Blog-e-zine

Picky eater vs. Acquired taste

2012-01-29T02:59:00.000-08:00

J is a picky and lazy eater. Each time she is given a new thing to eat, she would taste that with tip of her tongue. It is a funny visual and sometimes an irritating one specially when I prepare a dish keeping only her in mind. We had very hard time during her transition from bottles of milk to diverse solid food. She at the age of 1 and 1/2 years found no reason to come out of the comfort of just sucking milk from bottle or lick spoons of semi solid baby food with mild taste and swallow them immediately than to chew solid foods which were so complex in taste and texture. Result was an irritated and constipated child. Also now when I look back I find she was going to a German day care at that time and was taught to eat with utensils, where touching food with fingers was not a good manner. At home she found her Indian parents eating their food using fingers. J must have got confused seeing two ways of eating in that small age. Also the taste and texture of food was quite different in two places. Result, she got extremely picky about eating. We understood that and used to give her knife and fork to eat rice at home. This helped her. We also learnt to be consistent in giving her proper food and no baby food to develop her chewing and proper food eating habit.

At around age 3, she asked me once whether I feel messy to eat with fingers. I told her that no, it is just a habit. Also that there are some rules we follow, even if we eat with hands, like we use only right hands, we use only fingers, we use chapatti (Indian bread) to scoop sabji and daal (curries and lenti; soup), there are countries other than India where also people eat with hands etc. In the mean time, we, 'J's parents, big foodies, started including 'J' for cooking. She used to do simple acitvities like mixing things together. This broke her inhibitions of touching food with fingers. She started learning the names of different fruits and vegetables. She started to like the process of baking and so on. She still continues to taste any new thing with the tip of her tongue and she still continue to reject several vegetables (specially greens). She loved eating non-vegeterian items though. When she was 5, she asked me one day whether she could try eating food at home like us. She tried to eat rice with her fingers and as fingers are easy to use than fork and knife to mix food and Indian curries, she liked the taste of food better. Also with constant exposure to diverse food habits at school/day care and home she started accepting both and started picking some favourites of her own in both places.

In this time she also started visiting her friend's house where she found that food was yet again different from her home and school. In spite of being picky, upon repetitive exposures she started choosing certain special food in her friend's house too. I started introducing the term 'acquired taste' in our regular language. I tried to explain her that there were several things I did not like to eat as a child, but as I grew old I started liking them. One example being cooked onions. 'J' found it funny that her 'food loving' mummy also had 'dislikes' as a kid. We kept watching food programmes talking about different types of international food and we kept buying and using several ingredients which are not that used in an Indian kitchen. 'J' started taking interest in several methods of cooking and used to come up with her 'own' ideas of cooking.

Recently upon our return to western part of India, she saw yet another world were vegetarian food are more common to consume. Geographically this region of India is land-locked and dry. So in earlier times the availability of fish and meat might be rare, legumes, fruits, vegetables and cereals are are major produces in these regions leading to vegetarian eating habit, which might have inoculated in the form of religious necessity as human being started creating faiths and religions for streamlined life.

Kids don't know all this reasons, they follow whatever they see at home, they get conditioned accordingly, so they form a critical view towards food not eaten in their home. 'J' on hearing the comments that eating fish or meat is yucky got quite confused. She started showing her doubts towards chicken and fish curry which are her all time favourites. In her school non-vegeterian food is not allowed in the tiffin as they share food with each other adding more points to her doubts .

My parenting came under taste again. Along with using the principle of 'acquired taste', I started talking with her about the geography and cultivation practice of different region or at least about the places where we have lived still now. This helped her understand that people in each place mostly eat what is grown there but as we are always on move we get chance to explore different tastes. Secondly I started talking about various religions and how what people believe also puts impact in our eating habits. She started understanding. We continued eating and cooking various tastes at our home and started exploring different restaurants.

Recently I noticed that 'J' is finding it hard to eat at bigger gatherings, because of her being shy, because of all the excitement she goes through in such places, because of foreignness of the places and faces of people and because of she being not used to it and being picky, specially during festivals and big parties. Such gatherings were not their in her life till now, as we were not in India. We discussed on this issue and she said she was too tired to eat and she was although sad for her behaviour but she could not help it.

So the next journey is to make her comfortable or at least accept the novelty of a situation that sometimes arises around food, and that where so many other people are eating happily, she can try to taste the things with a smile and who knows she might find a new favorite.

When they speak - III

2012-01-23T07:30:00.000-08:00

Communication

J- Mamma, can I ask you something?

I (little dreaded as such permission for asking leads to tough calls)-Yes, darling, go ahead.

J- This is something I am asking on behalf of me and my friends (neighborhood).

I (frightened now)-What’s the matter J?

J- Can you please open a bank account for me? Where we all can keep money?

I (Shocked but with calm voice)-Opening a bank account is a good idea. It is nice that you are thinking of saving. It will be better for me to know why you are thinking of bank account.

J (fall into the trap and opened up)-Actually we want to communicate more with each other.

(The story behind; J and her friends are learning about methods of communications at school. They have made a channel for communication by tying rope to a toy bucket with that they pass chits to each other. But this method is not working with friends from other buildings. So they were thinking of wireless options walkie-talkie or mobile phones(even better).

I-Humm, I understand now. Okay put on all the ideas you have for communication machines and then we (read parents) and you (kids) can sit together and work on it.

J- Okay, satisfied she gives a full swirl!

Mother’s night out

Encouraged (or frustrated) we (the ladies of the neighborhood) from meetings, discussions and group making of our children and husbands decided to form a group of our own and planned out our first ‘ladies night out’ on Saturday night. Men were okay but our kids (especially those between 6-8 years) gave a hard time accepting it. They got together and shouted ‘This is not fair’ against us. They demanded that we get something for them on return. They wanted to have their own time and a picnic as we were going to have fun on our own.

All these kids have stayed happily at home or day care when their mother gone out for work, work travels, shopping and so on. But they have seldom (or never) seen their mothers going out for a party at night. It was really hard to accept. Party is associated with their birthdays or Dad’s routine. Why on earth mother’s need to go party and that too without them-horrible this is.

We did not get time for us

They got together on Friday evening, enjoyed the beginning of weekend. On Saturday, they played in the morning. They had sports day in evening. Sunday morning went by cycling together. They passed notes, exchanged storybooks in between. In the evening they glued again, played, laughed and joked with each other. When parents called them to come home at late evening – “Aww, we never get enough time just for us” was the answer in chorus.

Trail of thoughts

2012-01-22T08:06:00.000-08:00

Sticky situations

I was extra cautious for some meetings recently I had to attain, avoided differences of opinion and came out clean. This was a conscious effort. Then for obvious reasons I was cheerful, left my caution and went to places which were soft zones for me. And exactly there I ended up creating sticky situations. Such is life and sticky situations doesn't come with warning signs. I will lie if I say it doesn't bother or hurt me and a big chunk goes in learning to live with these.

Lies

On talking about lies with J and asking her if or when she lies, she genuinely told that she feels like lying or lies when she is scared. I got the message very clearly. And it is so true even for an adult. Isn't it?

