Being married to my mother

GUEST POST:

BY ZARA CHOWDHARY

My son’s parents ended their marriage two years ago.

One day his father was there, the next he’d moved out. And suddenly, the scared little child had a cat too depressed to get out from under his bed, and a mother too broken to get off the couch. The boy ached for company, for things to just go back to ‘normal’ as his four year-old memory last remembered it.

And then one day, his grandmother arrived at their door – with a fresh haircut, a spring in her step and a super-sized grin that’s hard to miss. She was everything his slowly crumbling household needed. She spoke in absurd languages that made us laugh even when no one felt like it, she cleaned out the unattended organisms from the fridge, replaced all three forgotten multigrain bread loaves with three kinds of seasonal fruit, threw out the wrinkled packs of frozen fries and packed in fresh meats in separate bags, she put bleach in his uniforms, oil in my scalp, and threatened us if we forgot to turn on the lights around maghrib (our evening prayer time) saying ‘The angels won’t come in’!

Slowly and simply, the smells, the sounds, the sights of one person we’d been used to for five years, were replaced by the noise, the madness, the super-loud, body-jiggling laughter of this other person whom we’d otherwise only seen during the holidays.

And that’s the thing about people when they become habits. It’s important when replacing alcohol or cigarettes (or any other analogy that works for you), to choose a healthier option in its place. Our oats-loving, Abba-singing, paintbrush-wielding Nanoo was better for our well-being than any new pets, friendly neighbours or (God-forbid!) rebound boyfriends could have been!

I’d seen my mother do this so many times in her life: walk into an empty house, set up the kitchen, whip up a meal, fashion sofas out of metal trunks, fill the balconies (and bathrooms!) with plants and make it a home —  all in a matter of hours. I watched her as a 29-year old with the same awe I had at ten, efficiently piecing my life together and putting it safely back in my hands for me.

People in my ever-shrinking social circle kept pointing out, how lucky I was to have my mum around to ‘support’ me. But I don’t think it hit me until I finally got off that couch (thanks to her threatening to throw away or burn my pajamas), found a new job and came back home from my first full day at work.

I opened the door and stepped in at six in the evening, the house was all lit up like we’d become used to by now. The scared four year old now a more confident and chirpy five year old came hurtling out of the room and torpedoed into my navel, the cat lay belly-up and smiling at the fan, and there mum sat at the dining table, art material piled up in a heap, my spare room officially converted to her studio, a new business plan swirling in her head — and I knew. This was mum telling me in not so many words: ‘I’m not here to just support you. You can never crash on me like that again. Looks like you’re doing better now. So I’m going to do what I need to do to keep that spring in my step. And we’ll both be doing the supporting from here on.’ I paused for one second wondering if I should say something about the paint likely to stain my chair covers. But instead I scooped my son up, plonked on the sofa, and started to tell them the story of my first day back in the world. Cheesy as it sounds, it did feel like the angels had finally come home and brought with them a partner for me, someone I’d never thought I’d be living with as I turned 30.

My son now has two parents living with him again, there are two individuals playing tag between what they want for themselves and what they know their family deserves. If you ever heard us squabbling over closet space and what to watch on Netflix, you’d think there was a couple living together here. And some days how we both wish we could have it any other way but this interdependence. Yet it’s been nothing short of amazing being married to my mother this way for the last two and a half years. It has taught me what marriage is supposed to look like. There are the occasional expectations that go unmet and some sulking happens with both parties. There are days when nobody wants to have to care about what’s for dinner. There are days of feeling frustrated and taken for granted, but usually some ice-cream or a drive to town or a movie date when the child visits his dad can sort those out. We take turns playing good cop-bad cop because no one parent should ever have to be just the one. We try to never sleep over a fight. Hugs and cuddles are a daily prescription, though the cat son usually claws his way out of those.

It’s a household that depends on honesty more than anything else — it requires being harsh enough to tell each other when we’ve lain long enough on that couch and need to get off our asses or be nagged to death. It’s a house that acknowledges the two little boys and the two grown women in it, and that no job is too big or too small or too ‘girly’. It’s a home where you will always find food, laughter and lessons in how to give before taking. And it’s a place that will, hopefully, always remind my son of what family is supposed to look like, no matter what marriage it is built on.

Of conversation starters, biggerators and learning the art of fearlessness from a child

GUEST POST BY APARNA JAIN

The other day my 7yo niece Arianna, pulled out a box from her room, came and sat next to me and said, “Let’s play this game Bua.”  She held out a recycled leather tissue box cover that had been converted into what was now the “Sood Family Conversation Box.” 

While privy to all the board games in their room, I had never seen this, and was particularly intrigued because it seemed home-made. I asked her what it was. She said she didn’t really know but asked me to play with her.

