An ode to cutted, putted, telled, buyed and goed

Dear Re

In a few days, you will be four. The age of perfection. The age of saying things as they are. Of doing things as they should be done. I should be delighted, but strangely, I am not. I love it when you say things the way the way they are not. I already miss hippopotis, which has now become hippotenuse, and might soon become hippopotamus. You used to say emitet, now you say elephant.

Four is the age of being conscious, they say. The age of being politically correct and wanting to be friends with people who don’t want to be friends with you.

I don’t know what milestone years are. I have never kept a track of whether you were doing age-appropriate things. It has never bothered me. All I knew was that you were fun on a daily basis and you brought out the child in me. The child I was mostly exhilarated to find.

You wore my dresses, my shoes, my jewelry, you turned my dupattas into saris and gowns, you twirled me and pretended to lift me up, like a ballet dancer and it reminded me, this is how I was as a child. I too wanted to be a dancer, although I am sure I wasn’t as graceful as you.

People asked me why I let you wear your hair long, or try nail polish or wear pink, or my bangles and dresses and I smiled. It never bothered me. It still doesn’t.

Today we found Gia’s hairband in your toys and you said you wanted to return it to her. No, you said you will put it on her and she will turn into a boy. And then she will put her hair-band on you and you will turn into a girl. Do you want to be a girl, I asked you. Yes, I want to be a girl, you said. I don’t know what to say to you except that I really like you as a boy.

May be you still remember that I called you Tia when you were in my belly. But I am happy that you are a boy, you sort of equalize me, I don’t know how to explain it.  I have never felt so girl as I have after you came.  So thank you for bringing me to me. And thank you for all the twirls.

The story of a Bourbon biscuit

It’s a weekday evening. Re and I are driving back home.  I have made an exception today and given him an entire pack (small of course) of Bourbon biscuits. As he devours them, one by one, I stare lustily. I am not big on chocolate or biscuits, but somehow the “I want to have what he is having” thought crosses my mind.

“Can I have one?,” I ask.

He hands me one, in  a rather grand gesture and says, “Take!”

I wolf it down greedily. Greed now takes the better of me.

“How about one more?” I ask, rather meekly.

“You cannot have one more becoz you are big. I am small no, so I can have one more. Then ony I can be stronger and bigger.”

“Then I want to become small also. Can I become small?” Now I want it real bad.

He ponders. “But you can only become big small. You cannot be small small like me.”

I rest my case.

 

 

 

Absolute imperfect: Why I’m like dad

A few weeks ago, I was bitten by wanderlust, a disease I have inherited from my father, and duly passed on to the son. Just the words “choo choo train” or “let’s pack a suitcase” is enough to send Re into a frenzy. So we took off to a Himalayan village under the pretext of watching documentaries for three days. Two trains later, we were at Kathgodam, filing into private taxis that would take us on the three-hour ride to Sonapani, our destination. As the signs for Ranikhet, Nainital, Corbett, Bhimtal and Almora flashed past, I had a sense of dejavu. I had been on the exact same road with my father over three decades ago. And almost in the tradition of my father, I was abandoning the known for the unknown. My father never told us where we were going. “You will see,” he would tell us. We would end up at Ramnagar or Kausani or Dhanolti or some such and my mother would always ask why we never went to Kulu-Manali or Darjeeling or at least some place people had heard of. My father would say, “Everybody goes to Darjeeling!”

I feel grateful to my father. For a childhood full of journeys, never mind if some of them never made it to the destinations. Our means were limited, but our hearts were full and our lungs always had more oxygen than they could handle. My father got off platforms and missed trains, he had a tough time keeping track of three children, he forgot to confirm reservations, he showed up at Lucknow in winter at 1 am without a hotel booking and didn’t blink an eyelid when the porter suggested a dormitory, he made us ride back from Dhanolti to Dehradun on a truck laden with peas, as we missed the only bus for the day (we ate a lot of peas on that ride). He lent money to a co-traveller in Pondicherry who pretended to be robbed even as my mother was muttering through her breath that he was faking it. He ended up broke at the end of that journey, still optimistic that the man who duped him would show up. We went without food on that train-trip and ate Horlicks.

