Tell me a story

It’s story time. We are reading Lucky Duck. Correction. Re is helping me construct the story of Lucky Duck through his questions. I never realised that this is harder that the actual reading of the story which doesn’t take much more than a clearing of the throat, faking a deep interest (don’t tell me you don’t fake it) and some degree of voice modulation and animatedness, which above all, should be consistent. Which is quite hard, considering that by page four, one is normally, well, tired!

So here is how our reading of Lucky Duck, a story of a boy Lenny who loses and finds his duck, all of 22 pages, by Jonathan Shipton and Suzanne Diederen goes:

Mamma, what’s this baby’s name?

His name is Lenny.

And what’s his doggie’s name?

His name is Zack (made up on the spot)

And what’s his mamma’s name?

Her name is Zoey. 

And why is the baby nangu (naked)?

Because they are all on the beach and making sandcastles, so he can wear only his trunks, otherwise he will get all dirty.

Oh, but the poor ducky’s feathers will get all dirty!

It’s ok, she can dust it off. 

Oh, ok…

Where’s the baby’s dadda?

He has gone to office.

And where is that crab goving? 

(I just notice a crab on the page)

The crab is goving to find food. 

What is the crab goving to eat?

Well, it will find some worms in the sand (by now, I am not sure what crabs really eat)

And what is the baby’s mamma dooving?

She is trying to spread a towel on the beach so that they can all sit on it.

That’s not a towel mamma, it’s a blanket. 

Ok then. 

We are still on page one. Some day, we will get to page 22.

Bangkok with boy

I was given the look when I mentioned to people last year that I was going on a two-week vacation with my toddler. To Bangkok.“What’s the point of going to Bangkok with a baby?”

I know what they were thinking. No sex shows, no strip clubs, no night life, no massage parlours, no scoring (thanks to permanent arm candy), no sex toy shopping or any other shopping, and generally none of the debauchery that is associated with Bangkok.

I must confess that I never factored in any of the ­aforementioned when planning my holiday. All that ­mattered was that it was just a four-and-a half-hour flight, and that Re would sleep through it, since it left at midnight. And that there would be a table laden with food waiting for us at the end of it. The revelation that the friend I was staying with was a gourmet cook was an added bonus. As for Bangkok and what to do with it, I would think about it later, I figured.

The very next day, Re and I set out to find our Bangkok, armed with a few words supplied by my friend and host, Shilpa. So kob khun ka (thank you), nam (water), hong nam (bathroom), nit noi (a little bit), ko tot (sorry) and nee tao rai (how much?) would be our friends for the next two weeks.

I have always believed that you can never really visit a place. You have to allow the place, with all its texture, contours and nuances, to visit you. Travelling with my child somehow reinforced that belief.

We did skytrains and tuk tuks, Thursday markets and fruit-platters (with a dash of salt, sugar and chilli powder), giant coconuts and blue mangoes, candy-pink taxis and purple milkshakes, parks and safaris (although Re didn’t care as much about the “cocodiling” and the “hippopotis” as he does now). And we had a blast. By day three, I had forgotten that Bangkok had a huge sleaze quotient. In fact, my most lingering memory of the place is a visit to the local Erawan temple, where Re joined his hands in auto-reverence, oblivious to the song and dance around him.

The other parental unit is more manicured in his travel habits and is seldom willing to think out of the suitcase. A stray episode of our luggage getting exchanged with that of a honeymooning couple in Goa the first time we travelled with baby was enough to break him into hives. “Oh God, our holiday is ruined!”

“For a few diapers and underwear? No way,” I said.

I come from a gene pool where we often got separated as a family on the train in classic Manmohan Desai fashion, thanks to my father’s wanderlust-fuelled need to explore every station, dragging the more adventurous child among the three of us (it differed with the bait offered) with him. So losing a piece of luggage was hardly of much concern. Losing a ticket caused a mere tremor. Losing your way was a means to find a hidden place.