We opened the box to find 60 assorted “conversation starters” in the box. In the form of little folded pieces of paper with questions on them.

She picked one, unfolded it and read out slowly and tentatively, “Would you rather dive from a high cliff into the ocean or give a book presentation in front of 500 people?”

She looked up and said, “That’s easy. I would rather jump into the ocean.”

I paused, wondering if she was just saying the first thing she retained or she actually thought about the choices.  I explained a book presentation to her. I used a show and tell analogy and explained “in front of your whole school, all the children, all ages in the audience.” I then explained the height of a cliff to her using our house stacked up more than 20 times on top of each other. Like “scary high.”  Unblinkingly she said, ‘Yeah, the cliff, Bua.”

I asked her why. Her answer:

“I like to take risks.”

Matter of fact.

Wow, I thought to myself. She is running towards the scary stuff. If I had this conversation with an adult, most would run away from the scary shit and in their case, it would likely be public speaking. Geez – the pressure, the embarrassment, the public judgement.

Arianna however, thought it was a cinch.

I wish I had the fearlessness of a 7yo.

We moved on to the next question:

“If you had to teach a class for a day, what subject would you choose?”

“Science” she answered in a jiffy.

“Why?” I pushed.

“Bua, because I love science. Remember I told you, when I grow up I want to invent a Cleanarator? It will clean all the air and take the pollution out. And it will be good for your asthma. And then I want to invent a Biggerator and  a Smallerator.”

Between reminiscing about Professor KeenBeam and Professor Calculus and wanting to give her a tight hug, I managed to keep a straight face. I had heard about the Cleanarator, so asked her what her Biggerator would do.

“You know when we really like something, like some tee-shirt or something and then we become bigger and grow out of them? Well the Biggerator will make these clothes also become bigger with us.”

“Interesting,” I added, “and think of all the people who cant afford to buy new shoes or clothes for their kids who grow so fast, it will be perfect for them too.”

She nodded happily with the quiet confidence of someone who had already cracked the formula.

My American aunt, who has spent the past 30 years as an elementary school teacher and administrator, was sitting there.Four years ago, she had made this box to transpose this idea from classroom to home. And it had been sitting in the recesses of Arianna’s room until now. She smiled at her granddaughter’s imagination and watched us as we continued to pick slips of paper and talk. 

We spoke for 15 minutes, but I managed to get an insight into Arianna’s mind like I never had earlier. What a great 15 minutes that was for me! It made me admire facets of her that do not come forth on a regular basis. Ideas that she nurses, ideals that she has. Yes, Arianna is voluble, but I can only imagine what a conversation box would do for parents with quieter kids. Or families who spend limited time with their kids – most of which is study or homework-related.

I have a feeling if I jig this slightly it would serve as a great icebreaker tool, to get to know colleagues at the workplace too. Or even acquaintances. (They may not be as honest or forthcoming, but it’s worth a try)

Some of the other questions in the conversation box, so that you get an idea:

If you could choose a nickname for yourself, what would it be?

If you could paint all the rooms in your house a different colour, what colour would you paint each room?

What superpower would you like to have?

Follow these up with ‘Whys’ and “Hows’ and get deeper into your child’s mind.

There is gold in there.

Pure Gold.

About the author:

Aparna Jain is an Integral Master Coach and the author of The Sood Family Cookbook and Own It- Leadership Lessons from Women Who Did (November 2015, HarperCollins). She is committed to making women take charge of making the workplace equitable. She has over 20 assorted nieces and nephews and lives with two nieces and one nephew.

(If you wish to write a guest post, mail me on mommygolightly@gmail.com)

What I miss about making vadaams and other community food projects

I always know that all is well in my household whenever vadaams (various forms of rice, wheat, sago and potato crispies, to be fried and eaten) are being made in the summer. For a long time, due to her fragile health and multiple open heart surgeries, my mother had lost her mojo (and so had the entire family as a chain reaction) and we relied on store-bought things, whether it was tomato ketchup, mango jam, idli batter, various preserves and chutneys and podis (the dry chutneys). Technically, I knew how to make them, but it was always a community activity and it wouldn’t have been fun without my mother involved. So I didn’t. But every time we were at a lunch or dinner and hot crisp vadaams would be brought out as accompaniments, I thought wistfully about our vadaam days. I also noticed that we had grown apart slightly as a family when we stopped doing these things together.

This summer is different though. I now live close to my mother, and out of the blue, asked her one day, “Amma, why don’t we make vadaams anymore?” Her eyes lit up. “You want to?”, she asked. I said yes, and then we were at it almost at once, planning and getting things ready. The house seemed happier already with our little summer project.

Since there was no muscle power available (some of the vadaam variants involve stirring together kilos of batter, slow cooking them on fire and neither Amma nor I had the strength for it), we chose an elegant, yet easy option: The elaivadaam.

