We have moved in to the apartment. There is no water in the kitchen. The story goes like this. The rubber pipes connecting the faucet to the water pipes are small->They leak->Solution change pipes. New problem->the granite hole is not big enough to fit big rubber pipes->Solution: drill a bigger hole. New problem: Special granite guy has to be procured and no one wants to come all the way for such a small job. Cribbed to the landlord enough and he has arranged for some one to come, with a full day pay(for a 30 min work) and transportation to come and drill. Today is the promised day and hopefully there are no new problems. Till this gets resolved I have to walk for 10 minutes, in the glorious Sun, with two children in tow, to the supermarket in the apartment complex and get a crate of Aquafina, carry it back to the apartment and cook. Though it took me three hours, made paruppu rasam, beans curry and stuffed kathirikkai poriyal yesterday. Chula hugged me and said that I am the best cook in the whole world. Washing dishes is a biiiiig story, MGM has reserved rights and I cannot share it here.

Because of all the activity, all my attempts to kick start activity, we have taken to eating lunch at 3.00PM and skip dinner. Having a child who does not believe in food and one who can live on white rice has its advatages I am finding out!

The language barrier is a H.U.G.E barrier for now. I am bad in languages to start with, some people just don’t have the ear for it. So learning a new language at this ripe age, even though I am trying hard, is not going well. I know a few nouns and few verbs in Hindi and try to make a sentence with lots of actions. For the most part people understand, or at least have an idea of what I am trying to say. The other day, I introduced R to my helper as, “Yeh, mera pathni hai.” She laughed non stop for almost six minutes, clutching her stomach, with tears in her eyes and all that, but she understood. Same way, I told the washing machine guy, “I(pointing to me) live hotel(making inverted V shape with hands). OK. Apartment empty. OK. No saman(shaking my head). No people(head shake again). Bada(making a random shape with hands) lock outside. OK. So dho(two fingers) gante-ki(showing wrist cos thats where a bloody watch goes) bath(throwing hands behind my shoulder), you call(telephone action) mobile-se. You come, then I come. OK????” I think, if I make enough hand movements and add se-ki-hai every now and then, I am speaking Hindi. I will not even go in to my conversation to supermarket guys asking for electric toothbrush. From far away, people thought I was displaying some kind of primal territorial dance. All the above I put down under effective communication. The difficult part is when I have to talk to some one on the phone. Oh god, just kill me.

Speaking of electric tooth brushes it is like finding Waldo, it is somewhere, but haven’t found one yet.

48 hrs after landing, I took my iPhone to a place to get it unlocked. I was worried about data loss and other general screwups, it being an iPhone and all. So the guy gave me a sarcastic smile and said that the unlocking part will be the easy part. I understood the full meaning of his statement when we were waiting for Airtel gods to grace us. Multiple trips, document copies and 10 days later, we finally got a SIM card. That too only after R completely lost it when the guy said, after we made multiple trips, gave all document copies, that R’s driving license(that is valid till end of July 2011) is valid only for two months and asked us to come after two months with a renewed license.

Gas connection is said to happen six months from now. We are not a bit hopeful. Solar stove in the balcony seems like a more viable option at this point of time.

Current neighbor report – many really nice, one acted as if I tried to snatch her husband when I asked about finding house help, one nosy. R is telling me that not every question needs to be answered. If I cannot give a suitable reply, I have to smile and switch conversation.

Getting landline and broadband can be checked off our list. Though it took a week, by far BSNL was the easiest thing. Managed to find a bank close by and opened an account. Now we have two documents as address proofs. Yay!

Hyderabad is a foodie heaven. Here are two more of my finds. Prego Italian restaurant in Westin serves the most awesome ravioli. Fluffy little pillows made with lots of spinach, very little ricotta cheese. The tomato-basil sauce on the pasta just blew me away. After I finished eating, Chula commented, very innocently that my plate need not be washed! The great kabob factory – have heard many good things about this place, finally tried it couple of days back. Hmmmmmm!!! Their rajma patty is so moist and mouth watering. Adding vellari vidhai to the sweet sauce is genius. Liked, no make it loved, everything they served us. Very friendly host.