In our quest to be the perfect parent, we often realise that it’s the imperfect one who leaves a mark. I always wished my dad could somewhat fit in, be like my friend’s dad, ask the right questions, nod at the right places. But secretly, I was happy that he allowed me to be the person I was trying to be. My father never read us books or told stories or gave us advice on money or careers. He took us to markets, nurseries, made us work in the garden, taught us bridge and cricket, travelled and trekked with us, and helped facilitate my life-long affair with food. He was hardly around at annual day functions; he couldn’t deal with the sham of small talk with other parents. I never missed him. He encouraged me to bunk school so we could watch test matches together. I was allowed to buy him ciggies from the local paan shop, till the paanwala and my mother collectively conspired not to sell cigarettes to a ten year-old.

He is 74 and mostly on a farm somewhere in Belgaum, hoping his green thumb will make him a millionaire. He is a maverick, but he is the maverick I aspire to be. He is the parent who set me free.

The perfect parent messes you up. I am still trying to outdo my mother. I can never be as non-controversial as her, never reach a state where I am blessed by an absolute lack of cynicism like her, never do things with the same consistency of purpose as her. She woke up early, kept a good house, baked, cooked, sewed, knitted, worked, was hugely respected by her students and colleagues, managed finances, did family, friends and synchronised her life beautifully and is the mascot for “nice”.

The thing about having a child is that it makes you love everything about you and hate it in equal measure.  I looked at parenting as my chance to redeem myself. The childhood I wished I had. The mother and father I wished mine had been. It was unfair and stupid of me and it took its toll on my sanity. But I couldn’t have been half the parent I am if my childhood had been any different. We end up who we are because we are more than what our parents made us out to be. And no one gets points for a bad childhood.

As I pointed the snow-capped peaks to Re from our cottage in Sonapani, he stood in attention and started singing the national anthem. My father would have so laughed out loud, I could almost hear him reverberate in the mountains. I felt grateful again.

Confessions of a not-so-dangerous mind

I just found this on my Facebook notes, and thought, why not put it out there? So here are 25 things in no particular order about me. Tell me yours.

1. I am a first-born. Not just at home, but in the entire khandaan. It sucks. I am tired of setting precedents. I don’t know how to undo my position in the family hierarchy.

2. I always stood first in my class (except in the ninth standard when a buxom girl called Urmi beat me by two marks). My building buddies secretly hated me for it. So did all my classmates. So did my cousins. And my siblings. “Why can’t you be like Lalli?” was the bane of my existence.

3. All I ever wanted when I was a little girl was to grow tall and acquire boobs and sit on the last bench (I thought the view was really nice). I never managed to graduate from the first bench till my tenth standard. I am still 5 feet 1” (the 1” doesn’t seem important anymore). I did get boobs eventually, but it took bloody long.

4. I have twin siblings. Boy-girl. I thought that made me cool. I don’t know any other boy-girl twin in the world. Except Angelina Jolie..(?!) But then, she doesn’t count, does she? Though, till I was six years old, they were at my grandma’s and I pretended my siblings didn’t exist.

5. I have one and a half dimples and a cleft on my chin. Funnily enough, that’s normally not the first thing people notice about me. May be it has to do with the fact that my siblings and my mother have better ones. Or that my hair is too distracting.

6. I used to eat slate pencils. Those white, slim ones with a dash of pastel colours? I tried chalk too, but it didn’t give me a kick.

7. I am a non smoker and a vegetarian, though I am still trying to go off leather. I tried smoking my dad’s ciggies when I was a kid and hated it. Years later, after a trek in Nepal and some rice wine, I tried smoking a local Nepalese cigarette. It gave me an immense urge to disengage my bowels and I felt all hollow inside. I never tried again.

8. I think I have a karmic connection with cats. I mean, I never felt they were pets, just that they are some superior beings you live with so that your fuckwitticisms stay in check, coz they are so bloody cool. I have lived with many… chinki, pushpi, kimi, kallu, simba, kuttu, tipu, chinka, lupooh, millie.. I now live with nadia and bravo and am still learning about cats.

9. I was a control freak. I still am. I always took charge of anything dad got home and insisted I allot stuff, as I knew best. I used to hoard scented erasers, pencils, stationery boxes, books, ribbons, comics. My brother hated me for this.

10. In class 4, I poked a boy named Nikhil in the eye to show him my pencil was sharper. My mother changed my school and put me in a girl’s convent as punishment. I never forgave her for that.