Scare

Scare or panic is integral to living, in equal parts to happiness. 'Scare' is a state of mind and some people might feel it more than others. I personally feel uncertainties of life bring in more scare and if we make peace with those uncertainties which we cannot control, helps. For me, talking with others helps too. Little reassurance gives lots of comfort. I have noticed scare has personal and social nature. Road rage is a social scare in India. I have talked with several people (office colleague, neighbours etc.) and have noticed everyone feel scared crossing the roads in Indian cities, to some extent. So this gives a shared feeling. Personal scare are the ones which are difficult to come out of. A sound board and time can help a lot for this.

Time

Time is the best healer and calms down several ripples but in life there remains certain issues which don't phase out. Which remains constant. Which are like tides, sometimes we get flooded by them, sometimes we stay above them.

Life

Recently some quotes for life from a famous humorist are intriguing me a lot.

Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

You can't keep blaming yourself. Just blame yourself once, and move on.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did so. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover

- Mark Twain

Some all time inspiring movies

2012-01-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

Some movies can be all time favourite for you. There are some movies which are my all time favourites. But there is an another list of movies for me, which are mine all time inspiring movies. There are days, when we all feel low, hopeless and cry-some. Those are the days when I can watch any of these all time inspiring movies and start feeling better, slowly. After that little betterment I find myself not that hopeless, and then I could collect myself once more.

Here are they in no particular order;

Julie and Julia

Extremely healing for me who loves food, who loves inspiration, who get stuck in not achieved enough in life syndrome, who faces extreme meltdowns. The movie portrays a legend named Julia child and connects it with the life of a regular blogger - Julie Powell in a same canvas. Marvellous movie. A must watch in my list.

Monalisa Smiles

Julia Robert starer, well her presence itself gives a movie an extra edge. Yes I am a Julia Robert fan. The story is about feminism at its budding stage. Feminism in those times when women used to divide on this point, specially in western world. When education was considered en-route to classy and flashy husband. It is wonderful movie and I get charged up watching this whenever I feel isolated and rejected in men's world. Very feminist comment I know, but so be it.

Erin Brockovich

Another Julia Robert starer and a real life story, and this was the first movie DVD which I bought without seeing the prices. This is the only DVD that came with us when we left Europe for India.

Julia Robert is fantastic. Her being working and a parent together and struggling between the two for a quest of meaningful job makes it very loveable for me. I love the mentor who finally believes in Erin Brockovich and gives her required due. Don't we all look for such unbiased, helpful mentors?

The Pursuit of Happiness

I saw this movie in a friends house, I was stuck in some situation at that time and this movie gave the required boost. As a parent, I admire this movie. As a working parent even more. Most working parent don't get enough time for raising their child. They face many situations in life where they choose work over child. Sometimes they want to and some times they had to. This movie relaxes the rules of parenting. This movie showed me how to extend my parenting while walking with my child to school, or while doing some sundry chores with her. This movie also empathised with the situations where a parent have to choose things for their children which they don't admire, be it a day care or a school and it is not always possible to get the best for your child. Actually we never know what is best for our child. The challenge is to rear a child in all possible circumstances in most normal way as we can.

Under the Tuscan Sun

This movie is an escapade to Tuscany and can be a mood booster anyway. Story of a woman, who looses it all and then gets them back but in a very different place and with different meaning makes the movie even more interesting. I would love to read the book too, but for now I find the movie extremely helpful specially when I feel like sinking and feel afraid.

Titli

It is a bengali movie, but a beloved one for me and my family. In rain clad European winters, this movie has given us immense warmth. Several evening after lots of tantrums and cry, I and my daughter used to cuddle over this movie. Titli didi is 'J's one of the favourite characters and mine too. I love the mother daughter duo in the movie. It is my depression buster when the reason behind depression is parental guilt.

Paroma

Extremely Bengali and extremely bohemian. I love the edgy storyline and the journey of an Indian woman whose life path is decided by all others but her. This movie also brings alive the colours of interior of a Bengali household. Story tells the lonely struggle of a woman who dares to look outside of her marriage, who finds the eccentricity of her life again upon holding fingers of a stranger. Who falls in love with herself through an extramarital affair. I love this story of an ordinary woman who is then left alone in her life but who decides to pick living for herself.

Umrao Jaan

Extremely rich, extremely tragic and extremely engaging. This period movie has remained my favourite inspiration for so many years now. The story is based on the life of a real personality. The story, its sets, costume designs and the actors make the movie collectable for any hindi or Indian movie buff.

And the list might go on with many more, but for today I stop here.

Potpourri

2012-01-02T09:24:00.001-08:00

Tata 2011

Yes, you are gone already but like every other year you were just there with me. I was still holding to you, I was stll talking with you through the office planner and wall planner, through memories and through my thoughts. Before leaving, you brought another year to us just like old tenants search e new one sometimes interms of good will with the land lord. Tata 2011. You were a very balanced year for me. You gave me 6 months of pure mommydom and 6 months of work. You fulfilled some of my long term dreams like visiting Provence and spending quality time with kids through the baking club. Just when I am saying you Tata (meaning good bye in Indian terms) I was wondering that we might have learned the word from the back of trucks which were only made by Tata company initially.

Chatter box

J is becoming a chatter box. I told this before right. Today we had to play "who can stay silent longer?" And of course she lost and we got atleast half an hour of silent zone! She is growing up in an environment of meetings, conferences, discussions etc. She and her friends are unknowingly including these terms and these culture in their playing.

A movie-Iti Mrinalini

This is a Bengali movie by Aparna Sen. Unfortunately I could not find any website of her in contrast to Mira Nair, another director, whose work I cherish. Aparna Sen lady holds a thought of pride in any Bengali womens' and in a few culturally aware Indians' hearts. I remember seeing her movie as a small child. The movie was called Paroma-I did not understand much of the movie then, but later I saw it again and many times and relished the intricacies of extramarital affair onscreen. I must say like Aparna Sen more as a director than an actress. Recently I have started liking her togetherness with her daughter. I like the way she gives, mingles and shares her life, her passion and her views with her daughter-Konkona Sen Sharma. Marvellous actress and a very poised one. She can also give another dimension to an advertisement of a health drink.

Recent movie picturing the mother-daughter duo Iti Mrinalini is a celebration of their togetherness. Many might find the movie a little slow and depressing but for me it is perfect. I liked the collage nature of the movie. Some pieces of which could have been bit more edgy considering life of a veteran actress as the story line. I liked the scenes were mother and daughter were shown to singing together and the wall photos (used as decorative pieces) of both konkona and aparna were were mingling with each other in different shots of the film.

Another story between this mother and daughter was a movie called Titli.
J and I have seen that movie several times and we shared our own moments of togetherness singing the song "Megh peoner bag er bhetor..."from the movie.

Bridge

That day, in office we were talking about roots. There were actually very few who feel they belong to a place, most others have gone one or more relocations in life and have become a bridge since then. There are few who feel lack of identity due to rootlessness and few who have made peace with the moves and being bridge between two states, or communities, or countries. I am a root less person, I have gone through my bits of identity crisis. I have learned to define my identity in my words too. Home is not a fixed place for me, I make this wherever I go.

Words

Many people around us believe that spoken words don't weigh anything. They just come out and vaporises. May be. I like words more than numbers and I give lots of importance to words which are said by others or by me. I try not to say anything if I don't mean it. I have never said or promised anything where I had doubts. I always say, "We will see" or " I will try". J used to get confused or frustrated at the age of 3 or 4 where she needed clear concepts. But I survived. Now J, in her 8, understands her mother's language and negotiates further according to her word skills.