For many parents today, the quest for baby-proof destinations has taken the fun out of travel. If they lacked spontaneity earlier, they have become vacation robots now, armed with checklists and in-case-of-emergency items which often amount to more than their luggage. They either go to brochuresque, Disney-type baby-destinations, or not go at all. The thing that scares me the most about “baby-friendly holidays” is the thought that I am blending into the monochromatic pool of parents who I might meet at such holidays. I am not suggesting a trek to the Annapurna at six months, although it’s perhaps the best time to do it and also the time when you still haven’t started cribbing about how much the child weighs.

I know someone who lives abroad and whose daughter’s “local” travel cot reaches her port of landing in India before she does (with the help of an obliging family) on her annual holiday. She believes that her child won’t sleep anywhere else but in her cot. Poor child. All opportunity for newness and adventure robbed because her mother thinks she is not ready. She also carries milk, pasta and sauces, jams, biscuits, spreads and crates full of toys from back home to wherever she travels. The child, of course, never looks up from her iPad, makes any new friends or ever eats anything new. I never understood the mother’s need to simulate her home in her holiday. It felt like she was moving from one bubble to another while ticking off yet another manicured resort on her checklist.

The thing is, travel sets you free. Travel allows you to become the person you could be. Travel makes you find the parts of you that you haven’t met in a while. Travel is your only chance to Botox your mind, considering the lives we live. Travel with a child does all of the above. What ­better way to see the world?

 

This post originally appeared as my column in the Indian Express EYE on 20th May, 2012

Yours, genetically

There is something about grandparents. And I don’t mean it in that warm, fuzzy, sepia-toned kind of way. There is all of that for sure, and some.

Something certainly changes in the equation between you and your parents when you have a child. Your parents become the equalisers in your life. And not just because they are (usually) the most non-grouchy caregivers. More importantly, they are the people who never trivialise your trauma by saying, “This is the best part. You will miss it when it goes away.” They may not have the answers to your convoluted problems, but they are antidotes to your pain nonetheless, in their mostly quiet but always soothing way. I don’t think I could be half a mother without my mother. Or half a father without my father (my homeopath told me I have too much testosterone).

My mother and I became womb equals the day I gave birth to Re. Until then, it was always, “You will never know until you become a mother.” I felt like telling her, “Bring it on now, I am a mother too.” With my dad, there was never any of these power dynamics. Men would rather not be reminded that they are husband/father/son. It just takes them away from being men. My father was just happy being the grandparent who could still carry his grandson on his shoulders. That he was still my father was just incidental.

Strange that what I got from my parents, Re got it too. From my mom, Re’s got a wide-eyed wonder in little things and a love for rituals. From dad, Re’s got that sense of abandon, a complete lack of fear. And yes, a palate that knows when you have been messing around, diluting his bhindi with capsicum. Ironically, the very things that annoy you about a child are actually you.

In my single days of living on my own (which I did for a long time), I was the kind of person who told her mother (who called every day) to give me the 30-second edit instead of the two-minute one of whatever she had to say to me. And when she was done with that, I’d say, “So is that all you called four times about?”

I am nicer now. I find myself asking my mother, “What else?”, “Have you eaten?” and “Did you sleep well?” I find a calming reassurance in inanities. I am becoming my mother.

I am also tender towards my dad, more generous with my compliments, less critical, and always make it a point to ask him about the secret ingredient in his pachadi, even though I am seasoned enough to figure it out. It always makes his day. So, in a sense, having children makes you a parent twice over.

The odd thing is, my parents are still not tired of being parents. But in year three of parenting, I am already ready to tear my hair out on most days. I am often found wailing to the OPU that I want to go on a holiday with me and just me. That I want a break from the people who bind me (which refers primarily to him and the child; the cats are not too particular). That I want to be free. He, being the totally-into-me person that he is, takes no offence. “I understand. It must be taking its toll on you. How about I buy you a gift? A reward for being a great mom?” And then I bark some more about wasting money and not planning for the future and we continue living ‘happily ever after’.

Perhaps, our parents had better temperaments for being parents than us. Their wallets were lighter, but their lives fuller, freer of parenting clichés. They lived; we are constantly thinking about living better. I sometimes wonder if it’s as simple as the fact that we grew up in a non-Facebook, non-Twitter, non-club-y, non-brunch-y, non-texty era. Now, we have somehow messed things up. Too much crap. Too little time.