11. I bumped into Nikhil 13 years later, during my post-grad. He messed me up. I guess what goes around, comes around.

12. I never got the lead part in any school play, as I was too puny, and had no boobs. I actually played a south Indian boy wearing a mundu and no shirt in a play on national integration where my lines were, “idli-dosa”. I was the only girl who could take my shirt off at age 12 and still look like a boy, so I got the part, I guess. I was an extra in the volley-ball and kho-kho team and was terrified that I might have to play. I was grateful at least I stood first in class, else people would never know me.

13. I love dancing. Anytime. Anywhere. And my boy loves it too, coz he is always happy when he (or we) dance.

14. I often hang up on my mother when she can’t get to the point. I have an extremely low attention span. I hate talking on the phone. Even to those I love. My mother now makes notes before she calls me. Strangely, other people aren’t as insightful as her.

15. I wanted to be a vet, but they told me I would be buried in cows’ intestines. I wish I hadn’t listened to them.

16. Actually I could have done very well with anything predictive. Futurology stuff? I see things before they happen. I sense things about people. And I am usually right.

17. I think that the worst thing that could have happened to me has already happened to me. So I am fearless to a point that it scares me, and the people I love.

18. I grew up on radio. I woke up with ‘Sangeet Sarita’ and went to bed with ‘Bela ke phool’. Doesn’t ring a bell? Wrong generation.

19. My dad and I had a haircut at the same saloon till I was twelve.

20. I always thought my dad was cool because he smoked and was tall and thin.

21. I think politeness and courtesy are wasted on most people. When you don’t have anything to say to people, why bother? And I hate making small talk.

22. My threshold for a book is ten pages. For a movie or play, 20 minutes. For a human being, thirty seconds. For an animal, usually forever (unless it’s a pedigreed dog). For a job or relationship, six months. If it doesn’t work for me in this timeframe, I just let it go.

23. I am a foodie. I eat like a man and also swear like one. I also feel that this whole thing about ‘cooking for one person is so boring’ is all bollocks. I totally enjoy cooking for myself, and eating it all.

24. I can sing. Wonder what happened to that? I was somewhat of a crooner in school and college. The pictures are embarrassing, but yes, I can.

25. I love being alone. I actually lie to people to make ‘me time’. I can live in a mansion with no one around and still not feel lonely or afraid.

Love letter to a school

I did a little jig when Re started school a year ago. There was no separation anxiety. There was the settling in of course, but I was more than happy to take it slow.  “The smoother the transition, the more long-term it is” they told me. Yes, there were tears — sometimes his, sometimes mine, but I knew it would pass, because I so badly wanted it to.

When I left him and got out the gate after a week of hand-holding, I smiled to myself and walked out, not turning back. I had to celebrate. I had got a child school-ready. To me, that was big. I went out and got myself a coffee and a doughnut. I read 53 pages of a book at a stretch. I watched a movie alone. It was like a part of me had made a comeback.

And then one day, just when I thought it was all sorted, he woke up and told me, “I don’t want to go to school. I want to be with you.” I was putty all over again. And that’s the trouble with parenting. It doesn’t have an expiry date.

Being a stay-at-home mommy is often lonely. But being alone is still a luxury. Sometimes you wish the child would sleep, so you could read. Or write. Or that the child would be quiet so you could talk. Or just listen to something other than his voice. Or that the child would not ask you to supervise every bit of artwork he did. Or read every book in the shelf. Or ask you to push his jhoola in the park. Over and over again (for me that is still a low point).

The thing about love is that too much of it can be claustrophobic. People need to go away so they can come back. We need to not talk for a while so we still have enough for a conversation later. We need silence so that there is room for words.

School absolves you of some of the dirty work. It makes me look like less of a bad guy. “We must not eat lollipop, othewise our teeth will get dirtttty,” Re said one day. I smiled. Someone else had taken over, even if it was for a short time.

There are rituals of course. The thing about the uniform. “I want to wear clothes,” Re would say. “I don’t want to wear unaaaform.” The thing about hair. And grooming. The thing about shoes. The thing about regimentation.

School talks about germs, habits, manners and cleanliness, the importance of order and repetition and discipline and all those dark, dingy areas. The importance of “No.”

School also addresses issues of jurisdiction, which are too black and white for me. It makes the trivial look important. Like putting stuff away, getting in line, listening. It is about finiteness, beginnings and endings. It is like something that fits into a box. A box I so badly needed when I was struggling to be my own person again.