Growing up

J turned 8 few days ago. She is growing up. Soon she will start walking her own path. She will not notice the clock when her mom will come back in the evening, and on some days she will not comment, "Hey mama, you are early today," with a golden smile.
I felt I have given enough of pencil, crayons, balloons and chocolates as return gifts in last birthdays and this time I decided to give fun and fresh air as return gifts after J's birthday party.

Struggle

J is struggling hard with her Hindi. I hope she will now pick the strings for writing Hindi. Being a mother I hate to see her struggling, but being a human I just am not strong enough to protect her from all the sufferings and struggles of life. I can just wish all the best for her. Earlier she struggled learning to skip, to bike, to speak and write English and so many other things. As a mother I really want to soak all the struggle from her life, but tomorrow I will not be there to do that for her, therefore may be it is better that she herself learn to soak them.

Being a mother

Is joy, happiness, patience, learning, power, responsibility, fun, irritation, helplessness, anger, struggle, dreams, selfishness, competitive, comparative, understanding, challenging, balancing...
actually an intense full time job to do.

With this potpourri of thoughts I welcome 2012!

Hi, there

2011-11-25T10:42:00.001-08:00

Yes, I am feeling that Blog-e-zine is slipping away from me. I am not able to connect to it as I used to while mothering all single. Strange ha!
Did I have more time then? Or did I notice 'J' more closely then? Or did my physical distance from my family made me write?

Anyway, today I am back in my mind-space as I am all on my own. 'J' has gone for a sleep over (first time after returning to India) and 'J's papa has gone faraway on a work-tour.
On other days I fall fast asleep at this time and today I am all wide eyed and talking with my e-zine at the middle of the night. Today being a friday is even better.

I have recently noticed that 'J' is speaking Hindi, highly accented but she has started blurting out. She is done with her shyness. Thanks to the new day care where she is spending her after-school hours till 6 pm and she is encouraged to speak Hindi. She has also started doing lots of craft again after starting to go in this day care. 'J' loves craft work and at home and school it does not happen that much. I plan, but never get to do it with her on regular basis. 'J' also get busy with other attractions. So now I am happy seeing to be back with her scissors, sticky tape and glue.

We are so much used to of community centre for child-care that we grabbed the opportunity of sending 'J' to day care from the day it got started in our area.

'J' also liked the place from first day. Being older kids they are strong voices in the day care. Little kids love them and wait from them until they come from school. That day 'J' was explaining to me how a little kid in the day care hugs her when she returns from school. She was so proud to show her elder sisterly instinct. An instinct which used to be very common in olden joint family days. Today in a nuclear family scenario these are the golden opportunities for a child to learn sharing, giving and caring.
I feel that it will become very difficult task for me to spend days after days with people in their eighties with only short options to see any one else of my age, just the same can be true for kids. Children need other children to learn equality. While living only with their parents or other adults they learn either to obey or to order.
This is my personal opinion and might not hold for you.

Our time to talk with each other has reduced drastically. In the morning when she goes to school, we don't talk. We act like robots (very sleepy ones). In the evening when we unite again, we all feel so tired (in India the energy level get really low after whole day of work and study) that we just stick to our own shells (reading, T.V. or doing nothing).
Its only in the weekends where we gets time to listen to each other.

'J' has recently started with mystery stories of famous five and all. I was little skeptical as once she starts reading mystery stories then it will be difficult to make her read anything else. But then in India Enid Blyton is all over, there is no denying her. So let she continue and I will continue with finding other authors for her to read. Recently we got a book on curious George. It is about a curious monkey and the character is quite famous in USA. We did not know him before. 'J' is grown up for the book but she and I loved reading and re-reading the book and the illustrations. I realized that with 'J' growing up I am also loosing the window of going back into toddler's and small kid's world of books.

'J' has stopped asking me to stay at home during her holidays. She gets up and gets ready to go to the day care. This was unimaginable just 1.5 years ago.

'J' always notice and says, "hey, Mumma you are home early today". She has stopped complaining when I come late from work.

Hopping in the world of different languages!

2011-11-16T09:50:00.001-08:00

* A fiction I wrote some months ago.

Riki could not understand this. Her parents told her that they needed to move to another country again. This time it will be India. They were in UK only for two years now, and they are going to move again! Riki was very sad and nervous to go to another unknown place. She has after all just started to speak proper English and making best friends in her class.

Seeing her not so ‘happy-curled lipped face’ and tears in her eyes, her mother made a cup of hot chocolate for her; she herself took a cup of black tea and sat with her. Then she started talking about the days when they were new to UK.

They came to UK from Germany. Riki had to leave all her friends and her kindergarten teacher there. She also could not bring many of her toys. She could speak only German then, and at home they; that is, her mummy, daddy and she, spoke Bengali. On asking once, her mother told her that they don’t speak German at home like other kids in her Kindergarten, because they are not German. Instead they are Bengali, from India. Riki who knew German and Bengali, on coming to UK found that people talk yet another language, English. She was little scared, as she could not understand them, her mother taught her to speak few sentences like “My name is Riki and I am five years old”.

On the first day at her new school in UK she was very nervous, but many children from her class wanted to be friends with her. The teacher was also very good and she told her that children are very good in learning languages so she need not worry. She liked her teacher and the school; it was very similar to her kindergarten in Germany. She was also very proud, as she was a schoolgirl and not a kindergarten goer any more.

In the beginning every one in her class tried to be very friendly with her, but it was really difficult for Riki to understand, what others were saying. Luckily her teacher asked a girl called Judith who was a German, to help Riki. She liked that arrangement. She was also observing others. She smiled and tried to be friendly with all. She used gestures and her eyes to express her thoughts but was hesitating to participate in any game. First few days, she liked it at school, the fun and the extra attention she was getting.

But slowly it was not that fun for Riki, as it was not possible to ask every thing to Judith. Sometimes she had to play with an invisible wind friend in the school playground, all others having their own group to play. She used to get very tired after school, after listening to a language, she could not understand. Her teachers were helpful, but they too did not have all their time for her only. On returning home she would ask her mother to talk in German, she would like her mother to read stories from German books. She would speak a lot with her doll in German. She did not have any friend in her neighbourhood. She so much wanted to run back to her friends and teachers in Germany, chat with them a lot and have fun in her kindergarten.

Her parents told her that they were also quite alone at their work and they were also struggling to make friends, in spite of their knowing English. But then they all would end up curling with each other and would talk with each other, Riki liked this time of togetherness.

Slowly with each passing day she found that she began to understand at least little of what others are saying, her teachers were helping her by speaking with her slowly and using few words repeatedly, they encouraged her to talk even when she managed to express her thoughts in small sentences, and when she was able to read those speech bubbles in English text books correctly, the teachers clapped with big applause. Her classmates also showed thumbs up each time she spoke with them.

One day her mother took her to the city library just as they had in Germany, there she could find many books with lots of pictures and few words, though in English, but she liked the books and the library. Slowly she started reading some words from them. Soon it became their Saturday ritual to go to library spend a lot of time there and come back with lots of books.

Then one day Riki’s mum told her that they would shift to a new house, and added that Polly from her class also lived in the same street. She got very excited hearing this. Riki liked her new rented house, for the first time she had her own room, her mother decorated her room with pink bed linens, photos and a mirror, so that she could look at herself when she would play dressing up game. And just few houses away it was Polly’s house. She could see Polly’s garden from window of her room. Polly was a charming and friendly girl. Riki and Polly started spending most of the time playing together at school and at home. Polly told Riki that she also has another language for home like Riki. Polly told, that the language she speaks at home is called Spanish and it is a language spoken mainly by people from Spain. Riki found this very interesting, as it was same in their family too.