On a good day, I am glad I got some writing done. On a bad day, my jaw hurts from answering all of Re’s questions and my temples twitch from being polite and nice. I can’t do nice. Not for long. And every time I forget how to do it (which is often), I come running back to my parents. Then my body and soul get fortified over two or three days — the body with food and much needed rest (“You sleep, we will manage”) and the soul with the assurance that I am doing something right. That mine is a happy child, and it shows in his eyes.

I realise then that the grandparents and the babies are fine. It’s the ones in between that are really messed up.

 

This post originally appeared as my column in the Sunday EYE of the Indian Express on 6th May 2012

A summer camp called life

It’s that time of the year where the only place I am legitimately allowed to take my child to is a summer camp. Or a manicured holiday destination.

Instead, I have taken a train to a new city, spending the last two weeks in a new home, eating new food, listening to new sounds, running on new grass, chatting with new voices, looking out of a new window, and breathing a new air with Re. It helps that two baby pigeons and their mommy inhabiting a flower pot in the balcony provide for the animal life Re is used to back home in the form of two felines. It also helps that he is in high testosterone zone (the friend I’m staying with has two boys) and able to give vent to his maleness — a thing much needed when you are a boy on the verge of three.

This is my summer camp. Okay, part of it. Sure, we are not learning origami or flower making, finger-painting, puppet-making, breathing or ballet like all his friends back in Mumbai. But we are smelling new smells and breathing new life and it is working like a tonic, to say the least.

Cut to a few weeks ago. “So where are you sending him?”, asked dour-faced Mommy X in the park. She meant, “Which summer camp have you enrolled him in?”

“Nowhere. We will just travel, visit places, meet people, hang out.”

“You mean you are going on a holiday?”

“Kind of.”

Summer is the time for extrapolation. When parents are set to find cues in every subtle move of their child and allow their exaggerated interpretations to take over by enrolling the child in a camp. Pretending it’s all fun and games. And that it’s the only way to keep the child “busy”. You see a little girl shimmying to Chikni Chameli (what choice does she have? It’s in every birthday party) and she is slated to be the next Katrina Kaif. Or at the very least, the next stick insect who wins the Miss World pageant. Off she goes for Bollywood dance lessons. You see a child climbing chairs and tables in the house and her mother will beam, “I think she will be a gymnast one day”. Baby gyms boom. You see a child fascinated by the somersaults of Parkour boys in the park and his mother will say “He is really kinesthetically inclined. I want to put him somewhere.” You see a child picking sticks, twigs and leaves and she will be slotted into a nature camp. A girl dressing up Barbies is a fashion designer. A child dabbling with a home video is slated to be the next Fellini. An iPad junkie is the next Steve Jobs. A splatter painter is the next Warhol. For parents who don’t have the time or the attention for detail, their children are all of the aforementioned. So, in the quest for generalisation, it’s Jack of all. And so, the creation of more dull, monochromatic versions of themselves in their children begins.

Meanwhile, Mommy Y, who is a kind of ebay mommy (a mommy who compares prices and comes up with the best value-for-money deal) soon computes that camp A charges less money for more activity and more hours than class B or C. It took me a while to figure that play was not “activity.”

I don’t know what Re is good at. Yes, he loves “shaking it all about” to “Mikeel Jackshun” or play-cooking pasta with crayons or playing “aminal aminal” with his hand puppets and line-up of rubber wildlife. Or shaking his curls and tossing them about. Or mixing and matching bangles.

“Have you got his portfolio done? He should be in ads,” says someone.

“Isn’t your husband in advertising? Why doesn’t he cast him?” says another.

“Is that your son in the Aviva commercial?,” asks a third.

“You must get him auditioned. Imagine, if he gets a break!” says another.

I think he is too young for talent. But not for texture. It might mean that I have to work harder. Also, I have enough time before I want him to be productive. Maybe, I don’t have it in me to be a tiger mommy. Maybe, what I really am is a lamb mommy — a mommy who grazes, who spends her time on reflection, who doesn’t really want to fill her child’s life with “productive activity”.

