In one of her emails PV said

“Your book shelves are so cute and inviting – drooled over the arrangement and the collections – please tell me that you have a cozy nook with bean bags, comfy chairs and soft rugs with a bay window close by to the bookshelves and coffee-on-demand (brewed by the better half while you are busy reading)”

At that time I did not have a dedicated reading area. Its been a long time dream to establish an art space and reading spaces at home. PV’s email kind of got me started. Considering the space limitation, I decided to focus on one thing and do it well. Reading space won ( and I settled for organizing the art material ). This summer, I did some shopping, rearranging and ta-da…… presenting reading spaces on a budget.

Look at the pictures and tell me what you think. If you guys have reading spaces at home that you love, do write about it, post pictures and leave a comment. I would like to take a virtual tour and use the inspiration for the future.

Technorati Tags: book shelf, inspire reading. cozy reading corners of our home, reading spaces

Sandhya tagged me for unwomanly behavior.

Does gender define me?

Yes. Big time. Right from childhood if I think back. I am the only girl child born to parents who had clear expectations who married in to a family which had crystal clear expectations of me and my role. I must say that I haven’t done much to send shock waves through the family.

I have always been dolled up. My mother loves to choose clothes for me. Even yesterday, she picked out what I wore. Occasionally my MIL/SIL does it for me. I love to dress up. I loved the chutti, nathu, pullakku, false hair, flowers decoration, kasu malai, ottiyanam traditional ensemble  I was in for my wedding. I loved it so much that I felt bad that if I try doing that any time any where again it will be over the top. I jumped with joy that I could do a repeat of it for my seemandham, without making people roll their eyes and enjoyed every moment of it. I like beauty parlours and such. Not much the make up part, I just like the idea of being pampered. My favorite colors turquoise blue and baby pink, in that order, in the whole wide world.

The role of gender has always intrigued me and made me write this post three years back. I think that we are all ardhanaris basically, with varying degrees depending on nurture and exposure.

My actions, at this point in my life are divided in to

-comes naturally to me

-love to do, so I will put my life on hold to do it.

-hate it/tolerate it, but do it anyway because life has to go on.

-will NEVER do it, no matter what.

The best part is, R is the same way too. So there are no major combats at home.

I love to make things, be it crafting or building furniture or dishing out fancy stuff from my kitchen. All the furniture in my house are assembled by me. Of course they come with instructions, but when I open a box of furniture, things kind of click and snap in my mind. Once to calm down, I locked myself in the girls room and spent two hours assembling the two newly bought chest of drawers. When I came out of the room, I was Buddha(for five whole minutes adds R ).

I painted the inside of my house. This was three years back with a 1 year old and a 2.5 year old. Picked colors, spent couple of hours every night prepping the room, covering furniture, get up next day, cooked for the day, painted like there is no tomorrow and packed up by the end of the day. Four days like this. I partly cribbed but mostly loved what I did.

I made the inside of two of our bedroom closets. There was provision for just hanging clothes and I wanted some kind of system where I can get more storage within the limited space and a tight budget. So I bought 12 feet wire shelves, hack-sawed it in Home Depot parking lot, loaded it in to the car, drilled and  hammered till the shelves were done.

I get vague ideas for a display shelf or a picture frame. I take my sketch to Home Depot early the next day(6.30AM – 7.30AM on Sat mornings works best) and consult with the guys to implement my idea effectively. Not all the ideas were super hits, but I like the adrenaline rush involved in the whole process. I probably would be wearing pink shoes, pink sweats, waving my pink cellphone and sporting a pink hand bag during the entire process. But who cares?

Planned an almost around the world trip from US to Tanzania to India and back to the US. Realized first hand how painful it is to make cost effective safari and hiking arrangements in a distant continent. All along there was this uncertainty if the tour operator is legitimate. When we landed in Tanzania and my tour operator did show up, I hugged him and almost cried.

While in Tanzania, we roughed it out on the mountain for five days, without shower or a bathroom. Perfectly cool with pit stops. Without any hesitation, will drop everything including the kids to do the hike again.