Then Riki’s mother and Polly’s mother told them that people from different countries speak different languages. Riki’s mother told them that in India even in one country people speak different languages. Polly, Riki and their mums became a strong gang and did many funny things together.

Slowly Riki was finding it easy and funny to live in that small town of UK, she did not feel sad for Germany anymore, she remembered Germany though. She had found friends at UK and she could speak English now.

Riki’s mum took a break from talking and sipped from her tea mug.

Riki was listening quietly to her mother and she smiled, as that was exactly what had happened.

Then her mother fumbled her hairs and added that as she excelled so well during her last move, this time she will do even better as in India many can speak English and Bengali and several other languages, also Riki will get a chance to learn so many of them. Riki’s mother promised her that she would help her to keep contact with her friends and teachers in UK. And one day they might come to visit her friends in UK.

Riki was still sad as she has to leave her friends, teachers and school but she was not that nervous any more. She could see that just like she learned English, Bengali and German, she would learn different languages of India-Hindi the national language and so many other languages used by people from different parts of India.

And her mother said if they keep hopping to new places like this then one day she will have friend from all over the world.
Riki, by then was looking at the world map hanging in her room; and thought that would not be a bad idea!

Mummy, Look! The milk is tearing apart!

2011-10-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

It was a Sunday and late in the morning. Rini, a little girl of love her Sunday mornings, because a) on Sunday mornings she can get up late, b) after getting up she can take out her heap of storybooks and magazines, she can look at them one by one, read some of them or solve some puzzles given in them while lying on her belly on the small carpet laid in their living room. Her mummy and daddy also feel very happy on Sunday morning, no office, no school, no shopping and no hurry. They read the newspaper, Sunday editions or magazines, drink tea and eat breakfast, chat and laugh.

Along with this, Sunday morning brings another attraction for Rini. On Sundays, Rini and her parents cook together after having a late. Rini does not remember from when, but it has almost become a ritual now, that the Sunday afternoon meals are cooked by all of them together. Rini finds it very exciting as she can see many magic happening while they cook, her mummy calls it ‘food science’. She eagerly waits for this fun time for the whole week.

Today while turning the pages of her magazines and putting a spoonful of chocolate cornflakes in her mouth Rini could hear her parent’s discussion about lunch-menu. Her mummy was reading out loud a paneer (Indian cottage cheese) recipe and they decided to cook that. But for that they needed paneer, which they don’t have in stock. Her mother took a look into the freeze and found there was enough milk though, her mummy announced that they could tear the milk and make some paneer, all by themselves! Rini could smell some adventure here, she know what paneer is, her parents have also make it at home before, but she never knew that it was made after tearing the milk! She finished her breakfast very fast, collected all the spread out of her books and magazines, kept them back in proper place, washed her hands with soap (a rule they follow before starting to cook) and went to the kitchen to spy what her mummy was doing. Her mummy was beaming with a big smile. She told Rini, to start preparing for tearing the milk and keep the things she thinks they need for the job. Rini was little confused, but she did not want to show it. So she took a big saucepan to pour the milk, she took out the milk packets from the freeze and she took the kitchen scissors also (for tearing the milk!). Her mummy smiled, she said to tear the milk they might not need the scissor, she took out lemon from the freeze and squeezed out juice from them instead. Daddy was also there in the kitchen by now. They pour the milk in the saucepan and put it on the gas hob, and let the milk boil on low flames. Rini was very curious; she was sitting on a stool and was waiting for the milk to boil. As soon as it starts boiling, mummy gave Rini the lemon juice to pour slowly over the milk. Her mummy was stirring the milk. Nothing was happening for a while, but suddenly Rini saw that the whole layer of milk was crumbling into bits and pieces, and actually the milk was tearing away. Rini was very excited to see this; she exclaimed Mummy, look! The milk is tearing apart!

Her parents were clapping too, and they put off the gas flame. Took the paneer out in a cheese cloth and the watery stuff left, mummy was calling it whey was kept to add in a gravy or soup. Mummy said they can also use the whey for making paneer again, and then they will not need the lemon. They made a bundle of the cheesecloth and put some heavy utensil on it. This was to take out most of the water from paneer, to cut the paneer into cubes later. It needed some time and Rini was bursting with questions inside her. Her mummy knows her well, so she took her to the dining table, took out her kitchen activity notebook and brought some colour pencils from Rini’s pencil box, then she said ask.

Rini wanted to know why the very uniform milk suddenly tears away into pieces.

Mummy told that although the milk looks very uniform but it is an example of natural colloid where in the water, milk proteins, one of them is called casein and fat particles are floating. Colloid is a mixture where one substance is dispersed in the other uniformly but not dissolved like salt/sugar in water. The casein protein cages lots of calcium (the material our teeth or egg shells are mainly made up of!) ions inside it, these are known as micelles and that reflects all the light and gives milk the white colour too. There is other protein like serum protein is also there. There are other minerals like magnesium and sodium and many vitamins.

Rini asked how the casein protein could cage calcium? Whether they had hands?

Mummy smiled and said, “Then we need to know little more.”

She continued, “Proteins (the building blocks for growth) are made up of smaller units called peptides (like Lego blocks), some peptides in the protein have branches called phosphate residues on them and they are negative in charge and calicium ions are positive in charge so being opposite they attract each other like magnets. And outer layer of the micelles are negatively charged so two casein protein don’t come close to each other and they keep swimming away from each other. But all this is a very balancing act just like you saw that day how that girl in the fair was balancing on the rope.”

Rini was growing impatient and she said, okay, okay and then, how on heating and giving lemon broke the milk into pieces?

Mummy answered, “On heating we are destroying the balance and again on adding lemon juice reduces the negative charge on the surface of the micelles and it also brings out more calcium and phosphorous from the micelles as it is an acid and thus the micelles get damaged and the casein protein come closer stick together, many thousands of them together make the paneer.” “Do you understand now?” Mummy asked.

'Yes," Rini mumbled, "But how can we see all these proteins and vitamins floating inside the milk", She added. Mummy looked at her and said, think on that. She added, “Just like you need glasses to watch TV properly there might be something else to watch those substances inside milk.” Then suddenly Rini shouted, “ I know with a microscope!” Mummy smiled.

In the mean time daddy was busy collecting the ingredients needed for the special paneer recipe, mummy wanted to make and the paneer was also ready to be cut into cubes, so mummy and Rini again went into the kitchen for more fun and science.

Return to India - Its been a year

2011-10-23T00:16:00.000-07:00

Diwali celebrations are in full swing all around. This reminds me that its been one year that I have returned to India for good.

Today when I look back to this year it has been, I can clearly visualise my journey back home and my takes on different phases of it.

I was never in two minds for returning back to India after seeing and living in other countries while getting education and going through first phases of work life. When the opportunity to return actually arrived, it did put me in several minds. While living in Europe I have seen life of total independence, complete organisation, extremely selected social life and material high. Also that life was devoid of family members, festivals or just an overall feeling of living in my own country. After returning back I immediately realised that from now on life will be more threaded with relationships, less independent (social, economic and physical), less in comfort in terms of organisation or material but at the end of the day, with a cup of tea in my hand I found telling myself, yes this is India - this is the country which has given me a nationality and this is the country where we will not need any visa to live. This is the country where my family is rooted and this is the country where my daughter is trying to find a root. It was not an easy situation for me, and I guess for anyone who goes through similar changes in life.

