We are completing one successful week of summer vacation.

I am still alive.

So are the children.

Our day is like this:

They go to a neighbor’s house for 2 hrs. A paid summer camp kind of thing. They do quilling, paper craft, basic sewing and knitting.

So between lunch and 3.00PM……

<I am at work>: 25 phone calls in 90 min, ‘Amma, when are you coming?’ is running in loop.

<I come back home>: ‘Yay! Amma!’

Amma can we eat chocolate?

No.

Can we eat chocolate biscuit?

No.

Can we eat regular biscuit?

No.

Can we go out and eat dinner?

No.

Can you make special dinner?

No.

Can we call out friends over?

If you finish your snack, we can go and play in the park/pool with all your friends. Lets clean up before that.

No(note role reversal)

Finish your lassi.

No.

Finish your fruit.

No.

Get you hair combed.

No.

After a serious glaring from me, child #2 asks me, ‘Amma, even if we make you mad, why can’t you keep smiling?’

The answer to this complicated question can be unlocked only when she has children, me thinks.

But all this aside, its the vocabulary that drives me nuts… *rolling eyes*

“Amma I finished the book full-to-full” =>completed reading.

“Amma, in teacher’s class I did stitching full-to-full” => the whole time

“Amma I ate full-to-full and I am full ” =>  finished what was put on their plate.

Note how ‘appa’ is no where in the picture, thank you very much.

Three day passes available on BookMyShow.

I will be there for Shobhana’s dance, with my binoculars. Full opera style wonly!!

As an experimental case, we bought tickets for Chula too. Fingers and toes crossed she enjoys it.

Was the topic Chula was asked to write an essay on by her teacher.

So the child writes…. ‘I love my family even if I get bad thoughts about them and also because they love me and we help each other.’

When I asked her what bad thoughts she gets about her family, she replied that she can’t explain, sometimes she just feels bad.

She also wrote, ‘My father’s name is _____. He works at _____. I like it when he plays badminton with me. I also like it when he plays monopoly with me. My mother’s name is _____. She works for _______.’

That is it!

No mentions of what she likes doing with me.

My feathers were ruffled and I asked her to explain this serious over sight and she patiently said, ‘Ammmaa, you do a ton of great things with me. If I list all the fun things, this will not be a short essay and I don’t know what to pick because they are all great.’

The child can save her behind through diplomacy.

She initially mentioned that she can’t think of one single good thing to write about her sister. Eventually decided that she will write how naughty her sister is.

Meija was upset with this character defamation and said that when she comes to second grade and when she is asked to write about her family, she will write verrry bad things about Chula and will supplement it with an ugly drawing of her. That did the trick.

The child can save her behind through black mail.

I have raised two good citizens. My job is done.

They did three pieces.

The Little Prince – I was excited. But considering that they invited 1st and 2nd graders, I am surprised if Little Prince was the right choice. The gentleman who performed was awesome, with the right modulation, body language and expression. Audience 10+ were mesmerized.

Three Oranges – a eurythmic representation of a fairy tale. Much enjoyed by children and their parents.

Potpourri of piano compositions and nursery rhymes – I personally find Eurthmy a little, ‘far out there’, so it would have been great of they had picked more popular nursery rhymes. Little Miss Muffet, really salvaged their reputation with the little ones. The children were rolling on the floor laughing. May be Humpty Dumpty, Cow jumped over the moon could have been better pieces from the familiarity point of view as well the laughter the rhymes would have produced. As I was wondering if people would get the nonsense rhymes by Edward Lear, Chula surprised me by reciting ‘The Owl And The Pussy Cat’ along with the narration! That was #facepalm for me.

The art part, movement therapy etc in Eurythmy aside, one drives all the way from Gachibowli to Nampally to see the children enjoy the performance, right?!

The London Eurythmy  group will be giving 2 performances in Hyderabad.

The first is for the entire family. It is a eurythmy rendering of 3 fairy tales – The
Little Prince, The Three Oranges, The Owl and the Pussycat. This will
be held on Friday 22nd February 2013 – 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM, Indira
Priyadarshini Hall, Public Gardens, Nampally, Hyderabad – 500 001
http://www.asc-hyd.in/childrens-fairy-tales-in-eurythmy—22nd-february.html

The second is for the adult audiences. it is a performance of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
http://www.asc-hyd.in/the-green-snake-and-the-beautiful-lily—23rd-february.html

Tickets are available in denominations of 200,300 and 500.