Last week went to the Chilkur Balaji Temple. Its a 17th century temple, very unassuming and is 40 minutes from Hi-Tech city. I was very impressed by the fact that the temple does not accept any donations. It is a no-Hundi temple! The head priest speaks at least a hundred languages, may be even klingon, told me in tamil that the only thing a devotee needs to give god is his heart and not money. We were told that people usually make 11 pradakshinams in their first visit and make 108 when their prayer is answered. The temple closes at 8.00PM sharp. If you land there at 7.45PM, you will be sucked in to the whirlwind of people trying to finish their 108 pradhakshinams and you will be carried around the temple with no effort on your part 🙂

The girls have taken to the Puri Jagannath temple in Banjara Hills, because they have picture stories on the walls. Krishna is not in the Dasavatharam picture, I wonder why.

Visited the Golconda Fort last Sunday. Picked up a tour book for Rs.20, bad editing, but kind of gave us an idea of what we were seeing. Be it Machu Picchu or Golconda, it is not the fortress itself that is impressive. It is the design, the acoustics, the aqua ducts, the engineering behind it is what is amazing! BTW, Golconda dates with the Machu Picchu 🙂 Walked up most of the 380 steps, shocked that they were cooking biriyani inside the fort and saw the light show. We carried water and mosquito repellant. The light show starts sometime around 7.00PM and is a compilation of many historical facts about the fort. It is good, but there is room for improvement. I was expecting visuals, different color lights on many different spots can hold ones attention only for so long. Even Chula said after the show, ‘Amma, I was almost expecting fire works at some point amma.’

Its been two weeks, since we landed in India. Has the transition started? Yes and no. No because, we are still put up in a hotel, so we are still in a bubble. Yes because, we are getting the flavor of the city.

Let us start with the food. If you like your jilebis warm+crisp+fresh+just a hint of lime juice without the scary red color, go to Ohri’s @ Banjara Hills. The jilebis hit all the right notes. The kids being used to grocery store jilebis, declared that the Ohri’s jilebis are ‘odd’. I said, ‘fine’, packed the rest and devoured them at 2.00AM, when jetlag wouldn’t let me sleep any more. I also tried their Dhai battata poori, very forgettable.

After eating americanized Indian food in the hotel we are staying and eating indianized American food in food courts, I was thrilled to be at Bhimas Chithram restaurant @ Jubliee Hills. Their chutneys are to die for. I ordered a spicy masala dosa and as I ate it, I cried, drank tanks of water, profusely perspired and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you are planning on ordering the Bhimas spicy dosa, it is a ‘complete’ cleansing experience, so plan accordingly.

Little Italy in Film Nagar, Jubliee Hills serves my kind of Pizza – vegetarian, thin crust, low on grease, with little cheese, some spice and a touch of paneer. They have a very interesting mocktail list also. I tried something with green grapes, mint and lime – tasty and refreshing.

Also tried the famous Paradise restaurant at Hi-Tec city and 36Chattees. Guess a carnivore would love it, but as a vegetarian, I nibbled on the vegetarian options and made sure that meat did not touch my vegetarian food.

Hyderabad boasts that it has the biggest mall in South India and Inorbit in Hi-Tec city is HUGE indeed. Sprawled over 5 floors and a massive Walmart Super Store like grocery store(Hypercity) I run to it for my every need. But I swear on all things good in my life that I will never set foot in Inorbit on a weekend evening, not if I can help it, so help me god.

Read about DIALOGUE IN THE DARK restaurant and badly want to try it out. R is the kind who wants his food to have name, so that he can form his biases even before tasting it. Needless to say he is not that keen about DITD. If I am in San Jose right now, I would have left the children with the husband and would have gone with YaadaYaada. Sigh.
(For more details regarding the dialogue in the dark concept read this.)

Hunted down a juice shop where they sell sugarcane juice. Unfortunately they do not crush ginger and lime with the sugar cane. They add ginger juice and lime juice to the sugar cane juice. The taste is not the same. Planning on asking them to improvise the next time.