First 3-6 months of my homecoming, my status was unemployed, I spent time in extreme relaxation, dipped myself into the warm weather, season changes and colourful festivals of India, I spent lots of family time, read lots of books and I brought myself out of the comfort zone of reading only fictions to read biographies and travelogues (some of them are about people on the move When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit , My Life in France (Movie Tie-In Edition), The Scent Trail: How One Woman's Quest for the Perfect Perfume Took Her Around the World ), I learnt the feel of wheels though still not confident on it, learnt to cross traffic packed roads of a buzzing city of India (Yes, the roads were not so wild 10 years ago and I really needed to learn it), tried to figure out ways to teach Hindi-another new language for 'J'. I also took time to settle her down in a new school with much more academic pressure as she had in her previous school. For the first time in life I directly got involved with several kids in our neighbourhood and baked cakes and breads with them in weekends, this was extreme fun. This step helped 'J' to interact with others and also learn the art of sharing. Also 'J' was very prompt to figure out her own path of adjustments and adaptation in India.

We travelled a lot this year in Europe and India. 'J' has started enjoying travelling, short term stays at hotels and trying new kinds of food. She has also overcome the fear of a new place and has started showing signs of an enthusiastic traveller. Good for us! This year also brought several guests in our place. Many for the first time, and they could visit us just because we have shifted to India.

During these months I deliberately reached out to people who have gone through the experiences of resettling themselves in India. I found that networking helps to deal with new situations of life. Community life is becoming rare in India. Joint families are a rarity, religious spaces like temples are not attracting the young Indians busy with several other things. So the new society in India is very much individual based. It finally depends on the individual, whether to choose and pick a circle of people and build a community for herself or not. For me for having a cushion of like minded people around me works - the golden rule is no competitiveness or comparisons - just speak or listen to each other and encourage each other. It is very easy to not accept or criticise each others views but to understand each others views needs more broadness of mind.

Amidst of all these I was also going through mental preparation for leaving my primary career choice to the plan B. This was becoming a tough decision but a new job happened in reality and very suddenly. I, 'J' and her papa went through re-orientation to accommodate my job in our family routine. I found myself in a very unknown set up of a private firm in contrast to the university schedule I was used to before. Work is new but the challenges are not and my long term interest about this career helped me. My new work place gave me a set of colleagues which brought me a feeling of direct belonging to the place which I was missing while I was not working. Most of my acquaintances still then were getting created through 'J's friends or her papa's colleagues. 'J's papa made a comment that just after getting the job I am more aware to know the geography or landmarks of the city. My work also brought me close to the local people of this part of India and I have started imbibing more of the language of this state of India - the language is called Marathi - it has some similarity with Bengali or Hindi, other Indian languages I know. I found myself in same situation when I started learning German in Germany. A language is a key to the door to the culture, cuisine and people of that place and very true it is.

My work has structured my days and 'me - time' is a luxury again. The time I was utilising in reading, baking with kids or to do nothing. Also the regular juggle to spend time with 'J', managing to send her to the day care on her vacations and managing her temper tantrums because of stress are catching up fast in everyday life. No I am not complaining, but trying to say that children do get more mood tantrums and feel very tired when they cannot see their parents for long hours. But I have noticed a silent Sunday (staying home and unstructured) between highly active weekdays really helps.

Daily life of a working woman in India is quite different than in western countries. There each and every household chores are done by her or her spouse. But work and family is sorted in different compartments in most days. In India there are affordable domestic help but then schools, day cares, work time and commutes are not so confined or smooth in India. Women in India are also not able to voice their 'no' firmly. I am trying to keep going with work ethics I have learned in Europe but it puts pressure too as often I see only me standing and voicing a concern in the work place. I am not sure where this will lead me but for now this is how it is.

In short this year brought extreme shifts in my life. I stumbled, stopped, got confused, learned and started a new journey with baby steps.

Indian festivals dedicated to women

2011-09-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

Month of October and November brings festivals in almost every place in this world. Summer harvest gets over and the season of autumn knocks the doors. India is no exception. Sky wears a poetic blue color and the monsoon clouds floats away, sun-rays losses its heat and becomes softer. Many will agree with me that autumn in India does have a special charm. The charm increases its depth as most of India celebrates this season. Ramadan Eid, Ganesh chaturthi, Paryushan Parva, Visvakarma Puja, Onam, Navaratra, Durga Puja, Dusshera, Diwali, Nabanna and more. India is a conglomerate of several religion, cultures and society here is layered with the history of invasions and immigration. So most of the time it becomes very difficult to disentangle just one reason behind any festival. Hinduism being the major religion and one of the oldest religion of the world is full of myths and behind each festival several stories come alive. In India religions melt with each other and it is a common scene that one community celebrates Eid and other celebrate a Puja may be on same day.

Just now it is time for celebrating different forms of womanhood - Navaratra and Durga Puja. Hindu religion does not mind to give the super power to a woman and make her goddess with 10 hands holding different symbols of power. Devi Durga in her different forms and her daughters Laxmi and Saraswati are visiting earth just now. This is also the time when in olden times daughters used to go and visit her parents house for celebrations. Several rituals carried out even today shows that festivals during autumn were mainly to thank mother earth and with time they took the color of certain religion. Just like how rabbit and eggs, symbols of spring and prosperity became part of Easter celebrations in Christianity.

I come from eastern India, a state called Bengal or West Bengal to be precise (after division of Bengal into West-Bengal and Bangladesh).There Devi Durga is worshiped during this time as she is involved in fighting with a green colored monster (as 'J' named him) called Mahisasur. Devi durga was created for this particular purpose by different Hindu gods and she fought with him for 10 days and at the end she won over him. Parents of married girls say, Ma Durga visits her parents during this time and comes to earth with her kids from Kailash parvat.

Another story from other parts of India says the Lord Rama fought with Ravana and at the end of 10th day killed the 10 headed Ravana. Dussehera is celebrated in northern India believing on this story. There must be many other stories. I consider myself very limited in terms of my knowledge about India.

Here in the western parts of India where I am living now, Navaratri is celebrated, where for nine days nine forms of Durga (goddesses) are worshiped. Different forms of Indian goddesses includes that of courage, power, calmness, riches, knowledge and so on. People here indulge themselves in colorful attires, jewels, songs and dance during this time of the year. Many of them eat only fruits or some specific food (known as fasting food - a word found only in Indian English) made from certain grains and legumes. They wear dresses of particular color on each day of celebration representing the saree colors of Devi's from different temples present in this region. Today the color was green. There are rituals were certain grains are sprouted in earthen pots may be to symbolize good harvest or new harvest I guess. Songs are sung in groups around those pots and many games are played. Little time of fun and relaxation after tiring period of harvesting and collecting crops from fields I guess. Today with so many women working in India's booming IT sector or in service providing companies, such rituals seem to come from far away land.

It is inspiring to see how women here are balancing the demands of old traditions and immersing themselves into the color and sounds of festivities and then on entering into the offices, they are picking up the phone to make an international video call for bringing business from their peers sitting in the other side of the globe.