I have a record of  fighting with my teachers. In school, I once told my PT teacher that she was wrong, I was right and asked her to apologize to me. This was in the assembly hall, in front of an audience. I did not get apology, but got pure hell over the next few months I was in that school. While in college, while in an association meeting, asked the professor in charge to put his cigarette down. Proceeded to tell him that he is killing himself. Four words, ‘Did not go well’. Two years back, I fought for my grades with my Childhood and Culture course professor. We had different opinions, she made me redo one midterm and two research papers and then while arguing about the final paper, she said, ‘Something something a B grade is not bad. Something something all Asians are very sensitive about their grade. Think about it.’ I said, that I do not want to think about B because, I am A material. Not because I am Asian, but because I work hard for it and I deserve it. Proceeded to give her a mini lecture. Yes, I did get an A in that course.

Except for people, I kill all living things under my care. None of the house plants have survived past a month. They sense my presence and commit slow painful suicide.

I am horrible taking care of sick people, even my own kids. I am okay the first two days, then I undergo sudden transformation from Florence Nightingale to grinding teeth.

I have high tolerance for physical pain.

I cannot sing, dance, handle a needle, do kolam, string flowers even to save my life. Absolutely don’t planning on doing any of the above. I am the spiritual one, but not always religious and regular about lighting lamps and saying my daily prayers. Of late I am developing a strong aversion to anything domestic – cooking, dish washing, cloth washing and the likes of it. May be it is a phase, may be it will pass, but I don’t know.

Meanwhile R is there watering my house plants, secretly suffering his long spells of cold, giving tylenol to kids in the middle of the night, toiling in the garden, taking care of the fish and whatever pet I drag home, washing dishes and cooking an occasional dinner while I am buried in my end of the term papers, dressing up the girls for social engagements in pattu pavdai+matching jewellery+color coordinated bindhis(the girls are very particular, so I know how tough it is) while I am busy attending my weekend language development workshops, supporting my friday fasts,  and picking up loose ends, if any. All this without making fuss about roles and with only the girls(three including me ) in mind.

Technorati Tags: are men from mars?, are women from venus?, gender roles, gender stereotypes, tag, unwomanly behavior

Mieja: Where is my period?

Chula: You don’t even have periods.

Mieja: (In a teasing voice)May be I don’t need periods. (Calling out to me)Ammaaaaa, can you tell me about my periods??

Meanwhile, said mother is fainting in the kitchen. She quickly pulls herself together and runs out to investigate.

The children point to the birthday card they are making and ask her where to put ‘full stop’ in their birthday message.

Technorati Tags: full stop, period, punctuation

Yesterday evening, while Chula was writing a poem (* don’t ask *), Mieja and I were rolling on the bed and having a conversation, which lead to an interview. I jumped right ahead, proper journalist style with pen and paper. She played along with her trademark, ‘Um…..um…..um’ and checked ever so frequently, ‘Did you write that down?’, ‘Did I say four already?’, ‘Make sure you get the right spelling, okay?’

Name four of your favorite activities

• Painting
• Plucking flowers
• Playing in the swimming pool
• Sledding in the snow

(If you ask me, dropping coins has to figure some where in this list. Electronics items have been unsuspecting casualties for her coin dropping. Things that have been damaged include, but not limited to CD player in car, music keyboard, slot for memory card in appa’s laptop.)

Name four of your favorite books.

• Princess baby
• Dora goes to the beach
• Fancy Nancy
• James and the giant peach

Name four of your favorite foods

• Plain white rice
• Keerai
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower

(Except for plain rice, the other things were news to me.)

Name four of your favorite TV shows

• Super why
• Sid the science kid
• Dora
• Strawberry shortcake

Name four of your favorite colors

• Violet
• Indigo
• Green
• Yellow

Name four of your favorite songs

• Adungada from Pokkiri
• Excuse Me from Kandasamy
• Allegra from Kandasamy
• Sollamal Solluvaan from Kandasamy

Name four of your favorite games

• Hi-Ho cherrio
• Candyland
• Smatch
• Go fish

Name four of your favorite animals

• Elephant
• Giraffe
• Tiger
• Lion

Name four of your favorite things to do with appa and amma

• Watch TV
• Making a picture for amma
• Making a book for appa
• Buying flowers for amma.