I find myself repeating to every driver, attendant, store keeper, sales person, waiter ‘DON’T TOUCH MY CHILD’. Might be a simple display of affection on their part, but I find it very disconcerting.

The potty process has taken a major set back. At last when I thought that my assistance is no longer needed in their daily ablutions, the water element intervened. ‘Amma, why do India people like to spray their butt?’ is the top why question of the week. I gave up and picked up a bundle of toilet paper from the supermarket.

Car hunting is going on in full swing. All my dreams of driving a hybrid automatic Prius has been crushed by the fact that Toyota Prius is being taxed at nearly 125% of its original price. So I researched Carwale and Cardekho and the only hits I got for key words ‘hybrid automatic transmission’ was the Mahindra Scorpio. There I was dreaming that I will be driving an eco friendly, non-polluting vehicle and will go around the city like ‘Sorna akka’ and again the dream was crushed by the Mahindra’s hybrid farce. Whoever in the world put Mahindra Scorpio and hybrid together, needs a serious hybrid101 lesson, even if the person defends themselves that it is a micro-hybrid technology….my @$$ is my response to them. But I am not budging from the automatic transmission. Currently after reading this, I am convincing the husband that we must buy an used automatic car and fit it with a made to order hybrid engine. Here I am trying to save the world and what does the husband do? He takes a dig at my (non)Hindi speaking skills. Life can be difficult when one is surrounded by dream crushers.

More transition notes to come.

Chula was in a mixed age classroom setting with preschool – kindergarten children in the same room. The California cut off for kinder is Dec 2nd, which means that Chula, being born a few days after Dec 2nd was still in pre-school and her friends born few days before Dec 2nd were in kinder. She was really looking forward to 2010-2011 school year because she starts the much awaited kinder, where she gets to do the special parts, she gets to graduate, walk the aisle with the graduation hat…basically the whole nine yards. But with every situation there are pros and cons, this Chula didn’t expect.

Sept 1st 2010, saw Chula start kindergarten, some of her best friends from kindergarten move on to a different building to start lower elementary and her best(est-est-est) friend move to a different school to start public school kindergarten. Chula went skipping to school and came back crying. The whole of 2010-2011, I had to give her pep talks, multiple times, about being open to make new friends, recognize the people who want to be friends with her and give them a fair chance instead of agonizing over what is not there etc. From my part, I arranged play dates with her old and new friends to show her that she did not loose her old friends and that at times we have to move on. I prided myself on doing the right things at the right time.

But little did I realize that somethings are easier said than done. It is slowly dawning on me that none of the advice I gave Chula makes any sense what so ever, when I apply it to myself, as I sit in India, 8700 miles away from my best(est-est-est) friend of 18 years, typing this post. The UTBT family has R2Ied. I am missing a part of me, the children are missing their godparents and it feels like a big void that nothing can fill. There is a lot to be said about this friendship, but I am leaving you all with what Yaadayaada said, ‘We have been with each other for more time we have been with our parents.’

Location: Nordstorm, Handbags and accessories department.

A gentleman holding two Coach handbags, same design, two different colors, same price, one in each hand and comparing.

Gentleman to the sales person: These two bags are the same design and price, but one is bigger than the other. What does it mean?

Sales person: It means that one bag is stuffed with more paper than the other.

Clueless people buying handbags means only one thing. HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY folks.

Anitha tagged me as The Versatile Blogger. Thank a bunch Anitha. The rules are, on accepting the tag, I must tell seven random things about myself. Since the kids are much more interesting, here are seven random things about Chula and Mieja. As for passing the tag, if you are reading this post, you are tagged.

Seven random dialogues in seven random scenarios with Mieja. You can come up with your own conclusion about her.
We watched Toystory-3 at home. Mieja is weird about movies. One sad note/night scene/loud sound scares her and she hides behind me and cries. I put her on my lap, coaxed her and finally pull her through the whole movie.
Me: See???? It wasn’t that scary. Isn’t it? What do you think of the movie?
Mieja: I hate it. All that the toys do are to get lost. They keep getting lost and lost and lost. This is not a happy movie.