Indian women definitely owns several facets just like their goddesses!

Reflections

2011-09-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

Weekends are busier than weekdays:

This is a typical problem I face whenever I opt for full time work. Weekdays get very organised, predictable and sometimes boring. If I feel like watching movie, I don't watch as next day I need to get up early, 'J' gets exactly half an hour of pampering and 3 and 1/2 hours of instructions, orders or scoldings. Yes I have counted it, that a full time working mother (9 hours + 1 hour commute) gets 6 hours of parenting plus housekeeping time and that is if her sleeping time is 7 hours. So that boils down to 2-3 hour of parenting and 2-3 hour of housekeeping plus entertainment (entertainment for me means; one cooking/travel show on TV, two cups of relaxed tea drinking in morning and evening and little chit chat with neighbours/phone or husband).
So all my quality parenting desires (baking, art and craft, playing cards, cosy afternoon nap or story telling) needs to wait for the weekend. I am a lazy woman and so all my not to be disturbed laziness also needs to wait till weekends. Grocery and other shopping and socialising also get cramped in the weekend. We need to do our weekly cleaning up of the place we live in and then we crave for small outings which again needs to be done in weekend. I yearn to do some freelance writing and that too get snuggled in the weekends.

So although friday evening I feel very elevated about the weekend but by end of Saturday I start looking for calm, quiet and boring weekdays!

Revisiting my childhood through J's:

That day, on returning home in the evening, I saw 'J' and one of her friends were walking very fast with fingers closing their nostrils. I asked, "What happened?" "Aunty, trees are releasing carbon-di-oxide now, we need to hurry up otherwise we will also inhale carbon-di-oxide, and that is not we should inhale."
I smiled at them and told them to hurry up and go home. I remembered as a child, I and my friends used to make big fuss about how we should not stand under a big tree in the evening as trees were also inhaling oxygen like us.

Plunging into forming a community:

I need friends for my survival. I need to be constantly on phone or mail or have access to friend's places. I need a community to thrive upon. I cannot live on my own. I am highly opinionated, but I need people to talk, argue or debate on them. My life of endless relocations have taught me to understand the essence behind any ritual, tradition or mannerism of people around me, before being judgemental to them. In summary I need to talk about all the observations I make in my life. Two and half years ago I started this blog exactly for the reason that I needed to talk and I was not able to as all my friends and families were far away from me in different time zones. This blog has brought so many new friends to me. Here on returning to India, I was bit cautious, skeptical and careful about going out and reaching people. But now I am confidently plunging into waves of new friendships. Who says friendship cannot be made once you are out of college? I found many open minded warm friends since then and even now, when I am knocking at the door of middle age.

Keeping the older bonds tight:

Yes, I also try my best to keep connected as tightly as possible with friends who were together with me at one point of my life, specially those with whom I shared golden and toughest moments of my life. Life take turns and sometimes those close friends might not connect to my present emotions, but I try my best to stay close to them. Just recently I felt that actually tightness of bonds remains in spite of physical distances when the efforts are two sided and informal. I have been very lucky that I get so many surprise phone calls/visits from friends whom I have not called for so many months due to sheer time constrains. They yell at me even before saying hello, but they do take time to call/visit me.
The ones who don't give space to egos, formalities or comparisons in their friendship.

On getting older:

Yes, crossed one more birthday, enjoyed the day thoroughly but a creepy feel remained with me and that is, span to live is getting less with each passing day. Almost half of the reel is spent and now I need to be careful with the other half.
As one of the friend reminded me that I am going to lead a much more matured, responsible, poised, organised, confident and sure life than my twenties.
I understood the underlying meaning that fun, frolic, confusions, dreams, ambitions to change the world (Yes, I did have high ambitions!), those typical highlights of twenties will be on short supply from now onwards.

So it is even so more important to stick on to whatever fun and laughter that comes on my way.

How inclusive you are? For your spouse

2011-09-22T08:39:00.000-07:00

We grow in a family, learn to abide by the rules, traditions and rituals of our family. Some are being followed from generations some are build new just few years ago. We sometimes follow them, sometime argue against them and mostly when we get chance to live on our own, we learn to ignore/mould or modify many of them.

While doing all these we meet that special person with whom we feel we can spend our life. So we start our conjugal life as spouses, for the first time where two people from different backgrounds and cultures come together and make oath of spending rest of their lives together in happiness (yes, I know it is always not true, there are divorces, remarriages and so on, but lets stick to the good old fairy tale situations). So we start a life of togetherness either as live-in or as a married couple. Along with being a child, sibling, relative we learn to become a spouse and we also try to play all the roles perfectly on some occasion. Here comes the twist in our lives. Here is a twisted questionnaire my readers who are already wearing the hat of a spouse or will become one sooner.

Living together, for two adult coming from different upbringing requires many skills, fine tuning and understanding. Most of the time we try our best and sometimes we fail badly. Being inclusive is the mantra of happy togetherness among spouses. Here I throw you some questions on how inclusive you are as a spouse? Or in other words, well no more explanations, go figure it out on your own. Read the questions and think about the answers in your mind, with no bias attached.

1) Before starting the relationship did you think that your partner will be a good choice for you or did you think that two of you will make a good team?

2) Did you think about the career/hobby of your partner when you decided for a change/transfer of yours?

3) Did you make a plan to gel with family of your spouse or you always wondered how your spouse will adjust in your family?

4) Although you are good friends with equal minded liberal girls but do you like have a not very upfront, shy and dependent kind of person as your spouse? (Only for men)

5) Do you like to have a spouse who can understand you in and out, who should give you equal stands, who should help you out at home and outside but he should also treat you like a delicate girl? (Only for women)

6) Do you give the right to speak and act to your spouse even though you don't agree with him/her all the time?

7) Do you stamp down your ego and consider making up after a big fight with your spouse?

8) How did/do you modulate your life to make space for your spouse, his/her career/hobby in it?

9) Did you alter/left your career or relocate with a new job to join your spouse?

10) Do you think you are only the money horse of the family and all the rest will be taken care on their own?

11) While buying a stuff do you go ahead and buy it considering your spouse will accept it at the end, you don't care much about her opinion or you avoid the situation where s/he can say no?

12) How do you see yourself in the coming time frame of next 3 years
a) Holding a senior position in your work place by giving more time to the job
b) You look forward to a healthy career and couple/family with almost perfect work-life balance

13) Do you include your spouse while doing household chores or investing money?

14) How often you give surprises to your spouse?

15) How much of your work schedule or career path is changed after birth of your child/ren?

16) How often you complain and nag about your negative emotions to your spouse?

17) How often you fight with each other because of third party/ external reasons?
(e.g. bad work day or having a frustrated day at home)

18) How much do you believe him/her?

19) How often you keep a bad fight as a marker in your mind to use it for next time?

20) How often you enjoy time with just each other, with no laptop, mobile, ipad, T.V or kid in between?

No markings or no correct answers are there for any question. Answers to all question are very subjective.

If you think you are not enough inclusive then work for it, sincerely. If you think you are doing a very good job on being inclusive then go ahead and spend some fantastic quality time together with your spouse (would be spouse) this weekend.

Happy togetherness!

A quick note

2011-09-19T11:07:00.000-07:00

Time is flying by. 'J' is growing up, she is also saying funny things almost every day. It is not possible to pen each and every funny moment a child creates in her parents life but here is a quick note of some of her recent tid-bits.

