Tip of the hat to Arvind Gupta. I can’t tell you why right now. But a great man!

Wag of the finger to the Intercity Packers and Movers. Accepted to move our car from Hyderabad to Chennai. After unloading it from the truck and before delivering the car to the Chennai destination, got in to an accident (drunk driving). Hit a scooty, luckily the boy riding the scooty fell on impact and rolled off (HELMETS DO SAVE LIVES people). Dragged the scooty for a distance of 5 – 6 km, got the vehicle seized by the police, bribed the police and tried getting out of all ethical, moral and legal obligations to settle the dispute. Big mafia, these people are! Stay away.

Its been a year since I did my GUESS THE BOOK book quiz. Its not that I haven’t been reading any good books off late, but to find the right book, that is a challenge to decode at the same time encourage people to play is the challenge. So I have a book, how do you want the clues, picture or verbal? Will post on March 7th.

Title: Excuses, Excuses! Author: Anushka Ravishankar Illustration: Gabrielle Manglou Age: 4 – 6

Have you ever been in a predicament where you ask your child to get ready for school, 15 minutes have gone by and you find that she is still in her jammies watching water fall from the faucet, testing gravity? In more than one instance, I bet!

Every time there is a reason why the job is not done and the way the reason is explained and how the child jumps from one point to another, suddenly remembering something that happened many weeks back……. all this is humorous when it is not your child and you are not the parent in the hot seat. That is why it is so interesting to “Meet Neel, who has the most noble intentions, all of which have a funny habit of going wrong”.

Neel starts the week with a plan. Monday through Sunday he has jobs for every day. He is willing to take up more responsibilities, but is horrified that he has run out of days! As he goes through each day, Neel comes up with excuses why the job is not done. There is an elephant with spanking white socks stuffed in its ear, a very (Alice in) wonderland kind of clock, hypnotizing dogs and many more in the mix.

If you think my narration makes Neel’s story interesting, you must read how Anushka Ravishankar has presented it in verse. Funny and a true account from a child’s POV!

Gabrielle Manglou’s collage style of illustrations complements Neel’s whacky stories well. The illustrations will appeal to children because of its openness.

Title: The Great Race Author: Nathan Kumar Scott Illustration: Jagdish Chitara Age: 4 – 6

This book the third of Nathan Kumar Scott’s Kanchil stories. In this story Kanchil loses a running race to Plean. Pelan the snail, of all animals! Pelan definitely had a plan up his sleeve when he openly challenges Kanchil. You have to read and find out how this Indonesian trickster tale unfolds.

Jagdish Chaitara’s folk paintings are vibrant and enticed me. Take a peek behind the scenes to get an idea of what goes on while illustrations get picked for a book.

I can imagine myself framing this piece or working with children on similar lines.

Disclaimer: PDFs of the books were emailed to me as complimentary review copies. The review represents my true opinion and is not influenced by the ‘complementary’ factor. As an avid reader and a passionate book lover, I feel that every book I recommend needs to be of certain quality and I genuinely feel that the books reviewed above are a good read.

Sheela-ki-javaani is out and over.

Chamak Challo is taking our house by storm. Yes, we are late and we are like that only. No TV and no computer, we are usually stuck in a different time warp. The children hear about songs from their friends. By the time they register a song, memorize it and start asking for it, the rest of the world would have ridden that wave and would have moved on. But we peak!

Now I can measure every place I drive them to, by Chamak Challo scale. Airport, one way, almost 6 Chamak Challo’s. Grocery store – 3. The auditorium where the children had their annual day function – 3. Copying place close by – 1 etc.

Enthused(and irritated) by the number of times the husband heard the song, the eager beaver he is and with his ever wanting need to get to the bottom of things and understand the meaning, he, of all people, asked the maid the meaning of Chamak Challo. The maid started blushing. I, who was dusting close by, froze. And gave him the look that means, ‘this maid is a keeper, don’t ask her meaning to Hindi movie songs, which usually contains lots of read between the lines material and make her stop coming to work’. The husband, as usual, blissfully unaware of all looks and meanings and implications, moved on with his simple existence.

Another song that the children are singing non-stop is Kolaveri and holds the record for entering the house while it is still in vogue. They dance for Chamak Challo, Mieja has two moves – a standard march past kind of move for male voice and a hip shake with hands crossing for the female voice. But their response to Kolaveri gives me the creeps. They lounge, please note, not sitting but lounging, on the couch and sing dreamily, ‘Hand-le glass-u, glass-le sctotch-u’. Suddenly they tell me ominously, ‘Amma your future is dark-u dark-u’. For which I reply is full childish demeanor, ‘Noooo, my future is not dark. It is bright. I am going places!’

Last but not the least ‘Dhinka Chika’. I don’t even know when it came, so can;t say if we entered this wave soon/late/at peak. But I can tell you that I have heard it so many times that it has filled my head, over flowing from my brain and finding its way out through my vocabulary. Yesterday I told the younger child, ‘Yes, I will tell no if it is not appropriate. Don’t expect me to do Dinhka Chika to all your whims and fancies.’ She missed the point and wanted me to play Dhinka Chika.

Ta folks, have a good weekend!

UPDATED TO ADD

Hilarious!!!

and

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

Session fee Rs.100.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.