I am explaining the concept of money, budget, buying out of need vs buying for the sake of buying etc.
Mieja: I know amma. Let us go to Target and buy some money. That way we will have lots of money and need not prioritize. We can buy anything that we want.

Mieja playing with her close friend. Friend is wearing Gap shoes. Mieja is clueless about name brands.
Friend: Mieja, look what I am wearing. Gap.
Mieja: <Frantically looking around her> Where?! Where is the gap?

I am taking Mieja to the doctor to finish her five year old vaccinations. This is the second visit in the last three weeks. She had two shots last week of March and is having the last two vaccines this appointment.
Mieja: <Lips quivering> But amma….. why do I even need shots? I don’t like shots.
Me: Shots are for your own good. It helps you to be healthy.
Mieja: That is not even true. I had two shots the last time. Right now I have a cold. If shots are supposed to keep me healthy and the germs away, they are not even working. So I will not come to the doctor. Ever, never, never, ever again. Never in my life.

Chula and Mieja playing ludo with my aunt.
Aunt: Don’t throw the dice like that. If it gets lost or broken, then we can’t play ludo.
Mieja: Its okay if the dice gets lost or broken. The dice any way gives us a random number between 1 and 6. So when it is my turn to roll the dice, I will tell a random number between 1 and 6 and move my coin. We can still play like that.

Mieja goes ‘walking’ with my aunt. In two seconds she places a request to be carried.
Aunt: Come on, we have come for a walk.
Mieja: Yes. But I don’t like walking and you like walking. So you carry me and walk, I will be carried and not walk.

Mieja and my aunt ‘walk’ to the local Target. Meija asks to be placed in the shopping cart.
Meija: Now…. I am looking for something. So follow my directions and push the cart.
<After multiple left, right, u-turn, stop, circle, left, right, slow, yields later…..>
Aunt: What is that you are looking for? My head is spinning.
Mieja: Okay, okay, okay. I want something, but I don’t know what it is. So let us look on the computer.
Aunt: How is that possible?
Mieja: Why not? That is what amma does. She looks online about things. So borrow a computer from Target and let us look online and find out what I want. May be we can ask Google and it will tell me what I want.
Aunt: ????

Seven things about Chula:

She C.A.N.N.O.T take it if she loses a board game. Friday nights are game nights. The idea is to spend time together as a family. So we make alterations and try to make the game cooperative. But on those rare occasions we play the real version and she loses, hell breaks loose.

She believes that the world is a happy place. She believes in fairies and magic.

“Amma, do you know that people and animals never die? Everything that dies comes back to the earth in one form or another.”

She is my litter police. The rare occasion, I throw something as inconspicuous as a strand of hair, she is on my case.

She is a people pleaser. She would try out things that she hates, just to please me.

She has a gift for music, rythm and languages.

She prefers a book over TV, friends, playing, tech toys etc.

Child Sexual Abuse Awareness

I have been silently following CSAAM for sometime now. I went for lunch with a friend and no prizes for guessing what we talked about. I came back thinking that I must put up a post, but quickly scratched the plan within hours because I didn’t want to attract any trolls. So far I have always written about safe topics and have stayed in my comfort zone, do I really want to jeopardize it?

Today morning I read Kiran’s tweet.

This reminds me of the “they came for the Jews, I kept quiet”. All ye who kept quiet, tomorrow it could be you.

That was the decision point for me. I mean, I am a Early Child Education professional and if I hesitate to advocate for the kids and their families, then what is the use of my education?

Irrespective of one’s age, one inappropriate touch, even if it a hasty groping, is enough to open one’s eyes to the world. Suddenly the world is not a safe place any more. Even a ten year old will develop a bat sense that teaches her to steer clear of some people. This is all in retrospect, but it is very confusing when you go through it and you are only ten years old and are not equipped with a good support system. I remember thinking hard about this negative attention but for the life of me couldn’t figure out why. The only explanation I could come up with was my non-existent breasts and the potential of what they can develop in to. I also came up with ingenious solution of wearing baggy clothes and molding my spine in to a convex shape that would give Manthara a tough competition!