Name four of your favorite things to do with akka

• Blowing bubbles
• Swim
• Drawing with side walk chalk
• Having a picnic lunch/dinner

Technorati Tags: favorite things of a four year old, interview with a four year old

“Involve the kids in everyday activities.”

Whoever said this did not have kids, that I can be sure of.

It works well in a school setting. I have scrubbed chairs, watered plants, gardened, done nature walks – all with kids. But a home is not as structured as a school. There are certain things that are a routine like loading/unloading the dishwasher, line drying the clothes, folding laundry and putting it away. We do these jobs together. At times when I am making dishes like soup, sandwich, cookie, cake etc, I involve kids. There have been days on which I have made them sit at the kitchen table with a slice of bread to butter or a tomato to be chopped or a cube of cheese to be grated, even if I am not using any of the above in my dish, just to get them out of my hair.

The thing about involving kids is that it needs some degree of planning. One must know the steps in order to delegate. Even better, the delegator must have done the chore at least once(with the delegatee in mind) in order to comprehend the exact skills essential to complete the chore.

Do you want to know what is even more difficult than delegating to kids? It is a mother delegating to siblings who are close in age. Imagine child1 and child2 sitting in their respective carseats all strapped up. After reaching the destination, child1 wants to take child2’s seatbelt off and the mother agrees. Child2 is deeply insulted. She wants to take child1’s seat belt off. So the mother comes up with the solution where child1 takes her seatbelt off, then takes child2’s seatbelt off and gets on to her carseat and straps herself. Child2 now proceeds to take child1’s seat belt off, every one is happy, calamity avoided. But hell no, the children being highly skilled torture specialists come up with the supreme question of who goes first. Now the mother has two choices, to bang her head on the steering wheel hard enough to do some damage to her brain or to calmly tell her children that this is an egg and chicken problem in which she does NOT want to be involved and walk away. Trust me, they do come up with some creative solutions, because they are clear that the enemy is not the sister but the parent and when the parent is not involved, they do tend to save their energy.

PS: This is not an isolated incident. All chores are now viewed by the children as ‘Why can’t I do that?’, ‘Why can’t I do it ALL BY MYSELF?’, ‘How else can I show off to my sibling?’, ‘Are there any other ways to establish MY territory?’.

PPS: The mother is secretly anguishing over the fact that  she was stupid enough to read to the children that the free tiger trial issue of  GloAdventurers where it describes in detail how tigers establish their territory by peeing. She is hoping that they do not connect two and two, end up with twenty two and pee all over the house.

PPPS: Double thumbs up to GloAdventurers. Do try them.

Technorati Tags: delegating to kids, division of labor, involving kids in every day chores, the chicken and egg problem

Its been a while since I did updates about the girls. So here it goes.

Chula:

She loves to dance. She can dance gracefully and keep decent beat.

When she is focusing on something she bites her lower lip.

She is REALLY good in reading between lines. There are 56 children in her class and new kids join her class all the time. I do not remember all her classmates names. So if I address them as ‘honey’, she pulls me aside and says, ‘Amma her name is [x]. You called her honey. Is that because you don’t know what her name is? Do you want me to introduce her to you?’ This is only the tip of the iceberg. She goes much deeper as to rationalize lots of things that it is actually scary for me.

She has an amazing sense of direction. Considering that I am still working on my left and right, this she definitely got from her appa. This coupled with her fluent reading there are constant requests to go through a specific street to her school. If she mentions a street name and I draw a blank, she promptly says, “Don’t worry amma, just follow my directions. Go past X street. Then slow down. After J make a left on to W Ave. Remember, W Ave does not hit F Ave. So you have to make right on S Ave and then a left on to G. You know G, so you can manage from there amma.” When I ask her how she knows this, she places both her hands in parallel-perpendicular-parallel fashion and explains that A street and B street are parallel/perpendicular(in action, she does not know the terms parallel and perpendicular yet) and hence forth so it all makes sense.