As news of Vishawaroopam comes out, what I am hearing is, ‘Sad, but he deserves it no?’.

Translates to, “Kamal has been arrogant in the past, now he is humbled and humiliated.”

Just like one loosely comments, ‘She was raped? Well what did she do?’

Do we congratulate ourselves that we are impartial to men and women when it comes to victim blaming?
Must we be shocked at our spiraling speed towards intolerance?
Must we work on objectivity and empathy?
Must we be ashamed that we are so malleable that any one can pull us in to a political farce and manipulate us to their advantage?

Where does this victim blaming come from?

Does it come from India’s spiritual core that believes in Karma – one suffers by his own actions.

Is it our way of developing resilience?

Or is it our way of burying our head like an ostrich and say, ‘Even if I had done something this would have happened because of his karma. So I don’t have to do anything. This is not MY problem.’

So… the husband is in to MAKING them talk and walk in Hindi.

Well…. I am not, I have other priorities, like…… every thing else.

Today father and the Meija were sitting on the couch. Meija was reading an English book to her father which had pictures of animal babies – puppies, kittens etc. The man kept insisting that she translate in Hindi in her head and read out loud.

Result = KUTTA KA BACCHA……

Oh! I see lot of blog potential in this!

Or at least trying to…

I am in my parent’s place in Chennai. The only way I have a signal on my cell phone is to stand at the right hand corner of the hall window and hold my phone towards the sky. Chula observed it and is asking me if my phone is ‘solar’ and if it is powered by the Sun.

As usual it is raining in Chennai. I always manage to drag the rain along with me when I visit Chennai. With the rain comes a overflowing laundry basket and wet clothes. I tied a clothes line inside the house, hung some essentials and switched on the fan. Meija was watching me do this. When it was time for scheduled power cut, the fan stopped and she asked me if she can implement her brain wave to dry the clothes even during power cut. I was curious what she was going to do and ended up ROFL when the child came back with a palm leaf hand fan. I thought it was cute. She thinks I was making fun of her. We have agreed to disagree.

I took a major risk this time, by using wash room without a functional latch, with only Chula standing guard outside the door. MONUMENTAL risk people, so it needs to be recorded here.

Sibling rivalry at its peak: Meija is imitating what ever I do. If I get up she gets up. If I put my hand on my hip, she copies. After observing this for a min, Chula says, ‘Amma, slap yourself R.E.A.L.L.Y hard. Quick amma.’

Getting in to my good books: We are getting ready to go to the beach and I was asking them to change out of their fancy clothes in to something that will be appropriate for beach.
Chula: Meija, I am going to listen to amma. I am not like you. I will wear regular play clothes because I don’t want to get my fancy ones dirty.
Meija: I LISTEN. I know our clothes will get dirty. In fact I was planning on wearing something from the laundry basket, something that is already dirty and needs to be washed anyways. Is it ok amma? Am I right?

Chula: <Thinks a bit how to top this> Amma I am going to wear some ripped clothes. What do you think about this amma?

I was seriously thinking about which wall I must bang my head against.

Dec 2012 was horrible in more than one way.

Yes, I am talking about ‘the girl’. As some one mentioned in their post, ‘not a martyr, not a brave soul, not a rebel, but an ordinary girl who just wanted to get home’.

Many predict that we react and will soon forget the girl and move on. I wish I knew how. Believe me, for the past few days, I have been trying to forget and I am failing miserably. She is there under the surface, no matter what I am doing. Even after the initial shock has subsided, my reaction is still the same. Mostly I am shocked by my own realization that rape is not about sex, not about power but gender violence.

It feels too shallow to think that she is a symbol of me and my generation. For what she has gone through is much more than what I have gone through, E.V.E.R. I see her as more like my daughter, the daughter I have failed to protect.

She is not a culmination of actions past, but is an indication of the future unless we do something about it.

My 2013 word is SPEAK. I will start with my children and hopefully I can grown with it.

http://events.fullhyderabad.com/times-hitex-funival-the-internation-carnival/2012-december/tickets-dates-videos-reviews-75470-1.html

Times is hosting a carnival for children.

Live music.

Hot air balloon rides.

Stalls and fun stuff for children.

Check it out if interested.