I have been subjected to an occasional groping in public transportation, exposure to inappropriate language and despicable behaviors of a few individuals while in college. As difficult as it was to deal with it at that time, I must count my blessings. When it comes to my children, how do I deal with it? Gamble on luck? I wish I can put them in a bubble. But that ain’t happening. I cannot look in to those wide, innocent eyes and say that there are big bad wolves out there and they can potentially be affected by them. I just finished teaching them about widening their circle of trust and letting on people other than me in to this circle. Do I want to give them mixed messages? Though the girls already know certain aspects of appropriate and inappropriate touch, I had been afraid to go any further with this.

Thanks to CSAAM, I have been thinking about this topic for the past month. I am trying to remove the emotional ‘parent’ aspect from this equation and approach it as I would any lesson plan and I must say that helps. With this in mind, I have split what I want to do in to two categories – objectives and goals. Objectives are very concrete set of achievables which come with a definite time frame. Goals are something that we walk towards and at times we find this expanding and elusive.

Goals:
#1 Create awareness.
#2 Giving the child the right to say no.
#3 Teaching the children that they have full control over their bodies.
#4 Keeping the line of communication open.
#5 Let them know that they are special no matter what.

Objectives:
If you have a set of goals in your mind, small opportunities present themselves and these can be turned in to objectives. Otherwise, introduce the topic through a book with good content that targets your goals.

-For quite sometime now, Mieja has been pestering me how baby comes out of a mommy’s body, for which my typical answer has been, ‘When it is time the doctor will help the baby come out of mommy’s tummy’. Three weeks back, Mieja refused to take the template answer and forced me it to a corner asking me, ‘Amma, I have heard this million times. Tell me the body part the baby comes out of.’ So I told her the name of the appropriate body part. This to me is one of the goals that keeps in line with goal #3 – Teaching the children that they have full control over their bodies, which includes every body part has a name and a related function.

Over the three weeks at multiple instances I have followed up on this conversation, stressing that it is the name of a body part and is not something to be giggled over/used as a joke; the need for hygiene; every part of the body has a certain functionality including private parts and the children need to define boundaries for every body part. For example – It is okay to hold hands, not okay to touch some one’s eyes, okay  to ask for permission and give a hug, not okay to touch private parts. By holding hands and hugging you tell a person about love and trust. By touching some one’s eyes, you can potentially harm their eyes. When it comes to private parts it is inactive currently and all they need to worry about is hygiene.

-Indian culture is one that expects compliance, especially from children. So when your child says no, stop and listen to it. If possible help the child to give a reason why they are saying no. When one blindly discounts every no a child says, the child is going to grow up thinking that they do not have the power to say no. This addresses goal #2.

This is a constant struggle for me. Expecting compliance from my children has been written in to my DNA owing to the way I was raised. So I have to really practice to count to ten to keep my reflexes under control.

-Post 6 years of age, all children experiment with lying. The intention is totally harmless. A simple, ‘Yes, I washed my hands already’ is not meant to make a fool out of you, but to move on with the next exciting thing. Stamp out the urge to make a lesson out of the situation. A simple and quite, ‘I can find out if you washed your hands or not. Please tell me the truth. If you are in a hurry to go out and play bubbles, I will ask your sister to wait for you.’ will do wonders in the long run. goal #4.

What would I recommend a friend to read?
Of course the whole website, but in particular

– Awareness about cyber sexual abuse

–Commonly asked questions

–Book references by Sandhya.

Everything is two of the same at home that an innocent bystander will start rubbing her eyes, just to make sure that she is not assaulted with a sudden case of double vision syndrome.

But, totally worth it!!!!

Montessori is a philosophy. I consider it as a ‘way of life’ as opposed to ‘alternate schooling method’.

Magic number in Montessori – 3.