She has an amazing perspective. When she has just turned four, she colored a Caillou print out and next to the it she drew a pair of shoes much bigger than the boy. I made a flippant remark about Caillou’s big giant shoes, she calmly explained that in the frame, Caillou’s shoes are much closer to us and Caillou is standing far away from us and hence the difference in size. She still has this perspective, sense of depth/distance and I see it in her art work.

She is the queen of procrastination. This she gets from me. When I ask her to put a book away in the shelf, it almost invariably goes like this: puts the book away->gets another book->starts reading the book->wants to draw something connected with that book->comes to get a pencil->gets distracted by the easel on her way->starts drawing something on the easel->goes to get the camera to take a picture of her drawing->gets distracted on the way to the technology shelf->goes to her room and starts picking her clothes for the next week of school…….. Me: “No fair, there can be only one procrastintor in a home and that position is taken.”

She thinks her sister loves her, but is not always kind to her. Her fantasy is to have a ‘Mieja tree’ in our backyard, so that there can be many many many more Mieja’s in our home. (More than one Mieja? The very thought makes me shudder.)

She takes poetic license when explaining facts to me and hence my nick to her ‘Dubukku’. Her other nicks are mylapore mayil, annakili, smathu chellam, seeni sakkarai, pokkiri.

She follows rules to the T. While on walks, she reaches intersection and waits for me to cross the road. When outside, she always asks me very politely if she can do something. While in public library, she always tells me before she leaves her spot. While crossing roads, she mumbles to herself, ‘STOP. Look left, Look right. Look left. Make sure it is safe. Now cross, quickly, but no running.’

She is scared of movies, even kid’s movies. The only movie she has seen in theaters is UP and that too she closed her eyes after the first 30 min. Not sleeping, just closing eyes and ears. All she watches is PBSKids programs.

Mieja:

I thought it was a fad. But it has lasted for the past five months and she is still going strong. Chula got a face painting kit for fifth birthday in Dec. Mieja of all people, who hates anything on her face has taken an unusual liking to it. However it is not ‘face’ painting per-se for her, but body art. So the routine now a days is, come back from school -> shower -> face painting body art. The routine hasn’t wavered for the past five months. R thinks his daughter must have been a temple elephant in India in her previous jenmam and this fascination is affectation of her previous jenmam. So far I have painted rainbow, cloud, dolphin, flower, heart, frog, star, butterfly and the list goes on. Even on weekends, when she is dressed in something fancy, she insists that her ensemble is complete only with hand painted bracelets, anklets, necklace and such. R and his temple elephant jokes apart, I am seriously praying that this is not a window in to Mieja’s future in which the said child is covered with tattoos.

The children have taken to Kandhasamy songs, which, I would like to clarify, has absolutely nothing to do with me. It is the husband’s idea of exposing them to the real world (*rolling eyes*). I banned Meow Meow, so I am happy that I have had my say. Mieja in particular loves singing, ‘naan pattu pattu pattu pattu pattu sundari’ in her baby voice and it is quite adorable.

Her current nick names include, but are not limited to Pipi Longstockings, pattu sundari, minor kunju, lord labakkudaas(labakku in short to match the dubukku)

Last month when her patti forced her to say something in Tamil, she said, “Soap-le face podatheenga patti” (Don’t put my face in soap instead of the other way around). She got mad that we laughed, stormed out of the bathroom, closed her naked self in her bedroom and refused to open the door.

The child has emotional blackmail encoded in her DNA. She goes ahead and does something 100% unacceptable, which makes me mad and what does she do? She turns on the water works. Here I am using every ounce of self-control and I ask her, ‘Why did you do that?’ and she has the nerve to answer, ‘Only because I love you amma. I love you, love you and love you. All I do is love you with all my heart and you are mad at me.’ But she is beyond any kind of blackmail. Once my chithi pretended to go back to Boston  because her feelings were hurt by the said child and the automatic response that was uttered was, ‘Stop, you forgot to take your jacket and suitcase. Take everything before leaving.’

She wants me to have another child. When I told her that two is my limit, she offered to move to Antartica and live with the penguins, so that I can have another baby.