Teachers have a peek into a universe that perhaps you don’t. When you are too close, your universe collides and sometimes it’s hard to see beyond the intersection. My mother was a school teacher for 36 years before he retired. She would talk fondly about her students, they would discuss recipes, trees and fantasies – things perhaps the children never discussed with their parents.  She never had a dull day in her job. But as a mother, I would be debilitated if I had to do everything the teachers have to do. I am not brave enough to homeschool.

Every hour you spend away from your child is an hour for self-renewal. You need to deconstruct. Reconstruct. Reclaim your space. You need to become whole again, because motherhood sometimes makes you fall to pieces. There is also marriage, which suddenly, is not as invisible as it used to be.

When he started taking the school bus six months ago, I did an even bigger jig. No more hanging out with sad mommies always complaining about maids and other demons in their life. I began to get good at incentives. First there was the bus cookie. A cookie that only children who make it on time to the bus got. Then there was Sheroo and Sher Khan, the local resident strays, one or both of whom would hang around Re, waiting for the bus. There were leaves to be picked up, autos to count, birds to spot.

The last time we missed the bus and I dropped him to school, I found his hand loosen in my grip the minute we entered the gate. Two seconds later, he was gone. “Please turn, please turn,” I said to myself. He did, and blew me a kiss. And that’s when I realised that he was just not in school. School was in him. And so yes, I don’t miss him when he is away, and I do look forward to seeing him go away every day.

 

This piece first appeared as my column in the Indian Express on 10th February 2013. For older columns, click here

Child, uninterrupted: why you must never let go of the child in you

A few days ago, I overheard a remark at a supermarket which went something like, “Come on now, don’t be a child!” It was meant — as most references towards child and animal behaviour are intended — to be condescending. As if the said person, if he ever got over his “childishness”, would be just that perfect human being the world would like to do business with.

It bothered me, that remark, particularly at a time when I was beginning to feel that adulthood and its related baggage is, to a large extent, our undoing.

We have too much time to be grown-up, too little to be children. We have forgotten how to laugh, cry, jump in abandon, sing and dance at whim, eat, play, love without an agenda. We are all hiding behind our adult masks, pretending to be all grown-up. It’s exhausting, this grownupness. Etiquette, protocol, political correctness — they are all collectively conspiring to render us clones of each other.

Children ask questions, don’t take no for an answer, don’t say “yes” too easily and almost say nothing to please. Spending time with a child keeps your dissent alive. It makes you question authority, it makes you wonder why you do what you do, it makes you happy, sad, angry, curious. Some of us hold on to the child in us, others let go. But in the end, it is the child in us that sets us free, no matter what we choose to do.

So let’s not rush it for our children. Let’s not admonish them for being “childlike”. Let’s not make adulthood this hugely exciting place they have to get to. Or, as American quotation anthologist Terri Guillemets sums it up: “Always jump in the puddles! Always skip alongside the flowers. The only fights worth fighting are the pillow and food varieties.”

My mother, minutes before she went into her second open heart surgery a few months ago, said, “Oh no! Now I have to tear open my rib cage like Hanuman and will end up looking like an open cockroach!” Her biggest peeve about the hospital stay was not the pain or the needles. It was her hospital gown, which she thought was most unbecoming for her petite self. She called it her misshapen backless choli, laughing feebly to bring out the cough that was necessary to decongest her chest, help her lungs clear and her heart stabilise post her valve replacement. She is the best child I have ever had.

The husband, on most days, is spank-worthy. His jaunts to the building landing (his allotted smoking area) are now getting increasingly longer thanks to Pocket Planes and Tiny Towers, his current hot picks on the iPhone. I find it harder to get him off his Xbox than Re off his toys and into bed. Why do you allow him to game, friends ask me. Because you can never not allow someone to be a child, I say.

One of the sideeffects of having Re is that he has brought me closer to my inner child. And so I feel grateful to him for teaching me these little things:

To laugh. Always. With abandon. Like you really mean it. As loud as you can. It’s good for your lungs. And it really makes your face come alive. Know anyone who doesn’t look good laughing?

To sing. Loudly. Or even softly. Whistle. Sway along. Sing like the world belongs to you. It will.