These are rice crispies, made by soaking and grinding rice to a fine paste, adding water to a dosa consistency. This is then delicately flavored with salt, heeng, black sesame seeds and a green chilli concentrate (made by grinding green chillies and straining the juice). The vadaams are then doled out like mini dosas on vadaam plates which are stacked up on a vadaam tray and steamed for 5-7 minutes.

A trip to childhood: making vadaams

Peeling and air drying the steamed vadaams is the next step. When we were kids, this was usually assigned to me (and still is) as I was the only one who could be trusted with these half-cooked beauties (they are delicious). Also, I was neat and organised and patient (things I am not much of now). My brother was usually the chief crow watcher, as the vadaams were then dried on our terrace and crows would make off with them in minutes. Till my mother realised that he was the biggest crow, and was happily trading them for marbles with his friends. She then adopted the tried and tested way to ward off the crows: tying a black cloth to a mast, creating a scarecrow of sorts.

As I peeled the vadaams and dried them in rows on a sheet, Amma kept steaming newer ones and handing them over to me, as if in assembly line. We chatted, got nostalgic, shared vadaam stories and before we knew it, the batter was over. The clock had moved four hours. And my mother and I had bonded like the old times. I suddenly felt cocooned in her warmth and confident in the knowledge that she would always have my back. The energy was infectious and Re wanted a task too, and he was appointed chief counter and duly noticed that one vadaam had gone missing (eaten by yours truly)

In a few hours of air-drying, the elaivadaams curl upwards, almost threatening to levitate. It reminded me of when babies start walking and then you have to watch their moves, for they are ready to wander off.

The dried vadaams have a mind of their own

But there are still miles to go before you sleep. The next day, the vadaams have to prepare for a tougher journey, go out into the outside world, face the harshness of the sun, and become tough and firm, ready to face the world. It reminded me of what school is to children.

After all that work, and two days gone, the yield was a hundred vadaams. It might make one wonder, “Was it worth it for all the effort? Can you not just buy it off the shelf?” Perhaps you can. But for me, it was two days of intense conversation, laughs and giggles with my mother and my child. And that, as MasterCard would say, is ‘priceless’.

Two days’ work: a hundred vadaams

(A version of this post appeared as my column in Pune Mirror on 4th May, 2015)

Home is where the colors are

By the age of 18, I had lived in eight different homes. In the years that followed, there were three more with my parents, two hostels for working women (in which I had to change my room every year, making it six more homes; for me, every new room was a new home), three more as a free-spirited singleton who had moved up in the rent market and who wanted a posh Bandra pin code all to herself, and four more post marriage. And I’m not done yet.

I wasn’t born into real estate. I didn’t marry into it. It’s not that my father was in the services, or had one of those posh government or bank jobs where they transferred you every two years. My parents just never cracked real estate, so we never really owned anything (oh yes, my father did jointly own a home with his brothers when I was four, which they sold for a princely sum of Rs.36000 or some ridiculous amount for their sister’s marriage).

My mother, in an attempt to maintain her work-life balance and provide adequate care for the three of us, moved closer to her place of work every few years and my father followed. While the rest of my family moved up in the real estate ladder, filled their walls with white goods, my father gave us real adventures.

I always dreamed of a place where all our stuff could be found, where we had a room to ourselves. I often pretended to my friends that I did, and that my cats slept in a bunk bed and we wore night suits and that my mother baked scones and gingerbread (she baked other things, but Enid Blyton made scones so exotic!). But I never invited them home, for then my bubble would be busted.

Our real estate was memories.

I remember the home in which my father taught me the famous Jim Reeves song, “But you love me daddy”. My father is not a singer; my mother is a trained one. But the songs I remember from my childhood were mostly sung by my father (my mother was busy just staying afloat with three kids, hard times, the tyranny of her mother-in-law and other travails of the time).

I remember the home where I broke my nose, got my first stitches, the home in which I got hit by a swing while my babysitters (the neighbor’s children) were busy chatting. I remember the home in which my father made pav bhaji for the first time, the home where my mother made coconut cookies with cherry toppings (the cherries had to be cut into neat, square bits and we got to eat the leftover cherry bits that didn’t make the cut).

I remember the home where we walked half a kilometre to the nearest home that owned a television, to watch the Sunday movie. One day, they told us we would have to pay 50 paise for it. I remember then, we found another home, which was further away, where we wouldn’t have to pay, as our friend lived next door to it. I remember someone filched my brand new rainy sandals in that home and I walked home barefoot.

I remember the home in which my brother swallowed a nail, in which my sister fell from a slide and hurt her head, in which the nanny escaped by jumping off the balcony as she couldn’t bear my grandmother’s constant jibes.