She is very particular about her clothes. By the time she gets ready her room is strewn with clothes ALL around. I have learnt not to interfere with her clothing decisions and not to question her methods.

She has definitive idea of the concept of time. She carries on her daily routine without much repeated instructions from me. She is adamant that she will keep her own time and is offended if some one tries to manage her time.

If I tell her that I am not feeling good and ask her to take care of me, she makes me lie of her lap and pats me very gently and sings songs for me. Ever since I fell and broke my tail bone, she has been very protective of me. “Amma, don’t sit on the hard chair. I will get your cushion. Amma be careful, you cannot bend like that. You might fall again.” Every morning begins with Mieja asking me how my tail bone is feeling. Her favorite thing is playing mommy and baby game with me, where I am the baby and she is the mommy taking care of me. Today morning, armed with a rubber sheet, body towel, spray on starch container she insisted on changing the baby’s diaper and I had to declare that we are done playing.

She honestly believes her sister knows more and seeks her for advice, ‘Oh-oh. Chula I have a problem. How do I do this?’ and can tirelessly repeat the same question till her sister throws her hands up in the air, rolls her eyes and agrees to help her.

Technorati Tags: chula, mieja

Dear Mieja:

I have never written public blog letters to you and your sister. I had my reasons. Now, Mieja, this is my letter to you. My first public, blog letter to you. I have my reasons.

If I ever write your biography, the chapter that covers 3.5 years – 4 years of your life will certainly be titled HEART ACHE. To call the past six months as turbulent will be an understatement.

Your motto has always been Vini Vidi Vici – you came, you saw us all and you conquered us all with your laugh, love, expression and attitude. You make me laugh like there is no tomorrow. When I hug you, I feel this sense of contentment swell inside of me. You have multiple facets, all of which I enjoy. Heck, I enjoy even your ‘padagamani’( adamant and aggressive ) side. You have always gone by ‘naan oru mudivu pannital, appuram nane yen pechai ketka maten’ (Translates to: If I decide something, then I will not listen to me convincing myself to change my decision.) and in the past I have found it awfully cute. The thought that this child is my last child softens parents in many ways. It is an abstract feeling that  can only be experienced and cannot be explained.

Any thing goes is definitely not what flies in our house. Your appa and I believe that discipline is not a dirty word. We view it more as setting safe limits within which you and your akka can explore. It will be false to say that we do not have any expectations on you and your akka. Though the two of you are young, we do have expectations, age appropriate expectations on you both. We are not new, inexperienced parents any more. Tantrums neither scare us nor embarrass us. We are level headed to view it as mismatched expectations and  are willing to work through it.

Now, something happened. Or may be many things happened….. I am not sure, but I can only make educated guesses. May be you moved from what Dr.Montessori would call ‘just existing’ to ‘conscious existence’. May be you are trying to learn your limits by pushing our limits. May be you delicate digestive system is still in the process of maturing and you are suffering from the same lactose intolerance and acid reflux that made you scream in pain 24X7 the first two weeks after you were born. May be you are trying to define your niche in house and in school. May be you are trying to run with the top dogs too soon. May be you are competing with your sister. May be you are competing with your self. May be you found that by screaming you get my attention sooner that anything else and decided to take that short cut. May be you are feeling insecure…..

As a result of this, the past six months have been non stop crying and plain unhappiness – mostly for you. What shocked me was the rage, the anger that emanated from you and that you blamed me for your unhappiness. It was not just me, but your teachers also noticed it. What started as hugging my legs and refusing to say goodbye to me when I drop you off in your classroom, only worsened over the past three months. You regressed in certain areas I thought you had already mastered. Your teachers were surprised that you were having separation anxiety after being in same classroom, with the same teachers for the past two years.

We had a conference and discussed certain things that have been sending red flags right, left and center in my mind. Most of the red flags, your teachers said, were ‘preferences’. Strong, rigid and to some extent eccentric, but they did put my mind to ease by saying that there is no cognitive dissonance.