• Montessori believes that children’s development is in stages of three. 0-3 is the infant/toddler stage or the unconscious absorbent mind, 3-6 is the conscious absorbent mind. The 6-9(lower elementary) and 9-12(upper elementary) phases in a Montessori elementary focuses on helping children organize his/her thoughts internally. It is considered the period for social development and evolving a sense of justice.
• Even the lessons that are taught to children are taught in a format called ‘three period lessons’. The first period is the teacher introducing the child to the work. The second period is the teacher assessing how much the child retained from the first period and how much the child recognizes the elements of the lesson. During the third period the child is encouraged to do the lesson by herself, recalling all the elements and the vocabulary. If desired results are achieved, the lesson is considered complete. From this point onwards the child can repeat the work as and when desired.
• In the very core, Montessori regards a human brain to have three components – reptilian, mammalian and evolved. This is true to all human beings. What we exhibit is a complicated interplay of all these three tendencies.
• Shelves that are partitioned in to three levels with three objects/work displayed in each level.

Mixed age classrooms. Younger children and older children working together is a typical trait of a Montessori classroom.

Montessori classroom, often called as an environment, is divided in to practical life area, sensorial area, language area, cultural area and math area. In practical life children learn things like pouring from one cup to another, the hand control and hand-eye coordination learnt from this process is later applied to writing. Every area is interlinked. Though a typical Montessori classroom is a big hall with 50 – 55 children of mixed age, the children magically segregate themselves in to age appropriate areas. Younger children are almost always found in the practical life area, the older children in the math area and such.

Motto behind the Montessori environment is ‘everything has a place and everything in its place’. Same applies for children and teachers in the environment. The teacher’s place –  to observe and to guide. The children find their own place in the environment. Coming in to a Montessori environment the children are taught by modeling – by both the adults and the other children in the environment. The new child finds where she fits in this well organized environment and slowly grows from a novice to a leader.

Montessori considers 0-6 years of age as a unique window. It is known as ‘sensitive period’. Through her environment, the child is forming experiences which play a major role in how the neural networks are formed in the brain. By four these neural networks are precipitating and it becomes increasing difficult to rewrite the neural patterns. That is why many Montessori schools have an age limit after which they do not take non-Montessori children in to their environment.

Montessori places great deal of respect on sense of order, which is innate in a child. The first three years, all the child does is to make sense of the world and create order within herself. Sense of order in simple words can be explained as ‘where everything goes and when everything happens’. Though she cannot tell time, the child has a concept of time. Example, nap after lunch, dinner after going to the park, read books before bed etc. When the environment is predictable – few things, each in its place, well displayed, the child is more confident in the environment. Care must be taken to respect the child’s sense of order.

Many steps exist in a work and this is called cycle of work. If the child wants to paint, the cycle is -> get the apron on -> get paper -> pick paint -> paint -> place art work on drying shelf -> get water in a pail/container to clean easel -> dry the easel with a towel -> dump dirty water -> dry the container -> place all material in respective places (used towel in laundry basket, hang apron on peg, used paint cup and brushes in the sink). Every adult unfamiliar with Montessori to whom I have explained this cycle, have expressed doubts like , ‘this is too restrictive/child will feel burdened/are you for real?/this will never work’ etc. But I have seen 18 month – two year old children who do this without missing a beat. The main thing to recognize is that the doubt lies not within the child, but within the adult. The adult’s contribution to make sure that the child progresses successively without breaking the cycle of work is, to do the work once herself, think through the steps bearing in mind the age of the child, make sure that everything is available in the right place in the environment – like the paper is trimmed to size and placed on the paper tray, paints are filled regularly, dirty paint cups/brushes are cleaned and replaced, art work drying rack is accessible, towels are filled in the hamper, sink/faucet is easily accessible. I have also heard arguments that it is too much to expect from a child. I disagree. We talk about gratification and this is how a child learns gratification. Children learn their boundaries, which is not at all negative. Not to mention they expand their mind to the thinking that a certain problem has many steps and vice versa are aware that the small steps lead to a bigger picture.

Montessori environment places high emphasis on grace and courtesy. The idea is to teach through example that every person, every object, every process needs to be respected. This simple thing has deeper spiritual meaning. I can almost draw a curriculum web based on this.