I also remember our homes by the cats and other animals who adopted us. So there was one home of Kimi and Kallu and Pushpi, their proud mother, who gave birth to them on my ankles, there was another home where Tipu Sultan (my most handsome cat of all) died in battle and his mother Chinki was bitten by a snake. And where Millie rolled herself in rangoli on Diwali day and came to us, all multi-colored and we had a harrowing time washing her to get the color off.

My father eventually cracked real estate when I was 18 and we had a house with a garden, mango and guava trees, front and back entrances and all of that. But it wasn’t meant to be. That home resulted in a legal battle that took the rest of my father’s youth. That home also broke us as a family.

Meanwhile, I watched friends dating preapproved men on the EMI market, marrying into real estate, divorcing with real estate. I saw them upgrading to house number two just before they had a baby. To house no. 3 before they planned the second one. I saw their homes, immaculate and perfect, their walls adorned with art that never reflected who they were.

When I was pregnant with Re, I wistfully thought of myself as an ill prepared parent. We didn’t have a house, I couldn’t visualize a permanent address; I wondered what kind of security could I possibly offer him. It’s been five going on six years, and things haven’t been bad. Re has moved homes thrice already. He is magically Zen about it. Between home two and three, there was some turmoil, but then help came in the form of a kitten we rescued on the road and our transition got diffused in kitten care and all was well. Home three to four was smoother than I ever thought. It helped that it was on a hill.

But I never flinch whenever there is a “permanent address’ column in any form that I have to fill (and I still end up filling a few of them). I just smile and write my mother’s address. It’s a place I still go to when I feel impermanent.

And it no longer bothers me when I have to move. I just gather my best art, curtains, a few cushions and Re’s castle. I put them up. And it becomes home, so effortlessly.

 

(The above post first appeared as my column in Pune Mirror on 16th March 2015)

365 days of being raised by my child

365 days is a long time when you are a parent. It’s a long time anyway, but hell, when you are a parent, you can’t have much unaccounted-for time, like time when you pass out in the delirium of youth, time when you sleep through the alarm, or the child’s nocturnal pee break or hear him grinding his teeth, or moaning in the middle of sleep due to a bad dream or sometimes, even hear him talk or laugh and decode what he is saying.

They told me one year is all the sleep I would lose when I became a mother. It is now five going on six, and I haven’t slept straight eight hours on any given night. Except the few nights that I have been away and I am grateful for those. I have now come to accept that parenting is a journey that is as long as you want to be. I also know I have signed an open-ended contract, so I have no use-before date.

This year, I have, for the most part, been practically a single parent, as I decided to move to teach in a school and live on campus with Re. I realised if I didn’t do it, I would always wonder what stopped me and I didn’t want to be in that place. And it is not necessarily this stint that has taught me a few things, but here they are, in no particular order:

1. Having children does not necessarily make you understand them better. Some really apathetic people have kids and it doesn’t seem to change anything.
2. Not having children does not necessarily make you less aware of them. Most of the people I would implicitly trust Re with do not have kids.
3. People are always happier when children fit in, when they “love” going to school or to activity class or playgroup. It just means less work for the parent.
4. Parents have really short term memory when it comes to children – why they cry, how often they whine, why they have separation anxiety, and so on.
5. It is always easy to over simplify another’s child. But there always seem to be layers of explanation for the simplest things when it comes to your own.
6. Everything seems easier when you can speak about it in the past tense.
7. It is rare for children to only be seen and not heard, unless you are really intimidating or there is something really wrong with what you are doing.
8. We are all secretly gratified when our children take after us, even if it is something about us that we are trying really hard to fix.
9. Whenever we see a really happy child, we get more deeply connected to our own void and realise it is our own doing.
10. If each one of us was more in touch with the child within us, we would probably be happier adults.
11. We often underestimate tears and overestimate bravery. Not crying is not being brave. If more adults could cry in the free spirit of children, we would be able to untie the knots within, perhaps be a little more happy or a little less bitter.
12. In our over-emphasis of children saying and doing the right thing, displaying overt signs of politeness that often doesn’t have its roots anywhere, what we are actually doing is rendering our children into clones of ourselves.
13. We often choose the wrong means to get our children to do the right thing.
14. Sometimes all you need to do for a child is just be there.
15. We all need to learn how to truly lose ourselves from children.
16. Sometimes, it is important to break the rules to just know how meaningless it was to blindly follow them without questioning.
17. It is important for a child to celebrate every scar, every wound. Every scar is a story, an accomplishment. What growing up does to us is make us hide our wounds and scars, pretend to be brave when we are not.
18. Every day is a new world. You don’t need to wait for 31st December to bring in newness. The year is filled with pockets of newness every single day.
19. It’s never too late to start over. If you weren’t happy with yesterday, try something different today. Or tomorrow. Or the day after.
20. It is important to scream. And shout. And let it all out.

