep at least a couple of bananas or a small glass of milk and do a small pooja.
• Take time to pray together. Make a time, for instance, get up in the morning and convene before a deity’s picture and some heart felt prayer, “Dear God, make my day a great day. Make every around me happy”.
• Talk to your children’s teachers. Explain to the teachers the significance of a festival like diwali, holi, rakhi…etc. Ask them if a few moms can join together and make a small presentation about the festival. This gives the other children in the class to understand what our culture is all about. That is a big validation to our children.
• Call India and make the children get the blessings of the elders in the family on the day of festivals.

In a nut shell make the effort. Remember if you don’t take things to heart neither will the kids.

PS:

More suggestions are welcome.
I am a Hindu and I have given my perspective. Iam sure people from other religions face similar problems. I would love your comments on the issue.