Under The Banyan Tree

Drumberries Event On Jan29,2012

utbt — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 06:36:05 +0000

Drumberries is holding an interactive drum session at Sweet Nirvana, Kavuri Hills between 4.00PM – 7.00PM.

Session fee Rs.100.

For details check out Drumberries Facebook page.

Also want to do the CUPCAKE at Deli9, Road No1,Banjara Hills, starts Jan25.

For those interested, there is a Heritage Walk from Charminar to Chowmahalla Palace, Jan 29, 7.30AM to 9.00AM. Entry fee Rs.50. Tickets available at Charminar. Call 9849728841.

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Strike It Rich

utbt — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:13:32 +0000

Mieja lurves diamonds. Now, according to her, diamond is anything that is smooth, shiny and the size of a lemon. At this point of time I would like to clarify that I am not feeding her with unrealistic expectations. Many a pebbles were picked up from the park, washed, spat on and shined till hands ached and disappointment levels soared. But the child being the tireless kind, decided to change the process. As a result of which multiple diamond experiments were carried on at home.

I nodded approvingly and decided to keep a photographic record of the experiments, because (a)once her heart is set, no matter I reason, she will refuse to listen and (b)if at all by blind luck she did manage to make a diamond?! I mean, the child was talking about rocks the size of lemons. It surely wouldn’t hurt to have a few, wouldn’t it?!

So here it goes, the process, pictures and the product.

Experiment 1

Ingredients: Leaves from your garden, a bucket, water, scissors, plenty of sunlight.

Process: Watch out for the time sunlight falls on your kitchen faucet. Now open the faucet and check if the water sparkles in sunlight. Only sparkling water results in sparkling diamonds. Now fill half your bucket with sparkling water. Cut the leaves in to strips about an inch thick. Fashion these leaves in to little cups. Pour about half a teaspoon of sparkling water in to each leaf cup. Place the leaf cups in to the bucket. Leave the bucket in direct sunlight for a week. Check for readiness and leave them for an additional week if required.

Product:

Experiment 2

was formulated after said child’s mother complained to every one under the Sun about the stink emanating from the bucket and scientists needing to clean up their own mess(“Marie Curie’s mother did not run behind her with a mop and scrubber” my exact words). The goal of this experiment was to (a)keep the initial experiment to small scale and if successful scale up as required (b)compress the process to a couple of days, so that said diamonds are ready before the leaves start decaying (c)avoid contamination from air borne pollutants.

Ingredients: One tbsp of chopped onions, leaves from your garden, one tbsp sparkling water, fridge in working condition.

Process: Clean a big broad leaf. Mix chopped onions with sparkling water. Fashion the mixture in to a diamond shape. Place the mixture on the leaf and place the whole thing in the fridge. You can place it in the freezer, will cut down the process time in to 1/3, the trade off being the three footer’s dependency on her parents(read mother) to check the diamond formation every millisecond.

Product: This time the mother raised hell that the fridge stinks of onions and the child gave up after a week.

Experiment 3

Ingredients: Grape seeds, white acrylic paint.

Process: First eat the grapes, one needs the strength from the grapes to convince one’s mother about yet another diamond experiment, then collect the seeds. Wash the seeds in sparkling water. Pat dry. Paint every seed with white acrylic paint. Place in cup. Place the cup in fridge.

Product:

Amma had nothing to complain about. No decay, no stink. This experiment stayed for the longest in the fridge and was discarded after the unsuspecting spouse, looking for a late night snack, consumed about half of it.

Experiement 4

Ingredients: Glass, preferably in a sphere shape. One tbsp sparkling water. Hard surface. Pointy, sharp tools.

Process: Take the glass sphere and drill a small hole. Pour the tbsp water through this hole. Place right side up and place in the fridge to set. When set, tap the water filled sphere on a hard surface to chip the sides to make a shiny diamond.

Product: Promptly nipped in the bud by Amma. So no pictures or products to complain about.

She is taking a break right now and I am shuddering that she will come back invigorated after the break.

Technorati Tags: diamonds, experiments at home, mieja

Here By I Declare That…

utbt — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:34:18 +0000

Mieja’s accent is completely Indianized.

She just told her friend, ‘We will puT iT in a jiplock, okay?’.

There is nothing more Indian than jiplock. Period.

Birla Planetarium, Chennai

utbt — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 03:45:23 +0000

Was a total let down.