To dance. Anywhere, to anything. Dance like you know no fear, no inhibitions. Like your body is your best friend. Dance when no one expects you to.

To hug. Because no matter how big or small you are, you always feel happier after a hug.

To clap. Because it makes a nice sound. And when you are happy and you know it, you must clap your hands. The song says so.

To cuddle and kiss. Because everyone has to know they are loved.

To ask questions. Because it is important to know. Everything.

To cry. Because sometimes it is important to let people know that you are upset. Also, it always guarantees a cuddle.

They keep me going, these children in my life. One who gave birth to me. One I married. One I birthed.

(This post first appeared as my column in the Indian Express Sunday Eye on 28th Oct 2012)

A question of answers

The strange thing about your child growing up is that however much you are ready and waiting, it has this ability to creep up on you in the most insidious way, catching you totally off-guard. Like when Re asked me the other day: “Mamma, what is a husband?”

I knew where this was coming from. We had been watching Shrek 2 on loop and Fiona and Shrek made a fetching couple, replete with PDA. Re likes that, the PDA bit. “Oh, that didi is so happy with her dadda,” he said, almost pleased with himself on account of their on-screen camaraderie.

“It’s not her dadda, it’s her husband.”

Hence the question.

Now, this was quite an opening. In my earlier avatar, I would have said one of many things: that a husband is someone you marry and then feel weird whenever you are introducing him as “the husband”. Or someone you haffto be friends with on Facebook. Or someone you produce at family functions so that nosy geriatrics stop asking you about “good news”. Or someone you have to hear whine every day and be polite about it, even pretend it’s cute. Or someone you wake up with one day, and realise that unless you work really hard at making him run away, he will be lying next to you, somnambulistic, impervious to light and sound, every single day, for the rest of your life.

But then I realise he is a three-year-old, and I am his mother, so I obviously can’t colour his perception of things. I also realise that to him, answers are everything. Answers are the doors to more questions.

And so I say, somewhat reluctantly, “It’s what a mamma calls a dadda. Or Mrs Shrek calls Mr Shrek.”

I don’t know whether he is convinced by my answer. I have no means of finding out. But he is quiet again, so maybe that went well.

A few scenes later, Shrek is being attacked by Puss in Boots. Re is enraged. Shrek has obviously found a special place in his heart by now and anyone or anything that hurts him is the enemy. He screams at the screen, “Stop it, Puss in Boots! Don’t do that to my husband!”

“It’s not your husband, Re, it’s Mrs Shrek’s husband.”

I obviously haven’t factored in same-sex marriages here, but the whole thing is so darned complicated already, I am thinking.

Re is not convinced. He is already comfortable equating husband to father figure and peeved at this enforced limitation.

That’s the trouble with the growing-up virus. You are never really prepared for it, even if sometimes it might be the most eagerly awaited thing in your life. I thought all I had to do was be vigilant about gender stereotypes and teach him to respect women. But now I know what they meant in those boardrooms when they said, “Explain it to me like I am a four-year old.”

I will never really master that, I think, no matter how many books I read. But one thing I had decided early on was that I would never tell him, “You are a baby, you won’t understand.” There would always be answers. Even if they are answers he doesn’t want to hear.

Time passes. We move on to other movies, but inevitably return to Shrek one day.

“Why is Shrek angwy with Mrs Shrek?,” Re asks, seeing a visibly upset Shrek post a visit to the in-laws.

“Because they just have different expectations from each other. And each cannot understand what the other is saying,” I muster the courage to tell him. I didn’t want to say he was pissed off with his in-laws and their snootiness and attachment for all things material.

“No mamma, they are not having expotatoes!”

Okay then. That was not very bright of me. But here’s the tricky part with children. Sometimes, the only way to say it is to say it like it is. And sometimes, it is to say it like they want to hear it. It’s just that it is a hit or miss and you keep trying.

I could have said, “Shrek likes to live in the jungle and he was not comfortable with the castle and table manners and all of that.” But would it have worked? I don’t know. I can try next time.

The thing is, he has already decided that Shrek is the good guy. So, until he figures out a new hero, I will have to tread very carefully in Shrek-zone.

By next year, givaffe will be giraffe, cocodiling will be crocodile and hippopotis will be hippopotamus and Shrek will be replaced by someone else. But the questions will continue. For a long, long time. I better work on the answers from now on.