Happy new year all! It has been so lovely connecting with so many lovely people all over the world and I have learnt so much from you and your children.

(This post first appeared as my column in Pune Mirror on 29th December, 2014)

 

Family and other anomalies

This year has been a year of repairing estrangements for me. In the course of this, Re met an uncle and an aunt, two of his second cousins in New York (they had him at Elsa and Anna), and two long-lost (and I don’t even know why they were lost) second cousins in Bangalore. They bonded instantly and Re was teaching Alvi (the one nearer his age) his ballroom moves while we adults chomped on Tex-Mex and found that we were related in more convoluted ways than we thought. “It’s blood,” said the just-found cousin-by- marriage, looking fondly at the kids bonding. But I feel blood as a currency is overrated. It was definitely more than that.

He also met his chittapata (grand uncle, my father’s younger brother). When he was confused what it meant, I told him it was a junior taatha (Tamil for grandpa). Oh, he said. That’s why his voice is like taatha!

I was visiting my uncle after nine years in his retirement home in Coimbatore. I had, in the meanwhile, grown a husband, a child, two cats, a paunch, greyed all over and switched multiple careers. But my uncle and aunt were arguing about dates and family trees just like they always did and it was as though time had stood still. My welcome meal was chittappa’s famous chinna vengayam (baby onion) sambar and potato podimaas (mashed potato curry). That seemed unaltered in its aroma and taste and something told me all will always be well with this family. Chittappa had Re at his favourite semiya payasam, which he had multiple bowls of and declared his stomach was singing a song. Re had him at you-look-like-that-man-who-comes-in-that-ad (read Amitabh Bachchan)

The baby onion sambar assumes a different varietal with every member of our clan. While chittappa allows the baby onions to flirt freely with capsicum and bhindi, my mother would never allow it. She would of course chop the larger ones to equalize them with the smaller ones. She always has an economic agenda which often camouflages as aesthetic. My father would be more flamboyant about his preparation, given everything else he does. He would sautee the baby onions separately in ghee before releasing them into the ocean of sambar. I do my own thing of adding a chopped spring onion garnish to it, which my father finds interesting, although I always thought he would frown at the lesser onion polluting the higher onion.

Family is people who meet you even when it’s not convenient. They show up, even if you don’t like them very much. They never miss a wedding or a funeral. We all have our own take on things, as long as we are allowed to express them. But we have to meet enough to be able to do that. When I was little, there were always weddings, thread ceremonies, house-warmings and whatnots. There don’t seem to be enough of those now, and we have to manufacture reasons to meet family. But sometimes, desire is enough too. I have 15 first cousins. Re has four. He hasn’t even met two of them. I need to manufacture a lot of family for him.

With friends, it’s different. We meet our friends in airbrushed, manicured, orchestrated settings, the stomach is tucked in, the hair is in place, the food is molecular, the lighting is just perfect for ‘likable’ photos.

With family, we are our jagged, bad-haired, out-of-bed selves

I recently messaged a friend who I had been planning to meet when I was in Bombay. She wrote back saying her parents and sister were over, so could we meet another time? I just felt I was not family enough.

Part of the reason I moved out of the city was that I could never count on friends to be family for Re. They always had something more important to do, like family or activity classes or birthday parties, and I was tired of explaining to Re why he wasn’t priority. Since I moved out of the city, I use every opportunity I have in Bombay to reconnect with old friends. Food always catalyses such  reunions and the higher the possibility of it being involved, the greater the chances of my meeting them. Friends or families that don’t do food enough usually fade off my radar.

My friends know that I always show up. So asking me a lame question like “when do I see you?” is not a good idea, because I always come up with a plan and mean to execute it. I make friends so that I can take them home. I make friends so I can find more people I can be myself with. I make friends so they can feel like family.

I was recently at Delhi, spending a few days with Usha Aunty and Vijay uncle. I do this whenever I get a chance. They are not family. They are my dear friend Reshu’s in-laws. I meet them more than I meet Reshu, since she lives in Dubai. We go back as long as her marriage, which I think is 20 years. We discuss recipes of lauki with kalonji, stuffed baby karelas, apricot and tomato chutney. We recently found connections in our families, and realized what a small world it was.

In the end, we all want friends who feel like family and we want family that we can be friends with. But the key is, you have to show up. Eat a meal. Cook maybe. Talk some. Cry some. And no, clicking ‘like’ on Facebook does not count. So before the year ends, try and locate someone from your family tree or your friendship universe. Go meet them, have a meal with them. Tell me how it felt.