The real slap in the face came to me, when the head teacher of your classroom, the director of your school, a very patient, kind and nurturing soul called me aside and gave me ‘the note’. After an unhappy good bye in the morning, you were sitting with your teacher and she made conversation with you. After long probing you told her that you were MAD at me. Your teacher suggested that you write a letter to me. You dictated. She wrote. And I am holding the note that says, “To mommy, Mommy, I am having fights with you. That makes me sad.” Slap. End of story.

Since then, I have been trying to get a break. One thing I strongly believe is that, when you are desperate for something, the universe conspires to give you exactly what you ask for. It may not be packaged in the way we want it. But you get it. The challenge is to recognize it and make the most of it.

The break I have been asking for came as a real break…. in my tail bone. I fell on the stairs and broke my tail bone. The positive aspect of it is that I get to stay at home and spend some time with you. Real, quality time that is not measure in minutes but in love. I am able to slow down and give you the focus you need without cutting down on the time I spend with your sister.

You will be four in a week. Hoping that the chapter about your fourth year will be titled CONTENTMENT.

More love than you can ever imagine

Amma

Technorati Tags: Mieja-isms, Parenting, struggles of a parent, tantrums

Chula is now in to reading. If she sees print, she HAS to read it. It has become a basic need for her. So I leave the child to dress herself for school or bed, what does she do? She is sitting there and reading labels on her clothes. This led to her observation, “Made in China??!!! Hmmm…. It looks like the whole world is made in China.”

When I got married, I did not know how to make hot water. So things like muruku and idiyappam were quite intimidating. I was almost thankful that my mom did not buy me a murukku nazhi (murukku/idiyappam press) as a part of kitchen stuff I carried from India to US. “First become an expert in sambar/rasam and idlis before you venture in to complicated stuff” she said and I thought that it made sense. I still remember the initial idli days when YadaaYadaa and I used to grind the batter together, mostly because we were afraid to do it alone. After numerous rock idlis, doasas that refused to leave the ladle, India map chapathis, we kind of settled in to a generic formula. Soon I was feeling brave to venture in to uncharted territories – medhu vadai, masal vadai, adai, paruppu urndai kuzhambu, usili, modhagam, pidi kozhukattai and the likes of such followed. But I never attempted anything that would require special cooking tools.

After a nearly a year of marriage, I decided to try idiyappam at home. But the problem was the nazhi, I did not have one. So I bought one during my next trip to India. It was a regular aluminum mold, T-shaped, the kind that needs to be pressed on both sides. The handle was so hard that I had to wear mittens to protect my hands. I started experimenting with idiyappam. One day the idiyappam dough was so hard that I had to ask R for help. We both grabbed one side of the press each and applied our full strength to the press. Result, a broken nazhi. Relatives in India were horrified that the dough was so hard that the nazhi broke

I decided that I am not waiting for the next India trip and purchased from the local Indian stores, the kind that has a rotary handle, for $14.99. Relatives in India were aghast, by the price of the press or by my resolve to keep at idiyappams, I don’t know. I have to say that this press served me rather well. Only three plates came with the press – a single star, a single thin rectangle and multiple fat circles. I made chunky idiyappams, but the taste was all right. Deepawali came and I made murukkus too and was quite happy with the results.

After 5 or so years, R was getting tired of the star murukkus. He really likes the smooth ones. But for some odd reason I never found a nazhi that had the right sized circle holes. It has been 11 years and that is when this came in to our lives.

This nazhi belonged to my MIL. It is almost 75+ years old, made of finest quality Burma rose wood, heavy but smooth from all those years of use. The nazhi used to belong to my MIL’s MIL. Apparently my great MIL’s senior daughters-in-law had dibs on this nazhi and my MIL, the youngest of the daughters-in-law got it, to the heavy dissatisfaction of the other DsIL, I must add This nazhi has accompanied my MIL in all her trips to the US. The nazhi and her tattered 50 year old recipe book would definitely be in the top ten things she packs in her suitcase. She has put it to good use all these years I must say. Every time she visited us, my MIL made sure that there was an unending supply of fried goodies for R to munch. She would skip her mid-day siesta and churn out murukku, ribbon or omapodi. This was a regimen she strictly followed every ten days. It was purely her way of telling her grown up son, that she loved him fiercely. Tad too fierce, but hey that’s purely me

Now the nazhi has been passed to me. At first, the impact was minimal. But last Saturday as I was making murukkus, both the mullu murukku and the smooth ones, it finally sank in to me. For my MIL to give up something that she has had for most of her life…..I don’t know….. I felt very emotional about the whole thing. Some things have the power to stir up powerful emotions in a person and the nazhi most definitely did it for me.