(This post first appeared as my column in the Indian Express Sunday Eye on 30th September, 2012)

 

 

Baby interrupted

It happened so suddenly.

We were at the park, Re and I. It used to be our favourite spot once upon a time, but now that we have moved to a building with a park, we don’t go there quite as often. Re was ecstatic to find his old haunt. He first ran around aimlessly, trying to mark his territory, uttering sounds of glee, running to every corner, trying to pick his workout for the evening. He spotted a slide for older kids, and started climbing it as if in a hurry. I was surprised, as he usually picked the smaller one at the other end of the park. I pointed in the direction of  the small one. “Don’t you want to go on that one?,” I asked

“That slide is for babies, mamma. This one is for children,” he said, as he began climbing once again.

“So what are you, Re,?” I asked, anxious and happy at the same time.

“I am a children,” he said.

Oh. My. God.

Just like that, my little one had transitioned from a baby into a child. And he knew it. How do they know it? How do they find out? Is it the point where they can wear their shoes with less clumsiness? Their underwear? Their shorts? It is when they start going to the bathroom on their own? Having a bath on their own?  Perhaps. But maybe it is far more subtle. May be I totally missed it.

I also saw him climb up a slope with spikes that he was intimidated by a few weeks ago. Now he was doing it with aplomb. Over and over again. “I did it, mamma,” he gave me a thumbs-up. I melted into a pool of mush.

A little while later, it’s time to go home. Re is tired by now, having had his fill of the slides, see-saws, swings and merry-go-rounds. He puts his arms around my thighs and says, “Caddy me, mamma!”

“Carry you? But I thought you are a big boy now!”

“I am not a big boy. I am a small boy,” he said, reclaiming the child in him.

And that’s how we roll.

Forget me not: Scenes from another childhood

Strange, the things we remember from our childhood. I remember running away from the doctor’s clinic all the way to my house (a good 15-minute walk) at age seven, when I overheard mention of ‘an injection’. “I am so good at finding my way back from anywhere,” I thought then.

I remember being curled up in a hospital bed, reading Picture Post, and eating gallons of ice cream post my tonsilitis operation at age nine. Somehow, the ice cream didn’t taste as good when I didn’t have to fight for it.

I remember feeling a little happy-sad whenever my answer sheets were read out loud by my teachers in school. “The more they applaud me for my academic brilliance, the less my chances are of being cool,” I thought. All I wanted was to grow tall and get those curves. I wanted to be the bad girl, the back bencher, the one who didn’t have to know the answers. I wanted straight and silky hair that would get tossed when you toss it. My long, unruly, curly tresses never listened to me. As punishment, they were oiled and plaited for years.

I remember going for haircuts with my dad to his barber and feeling quite nice that they never complained how thick and curly my hair was. I hated ladies’ salons.

I remember my cat Pushpi giving birth to four kittens one morning at my feet while I was sleeping. She seemed really busy, licking her babies who climbed all over her, attacking her teats, their eyes half-shut. They looked ugly, and clumsy, like wet mice with no ears. This is what motherhood must be like, I thought.

I remember my mother staying up with me all night, as I struggled to breathe with my asthma. She tried everything – propping a pillow, rubbing my bony chest, giving me a hot water-bottle to hug, feeding me warm water with honey, fomenting my lungs with bags of roasted salt or ajwain. And she went to work the next morning at 6.15 am. Being a mother was hard, I thought.

I remember my parents fighting and me wondering if I would get to choose who to be with, if they separated. My father meant wanderlust, newness and culinary journeys; my mother was about security, consistency and the warmth of home. I wanted both, and I was always confused. Decades later, I am still confused. They still fight. They are still together. I can’t believe children keep parents together. There must be more.

I remember hoarding all the goodies my dad got — scented erasers in animal shapes, pencil boxes, stickers, little notepads for doodling, really long pencils, 3D scales and other things — and allotting them to my siblings as if it was my loot. I always kept the best stuff, but I thought they wouldn’t notice. My brother told me recently how much he resented it.

I remember poking a boy in grade four with my pencil, because he told me his point was sharper than mine. It missed his cheek and got his eye. He got a clot. I got outcast. Years later, he accosted me in a college canteen. “Are you the girl who poked a boy in the eye? I am that boy,” he said, shaking my hand. “You have the same smile,” he added. He wrote me notes. He made me tapes. He broke my heart.