(This post first appeared as my column in Pune Mirror on 17th November, 2014) 

Festivals and other reminders of family

My mother is always the first one to wish me on Diwali. My aunt is next. In their innocent questioning — have you taken a bath, have you lit the deeyas, what sweet did you make — lies the reminder of my childhood, how we grew up and what we shared as a family. It was a lot. Somehow I always felt they were subtly reminding me to never forget to be myself, no matter who I married. After all, there are two things that can happen in mixed marriages. Rituals either multiply or cancel out.

I am good with the motions, and I have been going through them diligently, even after leaving my parental home, long before I got married. I have tried to make each festival special, and even invented new ones for Re. But sometimes, motions create fatigue, and when you succumb to that, it’s a slippery slope for our children, because they have nothing to hold on to and it’s a long way clambering back.

Diwalis of our childhood were about being rudely woken up at 4 am, doused in oil, and asked to take a bath with homemade exfoliants. It was usually cold that time of year and the bath hurt and left us even more bleary eyed. Sometimes, cousins were over and they followed the same ritual. Then we were given new clothes (sometimes we had a say in what was bought, but usually they were home-stitched). There are no photos and that’s perhaps that’s why the memories are so vivid.

Each year, the money allotted to firecrackers began to buy us less and less and we often measured the fun we had in minutes. Sometimes we even managed to make them last by taking them apart. I remember my brother and I would spend hours over separating the laal ladis, and lavangis which we would ignite as singles than as a bunch to make it last. It was fun. Soon our cousins picked up and did the same. Even when money could buy us less, we still had more.

When we were growing up, cousins were people you met because of the grandparent connection — you had to share them (the grandparents), whether you liked it or not. Now that the grandparents are no more, the cousins are more or less redundant. They show up randomly on Facebook, want to be added as your ‘relative’, they post comments on your photos, and make fleeting plans to ‘meet up.’

When you have a child, festivals become indicators of a family that was. And cousins’ children become more important than the cousins ever were. You look through their albums, you ask if their children are crawling or teething, you find bits of them in their children — the bond is renewed.

A strange thing happens when the festive season sets in. Families begin to coalesce. They begin to feel grateful that they are still families. Friends begin to remember they can’t take friendship for granted. Couples begin to find joy in their coupleness.

And colleagues, whose kids you yet don’t know the names of, send you a text and put a smile on your face. They say that when you say something positive long and loud and repeated enough, it becomes a truism. May be that’s why even couples in dysfunctional relationships send out messages and cards in the festive season that end with Mr, Mrs and Master/Miss. I get them all the time and they still put a smile on my face.

And it’s addictive. Soon, you begin to Whatsapp or e-card people who you have never thought about in the past year. You text numbers from your phonebook that have been never texted or called before. You even call. You begin to add instead of subtracting.

Festivals remind me that despite all our virtual connectedness and real disconnectedness, we are still not bankrupt as a people. Yes, we do click ‘likes’ on online rangolis and diyas and pretend we’ve made our own. We raise a toast to goodies people have pre-ordered and a small corner of our heads says we should have tried harder.

Family has various meanings, but it’s in festivals that it reveals itself the most. It’s a connectedness that is palpably real, a camaraderie that no selfie can capture, a boisterousness that cannot be contained, a memory that age cannot wipe out.

There was a time we weren’t even aware we were making memories. Now, if we don’t manufacture them, we will have none. Next year, I’m going to wake up Re on Diwali and douse him with oil and exfoliants. He may not like it, but he will have a story to tell.

 

(This piece first appeared as my column in Pune Mirror on 27th October 2014) 

Yes, I have an only child and it’s fine, really

Pic By Bajirao Pawar

I never had a strategy to have an only child. I am the oldest of three married to a third-born of four. We have an only. Well, give or take a cat or two. I don’t think my parents intended for us to be three, but my siblings are twins. Everyone else in my family is a perfect two and there is only one ‘only’. He is my favorite cousin incidentally.

People make the ‘only child’ sound like a convoluted human being, devoid of social skills, compassion, kindness. They are supposed to be maladjusted, selfish and everything wrong with the world. For doing exactly the same thing, they could be branded as attention seeking or aloof and anti-social. Sometimes you just can’t win.

My friend Parul recently popped her third baby. Three is a great number, I always thought. Two is too symmetric, but three? Now that’s a crowd in a good way. When we were growing up, my father would often complain that we all didn’t fit into an auto, and so we would have to divide and conquer the movies. I was cool with that, as I got to go with dad and the siblings went with mom for kiddie matinees. It was the only time I felt like an only child and dad and I grew up as movie buddies.