Montessori, considers everything as work and every work is done in a certain way. In a manner of speaking even play is work and children are expected to play without harming themselves or their friends.

Montessori is based on reasoning and believes that fantasy can wait till the child is six and is capable of recognizing fantasy. As I have told many times, this does not make the children deficit of imagination and creative thinking. If a child is inclined to enjoying fantasy, even if they are Montessori schooled, they grow in to adults with logically sound fantasies. My most famous argument, ‘logic can exist without fantasy, but fantasy cannot exist without logic’. As an extension of this, tech toys, the iPads, iPhone apps and such are frowned upon. Because a young child needs to recognize not just cause and effect, but also a reason for this. All tech toys do is to teach children that things happen, take it for granted and don’t ever try to open your toy and analyze why and how.

Movement is incorporated in to the process of learning. Movement molds brain development in wondrous ways.

Montessori environment is filled with non-plastic objects, earth tones, no bright over stimulating colors, wooden materials, natural fabrics and such.

Montessori is neither strict nor all play. I like to think of it as flexibility within a structure.

Many more things to say, but I leave you all with this: any philosophy is only as sound as the adult who implements it.

Since this is a mommy blog, I have to write about the kids, even if it is once in four months.

Chula, all of a sudden looks so grown up. She is all of her 6.5 years and a little more, if you ask me. The danger in this is, I start thinking of her as an adult and start developing adult level expectations and she has to grow up, even more than she is currently, in order to catch up! Constantly reevaluating every scenario and breaking this cycle has been my prominent job for the past one year.

She has certainly departed from the ‘child’ category, but yet to arrive as a ‘girl’. In this journey, she is opening her mind and assimilating the world, thanks to the zillion-gazillion books she is devouring, eyes that are constantly observing and ears that are always listening.

Parents have been aware of the phenomenon of adolescence for ages now. Even terrible twos get noticed by parents, thanks to the child. But the flux children get caught while moving from what Dr.Montessori would call the ‘absorbent mind’ to ‘concrete thinking’ does not get the attention it deserves. From the parents point of view, first comes the monumental process of child birth. You don’t even get time to count all the toes and fingers and feel confident about the health of the offspring, you have to jump head first in to understanding a newborn’s needs and establishing a pattern that works. You take a breather and terrible twos is staring you in your face, which quite frankly is a misnomer, because we all know that terrible twos starts before two and drags on till four! Through out this phase we input values, family and personal, observe the outcome and keep tweaking the limits till we have a self propagating control system. By the time the child is six we start thinking about curriculum, extra-curricular activities, schedules, the poor second born, if any and such. So the transition  from child to girl/boy gets least notice, even if the parent notices it, since this transition is mostly inward, they pretend that it does not exist and do not want to deal with it.

I get some clues to what Chula is thinking. Of her most recent fascinations – namely poverty, pain, meanness, good and bad, kindness etc, the top priority goes to jail. Do children even go to jail? Why? Why would some one want to punish children? Are there even children capable of committing punishable offenses? Baby girl, I will tell you the truth and promise to answer your questions, but when you ask me, ‘But….amma…..if I don’t put my seat belt on, YOU are the one going to jail. Right???’, it scares me a little.

By now it is clear to me that she has a very broad sense of time. I think this is it. It is not going to change and I can either deal with it or try and make her perfect. While I understand that she gets it from me, it is annoying to have two such people living under the same roof. Half the battles between me and Chula is because of the clock. She is constantly taking her own sweet time to do things and I am constantly micromanaging her. It is chaos and friends will vouch to that!

Her clarity of thoughts amazes me at times. The other day she told me, ‘Not because I like you amma, because I love you amma.’ One of the drives back home, she requested for Enthiran songs and I replied, ‘The iPod is in shuffle mode and one of these songs will be an Enthiran song. I cannot drive and DJ.’ The reply she gave me for that, ‘Amma, there are 7 songs in Enthiran. There are 273 songs in your iPod. So 7 out of 273 will be from Enthiran’. I did not make a squeak after that.