So here is the thing. What do I want him to love? Sometimes, I want it to be something I didn’t quite dabble in. So I get to live vicariously through him. Like art. Or music. But camps make me queasy. Camps make me claustrophobic. Camps are a school away from school. And how much school does a child need, really?

The last time someone saw Re shaking his wild curls to a song, he said, “That is the next Rahman. You should really get him into music.”

We will see. Until then, I am allowing him childhood.

 

(This piece first appeared as my parenting column in the Sunday Eye of the Indian Express on 22nd April 2012)

Like a little prayer

The nicest thing about having children is that they break it down. They keep it simple. You feel you are losing control, that you haven’t been able to adhere, that you are so all over the place that you can’t really find yourself, or your silences. Sometimes, even a simple ritual like lighting a diya or joining your hands in prayer seems like a formidable task.

It did, to me. And one day, I gave up praying. I packed all my gods and goddesses in a trunk and returned my little mandir to my mother, telling her that it deserved more love than I could possibly offer it. I couldn’t bear that it stared at me every day, and I stared back, not willing or able to do much to engage with it .

And then Re reminded me how simple it all was.

We were in Bangkok, the same time last year. My enthusiastic friend Shilpa had made a list of things to do and sights to see and whipped out a list. “So what would you like to do?”

“Take me to a temple. A really small one,” I said.

So there we were, at the local Erawan temple. Girls and boys with purple hair and blue highlights waltzed in and out. Adorned dancers performed in the background and someone played a really nice looking musical intrument. People offered candles and coconuts, some chatted, some sat on benches, the white noise was reassuring.

I turned around to look for Re who had unhooked himself from my hand. He stood there, praying fervently.
And then I realised how simple it all was. Prayer isn’t thought, and it cannot be taught. It can only be felt, and here was my child, feeling it.

Right now, we are at a friend’s place in Gurgaon, and every morning, as my friend Anu chants, Re quietly sidles up next to her, joins his hands and closes his eyes. He used to do the same thing at my mother’s place too, during her morning pooja. Sometimes, he even asked me to join my hands, close my eyes and sing, “Om jai jagdish”.

Although nowadays, the national anthem is his favourite incantation.

Shake well before use

Something changes irreversibly in men when they become parents. They start asking for directions. They start saying “I don’t know”. They start including words like ‘how’ in their vocabulary. Yes, the same men who were from Mars, the same men who read maps, the same men who would rather drive into another state/country than ask where they were, the same men you married despite the idiocies of their gender.

Around the time that words like ‘parenting’ evolved, another treacherous term made its appearance to vindicate all those men who did a little more than donating sperm in the bringing up of a child. It was called “hands-on fatherhood”–  a term many men would like to add to their resume, but don’t quite know how.

Rather conveniently, a whole species of women also evolved who christened their men with the aforementioned term even if they so much as changed diapers for one week (under supervision) or dropped the child to school once in a while or walked the baby in a pram, with the entourage of maid, driver and whoever else they could get their hands on.

Perhaps I have high benchmarks because of the way I was raised. My father cooked, got us ready for school (even if he sometimes stapled a shirt together to camouflage a missing button), combed our hair (very badly), quizzed our geography from time to time, taught us chess and badminton and tennis and cricket, and waded through chest deep water with us on his shoulders whenever our building got flooded, although he often bungled up in public about how old we were. He didn’t know then that he was hands-on. Good for my mother, who didn’t know either.

In my book, a hands-on daddy is someone who knows what to do with child and how and when to do it without being issued instructions in triplicate.  Someone who wouldn’t ask, “What should I feed the child?”  or “What do I wipe his nose with?” or “Where are his undies?” would be a start.  Also, I can’t deal with the fact that answering the phone while changing a child is enough to give some men a nervous breakdown.