I remember my mother knitting for every child in the family, however old or young. I also remember that bag where she kept little rolls of leftover yarn from her various knits. Those were for us. Once she ran out of wool while knitting a peach sweater for me and couldn’t find a matching shade, so she used orange, hoping I wouldn’t notice. I did. Everyone did.

I remember Rishi Kapoor. And his vibrant, multi-coloured polo-necked sweaters. My mother made mental notes from his movies and copied each one of his sweaters for the three of us. So there we were, romping in Rishi Kapoor-polo-necks in Bombay winter. And one day, the school announced that all sweaters should be red. I was a little sad that day.

I remember my mother’s baking and her mixing the baking soda, sugar, flour and cinnamon powder in geometric proportion. Her cakes always rose. “She’s so perfect,” I thought, “I am never baking.”

The funny thing is, we spend so much time trying to create happy memories for our children, but we never know what will stay in their minds. And that is the great unknown of parenting.

This piece first appeared as my column in the Indian Express Eye magazine on Sunday, September 16, 2012

Open letter to my three-year-old

 Dear Re

Unlike last year when your vocabulary was still on the verge and I had to fill in the details, I thought I’ll beat you to it this time and write you a letter on your birthday before you slip one under my pillow (yes, the number of times you have borrowed my pen has made me increasingly suspicious). It’s just that I have so much to say, and get so little opportunity to talk these days, what with you being in love with the sound of your own voice. So here goes, in no particular order:

1. I know you are on a testosterone overdrive, now that you are a raging three year-old  boy and it is evident now that we are on opposite ends of the chromosome chain, but it will be nice if you tone it down sometimes. I am a lady, you see.
2. I do enjoy it when you go to school, and I love that you are on the school bus now and I don’t have to meet all those psycho mommies at your school gate who are either whining about their kids not eating, or that they missed their gym class or that their nanny ran away with the watchman. You going away makes me want you to come back even more, so that’s kinda nice.
3. I can multi-task bloody well. You won’t get what that means, since you just missed being a Gemini.  But I can be listening to you, typing on my computer and answering a phone call at the same time. It is not sacrosanct to make eye contact every time.
4. When you tell me to read you a story, I GET TO READ THE STORY, OKAY? OKAY? I am tired of pretending to read to you and be actually read to. I know you can make up stories, but what do we do with all the books we have?
5. The cats were here before you came in. They know that I am the boss. Don’t mess things up for me by taking up for them every single time, okay? OKAY?
6. I know your daddy can lavish you with technology. But I am the only one who can give you time, so, some consideration, please.
7. I think I have had enough of being nice mommy and I think it’s time for me to show my badass side. So whenever you are on a testosterone overdrive, out she comes.
8. If someone ever asks you why you wear your hair long, please feel free to toss your curls around like they do in those shampoo ads and say, “Because I’m worth it!”
9. I know that sometime last year, you developed an aversion to baths, but you have no choice in the matter. You need to bathe every single day, sometimes twice. If that’s not cool, well, so be it. Also brush your teeth. That’s the way it’s going to be, until you find a woman who is okay with you not doing it.
10.  Whenever you are faking a tantrum, I can tell. I wasn’t born yesterday.
11. Don’t play back my strategy to me. I needn’t be asked to take big bites if I have to watch TV. The rule was invented for you.
12. I am happy to note that you are not one of those boys who points at things in the mall and wants to take them home. Please stay that way.
13. I am also delighted that you are a natural with animals and think you are one of them (which, I secretly think you are, especially, the bath angle).
14. Make up your mind who your best friend is. I am tired of hearing new names every day.
15. I know your teacher is sweet. Don’t rub it in. In any case, it doesn’t affect me.
16. Night suits are not brunch wear.
17. Don’t keep asking me to “run away”. I just might.
18. All those toys and books you keep attributing to other people? I got them, just FYI.
19. I am tired of this good cop-bad cop business and you playing me against your father all the time. Think about this: You will be dealing with me far more than him. So I would advise you to be clever about it.
20. Yes, your father will be okay with you eating ice-cream for breakfast, wearing nighties to school, not brushing your teeth or skipping baths for days. You still have me to contend with.
21. But you know what? You are still the funnest person to have around, and I am so happy to be your mom. Thank you for coming into my life. Happy Birthday, munchkin!

Pic: Rahul De Cunha