I was never one of those women who dreamt of a house full of children running around while I fawned over them. I thought I accomplished a rare feat by popping a baby at 40 and that it would settle things once and for all. That it would end all the presumptive questioning (“when are you getting settled?” and “are you planning kids?”). I was wrong. Once Re turned two, it started again, and from completely alien quarters. More than questions, they were opinions cloaked in concern. Theories. Postulates.

“Have the second one quickly. Don’t wait too long. ”

“The first one is for you, the second is for the first.”

“He’d make an excellent older brother.”

“But who will he play with?”

The worst was, “You already have a boy, so it hardly matters what comes next!”

And my absolute favorite:

“Who will take care of him when you are no more?”

I felt like telling them, you don’t have to die so many times before you actually die. So get a life, because your child will eventually have one, and perhaps a better one than you. After all, family doesn’t have to be fate. Siblings are great, but sometimes, it’s a 4 am friend who pulls you together. For all the times my parents thought we would look after each other, well, they are mostly looking after us even now.

But it was as though there was unfinished business, that we were incomplete with just one baby. We also got the “you might not want another one now, but when he gets older, you’d wish he had a sibling!”

Every now and then, I would ask Re, So would you like a baby brother or sister? He thought I was cuckoo. When Re turned a happy five this year, I finally set aside my residual desires or concerns of a sibling for him. He’s winging it. So am I.

I wish people wouldn’t sound so patronising about “only child.” “They end up having a lot of imaginary friends,” they say of them, as if it’s an affliction. Are they kidding? I was one of three and I had more imaginary friends than Re. My imaginary friends had imaginary friends.

I get a lot of “He doesn’t behave like an only child” about Re. Like he has redeemed his ‘only’ hood by being kind and polite. I know that he will always be in his own head to some extent; he is comfortable in there. He knows where everything is, and he is endlessly evaluating his own perceptions of the world outside. I like that sometimes I am his buddy and sometimes I’m his mamma.

He is at an age where he loves board games and I often wonder if a sibling would have been handy. But that’s about it. The feeling passes away quickly, each time I feel like packing my bags and driving off for an adventure. With an only, you travel light. With more than one, I don’t think I could just get up and go the way I have been doing. Going into the back burner seems a necessary byproduct of motherhood for most women and I don’t fancy that happening to me again. It was important to claim me back after I had a child and it was important not to feel selfish about the whole thing. I never ask people why they have three kids, so I don’t see any reason why I have to justify my only.

I wanted a balance between selfhood and motherhood and stopping at Re helped me get that. I can focus on my own pursuits and goals, while I watch him grow, and it is getting more exciting with every passing year. Less is definitely more in our case.

 

(This post first appeared as my column in Pune Mirror on 22nd September, 2014)

 

Together in separateness

Three cities. Two kids. One family. In my new life, this is more the norm than the exception.

Among my new friends are an ex navy official who has now turned educator after a 20-year career and a globe-trotting life during which his wife was primary caregiver to the kids. To call him a multi-tasker would be an understatement. She is now finally pursuing her academic dream with a PhD program while he is a full time parent to their son on our school campus. They are both long-distance parents to their older daughter who studies at a residential school near Bangalore.

The boy, who is all of eight was one of my earliest influences at the school I now teach in, with his keen observation and his Zen-like stance on most things. On day one, he invited me to go swimming with him in the Bhima river and when I hesitated, saying I didn’t have a costume, he said, “There is no point being shy. It just wastes time.” Not to be deterred, I went along, and jumped into the river in my tunic and jeans.

Every weekend, this family of two turns into a family of three, when the mother comes over and once every term, they become a foursome when it’s term visit time at their daughter’s school.

Another colleague who teaches Physics lives on campus with her  daughter while her husband lives in the Nilgiris, where he runs an NGO. During our walks in the evening, she and I share a lot about parenting, the need to find the self and what makes us who we are. Her daughter, all of seven, is so free-spirited that no school could contain her thus far. They have finally found their haven on our hill.  The girl is also a buddy who takes me and Re on expeditions and claims to know all the ‘secret spots’ on the hill. I believe her. She is that kind of girl.

This is my new family. We look out for each other. We keep it simple. And mostly, it makes sense.

When I moved with Re to teach at this school, speculations were rife. Was I leaving my husband? Was this a sign? Was it really about Re? Was the marriage over?

Few ask me. Fewer ask him. Most ask each other. Some read melancholy in my writing and send me “Is all well?” messages. And some get it.

I wonder if they would have made such a big deal of it had my husband moved cities or country to follow his dream. “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” they would have said. “It’s important for his career,” they would have proffered. The child is still small, this is the time to experiment, they would have assuaged.

We are suckers for symmetry, structure and composition, never mind if it’s filtered. We want singletons to be married, married ones to have a child, one-child couples to have two children, and so on. We would rather gloss over the quasi perfection of the family picture postcard than wonder what really makes them tick. Collaboration is the biggest myth of parenting. A family that drives together while each stares at a screen is not a family. Neither is a group of children and adults that brunches, goes to Hamleys or posts selfies.