Riddle :
'J': "Can you tell a word that starts with a T ends with a T and has T in it?"
I was taking time.
'J': "Pass mummy, pass..."
I: "Yes, pass."
'J': "Teapot!"

Question:
'J': "Why do we need to grow? I don't want to grow. It is boring to be an adult. You need to work a lot as an adult."

Talking with a friend:
'J': "My mother is a medical writer, she writer about medicines."
Her friend: "What does she exactly writes about medicines?"
'J': "Humm... that is a tough question, may be she writes about the ingredients of medicine."

Demand (After 2 hours of TV time):
'J': "Why am I always asked to switch off the TV? You can watch TV as much as you want, then why can't I? This is so unfair!"

Curiosity:
It has become extremely difficult to talk with 'J's papa about any topic while 'J' is with us. 'J' is curious to know about every topic we talk about. And then on listening she also need to react or comment. Huff!

Concern:
After reading a story book, she comes and tells me to read that book. Recently she read a book where the story ends with a death and she was sitting silently for few moments after finishing the book. On asking she told me to read the book. I asked her whether she did not like the book, and she told me that she liked the story, but it had a sad ending. For the first time she read something where she wanted to change the ending and she was concerned for not being able to do that.

Playmate:
'J' is becoming a good playmate for Ludo, cards, chess and so on. She is maturing and developing as a serious player. She is extremely competitive but does not demand anymore to win each time we play.

Compliment:
'J': "Mummy, you are just like strawberry short cake."
I: "Why do you think so."
'J': "Strawberry short cake makes friend everywhere she goes therefore she never get lost in a new place. She just phone a friend living nearby. You will not get lost anywhere."

Oh! am I a slow coach?

2011-09-05T12:44:00.000-07:00

Thoughts of a mother for the teachers of India - On the occasion of Teacher's day;

"Oh! mummy why am I such a slow coach," complained 'J' with a very irritated voice. "Today I was also very clumsy, I dropped glass of juice in the birthday party and now I again dropped a glass of water." "Yes, I know," I told her solemnly. “It is fine to be slow than fast and faulty and it is okay to be clumsy once in a while," I added quickly to my normally neat daughter. We talked about other things and soon irritation from her voice vanished.

Who else will know than a parent about the minute details of their child/ren. 'J' has been a slow one, from the time she was born and therefore a calm, quiet, patient, sensitive and shy one too. I remember a scene where she was making a tower with building blocks in front of me and another friend of mine and in that age (around 1 and a 1/2 years) she used have great fun by breaking the tower also. So after making the tower she spread her arms to break the it but suddenly she saw my friend and she immediately put her hands down, both me and my friend were amazed to see her control and her facial expression of extreme shyness.

Then I remember trails of scenes like, her day care teacher gave me a sheet of paper where 'J' had scribbled all over with no space left. "A sign of patience and calmness", she told me. 'J' started walking much later than her peers but when she started walking she was all okay, no stumbling or wiggling. Then, she took long time to learn the colors, and I was almost loosing may patience. But she learnt them finally, same happened with learning shapes. She was never the one who could churn out rhymes after rhymes just on a single demand. She learned at the most 5 rhymes at a time and forgot them while moving towards other things of life. Her shyness was extreme till age 5 and I had tough time coping with that. She was late in speaking, also because she was listening more than two languages around her. She was late in eating with fork and knife as at home she was seeing her parents following Indian way of eating with hands. She was late in adjusting herself in her day care, she was extremely attached with me and her physical activity was not anywhere close to any of her peers in her group. She also started showing lateness in learning alphabets. I was also in a mess in that time with new motherhood and other things in my life. So her slowness, in general bothered me even the more.

Thankfully, we were living in Europe at that time and the pedagogy (process of teaching) out there is very effective and different than in India. All the care takers of day care and kindergarten teachers and later on her primary school teachers guided us through with great patience and I learned a lot of pedagogy (teaching+child psychology and/or child development) from them. This was a refreshing change for me in comparison to India were children and their ability are status symbol of their parents. Children are also subject of plenty of discussion and extreme curiosity among relatives and neighbors in India. For most it does not matter if a child is sensitive, helpful, good mannered, learn about his/her own safety and others safety, creative, innovative, but he/she should be able to recite poems, memorize times (multiplication) table and should be able to write in cursive handwriting by the age of 4.

Europe has acquired a very different perspective about child rearing over the years (decades ago they also had similar attitude like most of us have in India towards kids) and that helped us and ‘J’ to overcome or extend our boundaries and move ahead for the next challenge. This also helped us to keep our calm in the face of new circumstances and environment.

Here are some small gestures we got from most people in Europe and which helped us to come out of our own demands and anxiety of parenting and to understand a child;

Never ever a stranger has tried to squeeze 'J's cheek or fumble her hair. Old grannies, if they wanted they asked before touching her fingers very gently or hold her toe when she was a baby or a toddler. This was our first lesson about respecting children's body and will.

When she grew up and started speaking, never ever her day care attendant or any one else commented that why she is shying to tell her age to them. They always suggested that, "If you like you can show your age with fingers." 'J' responded to this smilingly and they exclaimed "Oh! you are almost a big girl."

She was going in a German day care, we could speak and understand German but definitely that was not the pure form. 'J' was showing slowness in speaking, I went to her day care teacher and asked, "Should we speak German with her at home too? May be that will help her learn to speak faster." The reply was, "No, mother tongue is very important in a child's life it will be a trunk of the tree where all the other languages she will be learning later will be the branches and you don't worry 'J' is showing signs of understanding German, she just wants to get sure before starting to speak, and with in few weeks 'J' started speaking, she was 14 months then, German in day care, Bengali at home. Few words first, and then she started forming sentences.

'J' started walking pretty late, but then her steps were perfect. We went to the day care the next day, and announced in pride that our daughter is walking now. Every one where very happy. In the evening we went to pick her up and asked enthusiastically, " Did she walk today?" "No, we guess she will take her time to feel confident to walk here", replied the day care person. After one month they gave us the news that 'J' walked in the day care for the first time and she did it with great confidence.

Once I asked her kindergarten teacher that she not really interested in learning alphabets, they told me that I should take more care to build a routine of sports or nature walk with her as it is all-right if a child does not show interest in reading/learning or writing till the age of seven. But by then they should learn to swim, cycle and play team games. The reason was that sports will give her the aptitude and energy towards life along with a easy method to retain good health.

When she started going to school, she was also learning a new language and she was confusing with 'b' and 'd', 'was' and 'saw' etc. She was also writing mirror images of several alphabets and numbers like S or 5, specially while tired or nervous. I got worried, and asked her teacher, "Should we go for a special training for her?" In Europe all schools do have counselling and special training if required. Her teacher in a calm voice told me, "She is not the only child writing this way. There are similar in the class and they have never learned more than one language or changed places/countries. So we should definitely give her more time." I an Indian mother persisted, "So shall I teach her little extra at home?" "You both work very hard the whole day in your laboratory or school, so after going home just relax, spend time with each other or listen to music or watch TV together. Life is not only about learning, it is also to enjoy", was the answer, in a tone even more persistent.