When my sister-in-law said, ‘An hour is enough for the planetarium visit. There is the movie show and nothing else’, I couldn’t quite understand where this was coming from. I had images of CDM in my mind and was thinking that I could easily spend a day in the planetarium and tech center. With half a heart I agreed to combine the library and planetarium. Thinking back I am glad I did.

They have a small dome theater, well maintained and the space movies they play are hand picked. No complaints. Once you are outside the theater, the air is nauseatingly thick with the smell of urine.

The tech center boasts 500 exhibits. Not one of it was working. Not one.

There is a 3-D movie show in the tech center, the access to which is through a puddle of water and I imagined the worst as to the contaminants of the water. The movie as such was about 20 min, a take on Alice in Wonderland and one another piece that I don’t remember right now. The girls liked it, they FINALLY understood the 3-D and were tad scared but mostly excited. I just sat and made encouraging noises.

I cannot get over the fact that the building was leaking inside and water was flooding the floors. Add to this the over powering smell from the rest rooms. Disappointing.

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Anna Nootrandu Noolagam

utbt — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:57:28 +0000

That is Anna Centenary Library for the non-Tamil.

(Pic source: Wikipedia)

I wasn’t going to leave Chennai without visiting this library. So on a rainy day, I booked a cab and landed in Koturpuram with the children in tow. Totally sigh worthy place. Beautifully conceptualized and constructed and can give any US library a tough competition. Note ‘CAN’ is the keyword here.

Management and administration needs a lot of fine tuning. As a visitor one gets contradicting information regarding what to carry inside, what to leave in the car. We were asked to leave our purses and carry just our cellphones in to the building, very surprising considering that majority of the population arrives in bus or by walk! After we crossed the lobby we found ourselves in front of the coffee shop without our purse. When asked the security told me, ‘Madam you must have put some rupee notes in your pant pocket’. For which my response was, ‘What if I am not wearing pants or pants without pockets?’ and I instantly regretted it! Thankfully the lady replied, ‘Most of them who come here wear pants’ instead of, ‘Inside your bra, like women did in good old days’.

The children’s section was the only section I visited. If I had more time I would have checked out the manuscripts section also. The library is not yet set up for checking out books. They have OPAC set up only through intranet, which means the catalog can only be accessed from the within the library.

I searched the catalog through the computer and was delighted to find many of my favorites showing up. The initial purchase was 70,000 books, I was told. No one knew if they will be buying more books and who is in charge of it. But the classification and arrangement was very confusing for me. They follow Dewey Decimal Classification for shelving, but when it comes to the end user, DDC must be transparent, IMO. Also the number of staff are simply not enough to check inventory and shelve the books for the number of visitors. End result chaos, fiction picture books and non-fiction chapter books shelved next to each other, tables heaped with books, one whole section of the library piled with books pulled out by children and cordoned off to be shelved later(which was after the winter break and school reopen I was told by the staff!).

Hopefully we don’t grow complacent that we have South India’s largest library and neglect the upkeep, if the library stays as a library, that is!

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Tip Of The Hat, Wag Of The Finger

utbt — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 01:07:34 +0000

This is classic Colbert style, okay?

Tip of the hat to brake oil. Paint scratches on you car paint, the ones that have gone through just the clear coat can be repaired by rubbing over the scratch with a soft cloth dipped in a little brake oil. If the scratch has gone all the way to the primer then, there is no hope. Now DON’T you dare ask me how I chanced upon this information. Consider yourself warned.

Wag of the finger to Reliance shops. IMO, they are like cockroaches. Inferior(in quality) and pop up everywhere. I got a kurti from Reliance Trends (the model with no slits at the sides) for myself. Looks like it is specially designed to wear for people doing adipradhakshinam. Being an aggressively cut, fabric saver model, it is okay as long as I don’t intend to sit cross legged or take wide strides. I did try it out before I purchased it, but one hardly walks and tests comfort level for a piece of garment! The track pants I bought for Chula came out of the washing machine with small holes after one wear and one wash. Very disappointing.

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Happy New Year

utbt — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:33:21 +0000

Happy new year to all of you lovely people out there. Wishing this new year will bring loads of changes(good ones) and good luck to you all. I am a dragon entering in to the year of the dragon! Can’t wait!

Will come back with more updates, until then, munch on the piece I wrote for Women’s Web on Alternate Education Philosophies. On a related subject, a link from one of my very first posts PICKING A PRESCHOOL. Ciao.