What we cannot bear is when sometimes, people, like electrons, have a mind of their own and want to see what a new orbital feels like.

But I am beginning to realise that sometimes the decisions you make for yourself can result in the collective good. After all, parenting is about finding ‘us’ in the spaces. It’s also about reclaiming ‘me’ sometimes. Having a child can obliterate your sense of self to a large extent, particularly so for the woman. If you are not the same you, how can you be a good wife, a good parent, a good anything?

So we are finally the family that meets every other weekend and walks, treks and jumps on puddles. We are long-distance couples, parents and children. We talk more, we eat more, we laugh more. We certainly breathe more. We have moved from separate together to together separate. And it feels infinitely better.

 

 

(This post first appeared as my parenting column in Pune Mirror on 11th August, 2014)

 

Of theme-park families, digital love and Karan Johar

I think Karan Johar is to blame.

“It’s all about loving your family” was his promotional line for  Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham, a Bollywood blockbuster in 2001. The line touched a chord and soon became a mantra that bombarded our collective conscience, begging to be adopted. The movie came in much before family selfies were in vogue, but it did set the ground for it, ever so slightly. I don’t know how much it contributed to us loving our family, but it certainly made photo-shopped and airbrushed families the next best thing to have, if you weren’t lucky or hard-working enough to have a real one.

If KJo’s mantra didn’t do the trick, the ‘like’ button did. Sons and daughters have become more effusive in their love, ever since it was invented. Now they don’t even have to make that trip or pick up the phone to show their parents they care. All they have to do is click ‘like’. And there, the love business has been simplified. Grandparents are back too. They are reclaiming their space in the family tree digitally, if not otherwise. Either they are liking, or they are being liked.

Something changes irreversibly in people in when they have children. They begin to feel grateful for their childhood, however chaotic and overpopulated it seemed at the time. They suddenly want their families back. Families look good in pictures. They lend ambience, texture, rough edges. They neutralise your gloss or your ineptness. Families make you feel empowered, they have a Botox effect on the lonely island that is a couple. Give or take a child even. People from families that were fragmented often seem to marry into close-knit families because it provides the togetherness they long for. And when we have our own children, we want them to benefit from the whole family experience – cousins, nieces, nephews, uncles and aunts, the works. A child does not add the equity you think it does unless it is backed by aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. And pictures with all of them.

But then, most people start manufacturing family. They engineer confluences, adding touches so it comes closest to their image of a theme-park family. Because “It’s good for the children.” Some over-mixed couples go as far as to say, “Our daughter speaks four languages. I am half- Gujarati, half-Punjabi and my husband is half south-Indian, half Bengali.” How much of the osmosis is real and how much is fodder for social media, one will never know. As people become more hospitable on their timelines, we see less of their homes. As for me, the taste of a well-knit family is the food they share. It’s always the food. But who’s eating these days?

A friend of mine, M orchestrated her pregnancy after landing a job in Bangalore where her parents lived. She ensured her husband got a transfer too.They have a child and a dog now and lots of family pictures and willing babysitters. It’s exactly what she wanted.

K is an amazingly successful, bright intelligent Indian woman who lives in Chicago. She is married to an American and has three kids who look anything but Indian. Every year, she flies down to India for exactly three weeks, in which she fits in work meetings, something cultural for the kids (throw in a palace resort here, or a wedding, or Diwali, whichever promises great backdrops for pictures), and rounds it off with something by the sea (of course bubble-wrapped). She also manages to track down enough photogenic people from her family tree and captures them into her smart phone. She makes a photobook a year and they all stand proud in her bookshelf.

She also flies her parents to the US every other year, or whenever she is nanny-less. “The kids have to do grandparents,” she says. Except the grandparents don’t really know what to do with them as neither of them speaks much English and the kids don’t speak Bengali. So it’s six weeks of parents watching desi TV while the kids are on their iPads, with a theme-park or a ski trip thrown in for good measure. But there are always pictures.

When I see these theme-park families, I always long for shiny, happy family pictures from my childhood. There are none. We don’t take family pictures or hug or kiss or say ‘I love you” or celebrate Mother’s day or Father’s day. But we cook and eat a lot together. We fight, we laugh and we cry. We are just an ordinary family I guess.

The closest I ever got to taking a family selfie was a recent picture of the brother, the mother, the child and me at a park in California when we went visiting him. It took a lot of effort and it didn’t feel like us.

I think I’m going to alter the mantra to “It’s all about keeping it real.” Sorry, Karan Johar.

 

(This post first appeared as my column on parenting in Pune Mirror on 4th August, 2014)