After Chula was born, I learnt the art of giving choices. If I put my mind to it, I can give a child choices and still get the exact results I want. But now Chula is in a stage where she wants a role in coming up with the choices. She wants to be more involved in me parenting her. My choices are to either try figuring out how a child can parent herself or learn this new art without any manual what so ever. Sigh.

Her sense of humor is developing really well 🙂

Mieja…..

Her current thing is to yell, ‘Don’t talk about me’, on the occasions I narrate something adorable she did/said. So here I am, writing about her.

She is still asking cyclic questions. Now her cyclic questions are scientific. Need I say that I have completely lost my hair?

We watched The Oscars and the poor child sat patiently asking, ‘Is this Oscar?’ for every human being she set her eyes on.

She likes school and she hates school. When ever she whines to me that she does not like school, I insist that she has to go to school to learn things and she makes it in to another of her famous cyclic conversations. On a particular day she went on a walk with YaadaaYaadaa, picked a dandelion and made a wish, ‘I do not want to go to school. Ever, never, never, ever in my life again. I want to stay home all days. All 8 days of the week.’ See! Case in point for me.

We were going for R’s colleague’s son’s birthday party. YaadaaYaadaa asked her, if she knows the child from school/dance class/tamil class/swim class. The answer was, ‘YY aunty, you don’t come to my school. You are not my teacher. You don’t come to my tamil class or my swim class. But I know you right? That same way, I know this child.’ People, I have to say there are V.E.R.Y few occasions in which YY has been rendered speechless, any one who has know her will vouch for that. This was one such occasion.

Her favorite thing to do while riding in the car is to play games with me. So far name, place, animal thing; find the odd man out are super hits.

This 5 year old is forced to constantly catch up with her 6.5 year old sister. Sometimes I have to physically stop her from doing that.

The MPDs….how can I forget this? She has 3 different personalities. Bawawdi the cat – she licks you, holds your leg, meows and pretends she cannot talk English. Gaggiga the baby elephant – she hits you with her trunk and crawls on the floor. Diggie the dog – she barks and bites. Her big sister is her owner.

Finally a joke from Mieja, of course she got it from a book, but I was surprised she understood it.
WHAT IS A MUMMY’s FAVORITE MUSIC?
Wrap music.

Until later….

I must confess, I am not a non-fiction person. The only non-fiction books I read are text books or books related to Early Childhood Education. Even these books, I survive because I do not have to read them from cover to cover. I flip through the book, pick topics that interest me and read snippets. Or I look for for something in particular, like a reference or the author opinion. To complete a book in this fashion means that I need to own the book and over a period of time, I would have read everything the book has to offer.

Of the books I read recently, India Calling is one of the few non-fiction books that has nothing to do with Early Childhood Education. The reason I liked this book is because, India is a land of contradictions and Anand Giridaradas not only put this in to words in an effective manner, but he also shows how two opposing ideas can co-exist.

Once I was coaching an American colleague on the appropriate style to greet people in India. She asked me if she can say something to effect of ‘you look like you are in great health’ or ‘your child is big for her age’, I don’t remember her exact words. I launched in to the phenomenon of evil eye and how a remark about size, especially a child’s can be considered as a mark of evil eye. The bewildered colleague, who obviously insinuated nothing evil, asked if the appropriate thing to say is something the opposite. So I had to tell her that such a remark will not be well received. The thoroughly confused colleague threw her arms up in the air because she was lost!

Look closely, there are numerous such contradictions. India is perhaps the only place where there are always generalizations and always exceptions to any generalization. Women are worshipped as goddess, but they are target of sexism. Women are repressed, but can be elected to the highest offices in the country. The society preaches commonality/blending in, but is constantly looking for a leader. India is a high context culture, big on social knowledge and non-verbal cues, but we have detailed manuscripts that details how every man/woman/king/commoner/first born child/last born child/daughter/wife/widow/mother must behave.

The Anand’s perspective as an outsider, on the surface level inconsistencies, how India is progressing and to what it is progressing towards is very intriguing. Sometimes it takes an outsider to see things more clearly. Good read. Thumbs up.