Technorati Tags: idiyappam press, mullu murukku, murukku, murukku nazhi, thenkuzhal, wood murukku nazhi

Tora Bora lives with her sister Bula/Bieja, their trusty pets Kumar seval (Kumar the rooster) and two parakeets namely Pachai Pazhuppu (pachai = green, pazhuppu = brown) and Ilamsivappu Neelam (ilamsivappu= pink, neelam = blue). She has an arch rival, Looter as in the person who tries to loot things from others.

Looter is not as bad as one would imagine. He is not the typical black or white kind of villain. He has multiple shades of gray, like all of us do. Given the circumstance and his impulsive way of thinking, he makes some regrettable choices.

For example, he steals Tora Bora’s pet fish because he badly wants to take care of something. Then Tora Bora and Kumar seval open the atlas and look for the place that is highlighted and travel there to retrive the fish. Tora Bora gives Looter a valuable lesson, ‘Don’t just take. Ask. If you need something you need to ask/work for it.’

Once Looter stole everything under Tora Bora’s Christmas tree. Tora Bora came down to find an empty tree. Even the lights and decorations were gone. The atlas pointed the duo to Iceland. She tracked Looter and found Looter and his whole family enjoying Tora Bora’s goodies. But Looter did it only because he didn’t have enough time and money to get his own presents for his own family. Tora Bora understood Looter’s plight, she shared her presents but only after reprimanding him for the act.

You get the idea. Every time Looter strays from the path of righteousness, Tora Bora and Kumar Seval step in and do the necessary. But the thing is, Looter never learns. He always relies on his impulse and Tora Bora never gives up on Looter. Unreal, but it is essential for sequels. Besides who is looking for logic? Then a lot of elements have to be cut from the story and we would have a bland, preachy monologue.

Just like Pipi Longstockings, the story focuses only on the children and the pets involved. There is not much mentioned about the parents, school and the likes of it.

Why am I rambling about all this?

This is the girls’ bedtime routine. They come up with a location, something out of random, Lebanon (CA, Why Lebanon you asked and this is the answer), Reykjavik (Iceland), Papua New Guinea…no rhyme or reason for the location. R has to look up something about these places and build a story around the place. He does an excellent job at this. He talks about snow sleds in Iceland, the wonders of Machu Pichu in Peru, the vastness of the Thar desert or the beauty of Taj Mahal in India, the paddy fields in Thailand and so on. He talks about the natural beauty and historic significance of the place/object. He is so good at this that the girls have christened him Storyman. When it is time for bed, they lie in bed and start chanting ‘storyman, storyman, storyman….’ and our dude makes his entrance and stuns them with the story.

As for me, I sit on the couch in the living room and listen to the story. After observing for months, I found that there always a context. The choice of place from the girls is always inspired by something that they heard at school or read in a book or simply mentioned by their friend. Another thing I have observed is that a storyteller can never be extraordinary if he just tells the story. He has to live it, give his interpretation of things, be emotionally involved, only then the story shines. I have heard Tora Bora rescue the arctic squirrels from the mean hunter Bora Palin, the abducted fish pet swimming in the paddy fields of Thailand and making big noise about how he is from the US and the paddy field is not up to his standards and such. R is very guarded and is a man of few words. So for me, it is like a window in to R’s mind. Sometimes it reiterates how different our thinking processes are. Sometimes it pleasantly surprises me with the things we have in common. Sometimes it just makes me laugh, roll on the floor, hold my stomach, tears from eyes laugh, which is what banned my presence in the room and landed me on the couch.

Looking forward to many more stories, Storyman, from the couch of course.

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