So I set some rules to keep it simple. I decided to award the hands-on certification on the basis of:

1. The number of hours of instructionless child-management (I wouldn’t go as far as calling it parenting) that have been logged in on any given day (adding up of stray minutes over a few months to say 22 hours doesn’t count)
2. The extent of resorting to packaged substances that are blasphemous in my culinary dictionary, namely ice-cream, biscuits, chocolate, strange coloured liquids masquerading as juices to appease the said child.
3. The ability to know when said child needs to be changed, cleaned, washed, scrubbed.

You have one of those? I can be nice to you. Or mean, if you flaunt it too much. Or send you muffins once in a while. I like hands-on daddyhood. It makes the men look good, it makes raising a child feel more collaborative, it makes me feel less full of myself when I write on parenting and other ‘grim’ issues that cannot be trivialised.

The other parental unit displays handson-ness under duress (my mother is in hospital, the cat has to be taken to the vet, I have a doctor’s appointment to catch or some such) and usually resorts to objectionable means (most of which involve clutching a remote or staring at a moronic screen) to sustain the hours. But recently there was a twist in my tale. The child, on his own, started demanding hands-on daddyness. “Dadda will get me ready for school,” he declared, one fine day. There began an ordeal of choices. “What would you like to wear today?”  or “What would you like to watch with your breakfast?” and the resulting chaos. My smooth morning routine of getting the child to school in under an hour fell to pieces.  I have never had as much grief as the time since the joint venture. Some days I miss the OPU’s “I am so dead to the world, that I really don’t give a shit about how much trouble you are having” days.

I have come to realise that I prefer hands-off to hands-on any day. There are also days when I wish I were a praying mantis who has her male for dinner the day she gives birth.  I am not for sexual cannibalism but sometimes, it seems the only way to keep the men away from stuff they know practically nothing about.  It’s just simpler. You are the only boss, the child can never play good cop against bad cop, and it’s just less confusing. Also, once the men remotely show the inclination to be hands-on, you do the one thing you shouldn’t. You raise the bar.

 (This post appeared as my column yesterday in the Sunday Eye of the Indian Express)

He said, she said

I am in that phase when the boy is spewing enough nuggets for me to want to pin a  dictaphone to myself. But since I am technologically challenged, I try and store them in my little head, sometimes punch them into my phone, and sometimes, put it down on this blog. I guess the joy of him being on the verge of three is that he still has a baby voice. Which makes the sound bytes a tad more appealing. Here are a few in no particular order:

Mamma. I don’t like you.

Why?

Because dadda likes you.

***

(Boy is making the bed and then lining all his toys on it. I walk in.)

Mamma. There’s no place for you.

Why?

Because cheetah haffto sleep. And lion haffto sleep. And zebra haffto sleep. And tiger haffto sleep. And rhinoscissors haff to sleep. And hippopotis haffto sleep.

Okay then.

***

Mamma, can lion be with the zebra?

Yes, technically it can.

Oh, okay.

And can tiger be with the zebra?

(Me, increasingly nervous now) Yes, why not?

Okay, so they will do ninni together.

***

Mamma, I want to tell you something.

Yes.

I think you are not a boy. You are a girl.

Yes, that’s true.

Mamma, I want to tell you something..

Yes.

I think you are not a girl. You are a mamma.

***

Mamma. I am not a bad boy. I am a good boy.

Yes, you are.

And you are a bad girl.

Hmmph.

***

Boy is singing his school prayer (with a twist)

God’s love is so wonderful, God’s love is so wonderful, God’s love is so wonderful,

O, wonderful love

So high, we can’t get over it, so deep, we can’t get under it…

* Thinks, pauses, and then says*

But….we can get… through it!

***

Mamma. Nadia beat me. (Nadia is the feline sibling)

What did you do to annoy her?

I put her on my cycle.

***

Mamma, please tell Bravo not to sit on my chair. (Bravo is feline no. 2)

Why?

Because it is a baby chair. It’s not a cat chair.

***

(Am trying to give boy a bath. He wants to have a no-soap, no-water bath, which I am trying to explain is a tad tricky. After leaving him to his own devices, I peep into the bathroom to check on him)

Mamma. I told you don’t come in my room.

So this is how it all begins, I think. That space thing.