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Answer This For Me Will You?

utbt — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 11:35:09 +0000

The Firework-Maker’s Daughter is the first Pullman book we read at home. As endearing as we found this book to be, I am fully aware that Pullman’s writing can be dark. So I always check out the reviews. While doing so, I stumbled across Publisher’s Weekly’s editorial review of Pullman’s The White Mercedes at Amazon.

Cut+Paste of the review here

“The menacing darkness that lurked at the edges of Pullman’s trilogy of Victorian-era thrillers ( The Ruby in the Smoke et al.) comes to the fore in this contemporary tale of shattered innocence and betrayed love set in Oxford, England. From the first line–”Chris Marshall met the girl he was going to kill on a warm night in early June”–the sense of imminent evil and inexorable doom builds unrelentingly to the novel’s violent, gutwrenching climax. Naive and well-intentioned, 17-year-old Chris has love, not murder, on his mind when he meets and later beds Jenny (described in lyric and intimate detail), who has run away from her abusive father. Indeed, it is precisely Chris’s trusting nature and sense of justice that cause the youth to be duped by a vengeful felon into causing Jenny’s death–and only then because she is mistaken for someone else. Here is a modern-day Shakespearean tragedy, with star-crossed lovers separated by fate, a terrifyingly philosophical villain and assorted innocents, cads and buffoons. Its evocative narrative and throat-tightening suspense make this novel a compelling read; however, the graphic sex, moral ambiguity and somber ending make it most suitable for mature YA readers. Ages 12-up. ”

I was doing perfectly fine, mentally valuating the appropriateness of this book(NOT for Chula, for some other purpose). But the last two lines left me gaping. Since when does graphic sex and 12 year old go together?

Which brings me to the questions,

Do you agree or disagree with me?
Do you think I am over reacting. A 12 year old can handle this content?
What were you reading when you were 12?
Would you let your 12 year old read this?

Thanks and have a good one folks.

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Technorati Tags: Firework Maker's Daughter, His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman, White Mercedes

My Bit For CROCUS2011

utbt — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 03:19:29 +0000

We are winding up CROCUS2011. Its been loads of fun with the five elements theme suggested by Praba.

I wanted to do something diverse this time. So I picked:

AN INTERVIEW WITH Mrs.NIRMALA DIAZ, FOUNDER OF SLOKA WALDORF SCHOOL – Waldorf schools place a high emphasis on nature. This is tricky considering that young children have a egocentric way of thinking and are not ready to view themselves as a small part in the bigger scheme of things. Mrs.Diaz explains beautifully how nature appreciation paves way to a balanced way to nurture and educate young children. An inspirational interview.

MA GANGA AND THE RAZAI BOX – a children’s book that touches on the topics of desertification and soil erosion through mythology. I found the story telling quite innovative.

THE LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS – If you are a teacher, you NEED to read this book. It changes the way you will plan/implement your curriculum. Do I have to tell more?

THE NATURE TEACHER – Doing lesson plans is pure joy. At SaffronTree, we were discussing that we have covered many nature themed books even before we hit upon the FIVE ELEMENTS theme for CROCUS2011 and if there was a way to incorporate all these past posts in to CROCUS2011 without overwhelming the readers it would be swell. This along with Richard Louv’s ‘nature as a teacher for young children’ made this post shape up the way it is right now. Pure joy people! In the near future, I would love to do workshops and share this joy with other people in the teaching community. Wish me the best.

Now go read all the posts @ SaffronTree if you haven’t already.

How Was Your Diwali?

utbt — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 05:50:04 +0000

On Diwali day, I did something I thought I would NEVER do! As a result of which child1 declared before she went to sleep, ‘Amma this is truly the worst diwali ever. I hope I make enough happy memories to forget this sad, sad day. It is the saddest and baddest day in my life. What is the use of celebrating if I can’t read amma?’

Yes! I told her she cannot touch or even look at a book for one more week. She needs to show and act like a six year old otherwise she will lose her reading privileges.

The reading, as much as I am proud of it, is reaching an extreme. Three volumes of Chronicles of Narnia in one day, forgetting the time entity and then whining that I didn’t take her to the park, I am not letting her meet her friends, not showing even 10% interest in making friends, always living in a dream world….. This is not just one or two days, has been going on for three months now and I have had enough of this.

Now that she has no fall back, she is making an effort to make friends. Otherwise the first sign of something that does not go her way, she would turn and walk to her book.

As for child2 she hopes she can irritate me as much, so that her reading privileges will also be revoked!

Two very different peas in a pod!