Later I observed that the teacher did do some extra things and gave useful tips to children to solve all the above said symptoms visible in many children in primary school age. Also special care was taken for proper pronunciation and expression. Maths was dealt in a very tactful manner too. So that children don't get afraid of numbers or their properties. And by the end of that year, I found 'J' was a lot better and not confused any more. She was writing stories, letters and expressing her thoughts properly and carefully.

'J' went to five different places (day cares, kindergarten and school) in Europe in first 6 years of her life and anywhere she went, she was extremely shy or cautious in first few months and then she started loosening up, and we always got the report from the carers/teachers that now 'J' has opened up and she has started to learn very fast. So every place gave her those few months of settling down time, an attitude so rare to be seen in Indian childcare/educational systems.

Finally just before arriving in India, I asked 'J's class teacher in Scotland, "Do you think she will be able to learn other new languages and will be able to manage the extreme pressure of conventional education system of India?" Her teacher assured me, "'J' has learned the method of learning, so any where you throw her she will tumble at first but slowly she will start collecting herself, you as a mother can hold her finger while she is in tumbling stage but then you need not to worry, she will be fine. She will never be the fastest one but don't worry she will be fit."

I said, thank you to the teacher and left the class with shiny eyes to start our journey for our own country, where education is still apart from life and far from contemporary.

Child carers, teachers and counsellors are you listening?

Single child and a game of Ludo

2011-09-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

She was a little girl and did not have television at home, evenings were mostly a time for reflections. She used to have to drink a glass of milk just after coming back from outside play, wash her hands and feet and then sit with her homework and stuff. Her mother and father used to have their tea to drink and the day to share in between them. Overhearing the discussions of what the colleague of her father commented on the new project and about the information from her mother on what the neighbour's Aunt is knitting for her kid she was concentrating on solving her two rows of additions and subtractions. After mathematics there were words to learn for dictation and one page of Hindi handwriting. Her mother always re-checked her preparation for the dictation and audited all other home-work. Her mother accepted only neat hand writing and completed home work. Today she was quite satisfied. Her father also finished reading the news paper and was looking at them. She jumped when her mother said, "Okay thats fine for today and you can play something until the dinner time." She brought her one of the few board game to her parents, with expectant eyes looked at them.

Courtesy -Google Images

Both parents nodded in yes, and hence started the game of Ludo. Little girl always played with red disk pieces, one of the advantage of being only child. They started playing and yes, just like the last time she was not getting any six from her dice throw to start her game. Her parents on the other hand were all out and all over the Ludo board. Her father as usual was making the winning noises and irritating her. Her mother was showing sympathy and was offering her to take the sixes she was getting from dice throw. "No, said the little girl, I am big now, I want a fair game." She tried her best and even when her discs were out but she was not able to win the game and then she could not stop herself anymore. It is never easy to accept a defeat and same is true in a game of Ludo when you play with your parents. Her eyes tried to be dry but failed and her parents encouraged her, told her that it was okay to loose once in a as other wise she would not be able to enjoy the victory. She did not understand that too well, but what else she could do other than waiting for next game of Ludo.

Some place else he, another single child; a little boy of the family also grew playing Ludo with his parents on some evenings and got lost. He made big fuss over her loss too and his parents cajoled him and told him that there would be always a next time.

Both are now grown up, faced many losses and in several points of a sport called life. They are a couple now and have a little daughter. They are busy parents, are well informed and well decked with several electronic gadgets. They don't get time to play Ludo with their kid. Their little girl is also too much involved with her gadgets, gizmos and friends.

That day, it was raining heavily and suddenly they found themselves playing Ludo with each other on a computer screen. The little girl was happy to play something together as a family and the adults were re-entering their childhood moments, unknowingly. The little girl lost the game, just like them several years ago, the little girl did not like it, she wanted to win badly at least from her parents. Her parents knew exactly how it feels, they looked at each other and they jointly said, Come on 'J', it is only a game and we are sure you will get many other chances to win."

As parents, both of them know now that it is essential to win in life but it is more necessary to loose and learn to accept it and move on, they wanted to pass the same knowledge to their only child, just like their parents did for them.

A friend and a cup of coffee

2011-08-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

It was just by chance; we were searching for a better house to live and we found a perfect one near to their' s. I knew her before as 'J's class-friend's 'P's mother. We met each other in the market street. She was a warm and pleasant person with lots of curls on her head and smiles in her eyes.

As we shifted to their street, they (family of 3) came to welcome us with a nice bunch of flower. I instantly sensed that we were going to have nice time. They knew we were temporary people in their street but they stretched their arms for nothing else but friendship.

Time went by and we started getting closer. I was in that time a shelled person with no confidence at all, I was all messed up and needed to get things sorted, I was trying to re-search some traits of mine and I was not sure about them. Her big warm hand, offering me a bond of friendship was absolutely the thing I needed then.

'J' also mingled with the family very quickly and took the position of the second child for them. This was the first time she was getting close to people other than her parents and kindergarten teachers/kids. Two girls used to call themselves, two sisters and we used to call them yin and yang!

We spent our time of togetherness with cups of coffee and we went for city trails, a theatre, school functions, shopping and also a Harry Potter train journey. We taught them to eat chicken korma, spinach - lam and they taught us to make burgers, potato salad, home made custard and so many other things.

I did not have specifics to brew real coffee, a must have for pure, dark, no milk coffee drinkers. I mostly offered her Nescafe with a spoon full of of sugar. She always took it with a smile, she had a special place in my home to sit near the window, with her coffee mug on the window side. It could be a weekday just after 6 pm or a friday, even better then. Girls used to get busy in their world, taking out each and every toy 'J' had and then displaying them and playing with them. We mothers were fine with that as long as they made promise to tidy things up. The two girls always agreed to that but always made fuss at the end.

While the girls were busy playing we used to talk on several issues mostly- religion, India, Europe, parenting, friendship, psychology or she would force me to do to brain training games like Sudoku or taught me play Back Gammon. She would never bother about my limits and once she even forced me to dance on the tunes on 'Hey MaKarena'! Yes, I liked that experience.

The place where we were is famous for its rain, wind and cold weather and people warned me when I was preparing to go there for not few days but two years. But while living there, my friend gave me the warmest experiences of my life.

Today on one very rainy friday while I am in warm India, I am missing you my friend. A friend who never cared for any calculation in friendship, who always kept her doors open for us and if anyway she found that my door is closed she just knocked thrice and came in.

A friendship is to share your thoughts, cross your limits and give your best hug;
A friendship is to break the walls, forget your woes or worries and embrace.

Dedicated to the month of August - where friendship day resides.

Falling into new routine- the ripples

2011-08-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

It is one and a half months now. My job life has started, for the first time in India. This is after 5 and half years when I and J's papa are working together again. In last 5 and half years we were either not in one place when we both were working or I was not working when we were living together. It therefore needed some recap of those days when both of us used to get up, get our tea, get ready and go to our respective offices.
The job has created some new ripples in our little world of three and we all got little off the stage to adjust with the new routine.

This time unlike the last ones, I have a 9-6 job, 9 hours fixed, cards get swiped, time gets noted, work gets done.

Time keeping is very important in my recent work. I, in contrast dwell in the layers of time. My new job demands lots of time calculation. Hope I will learn the skill now. I am trying to use up the nine hours in office to its fullest and then shut the computer and my mind from work.

J is happy as at least she does not have to go to a new city/country again because of mamma's job. She is absolutely fine now with mummy working 5 days a week. A scene unimaginable when she was one, two or even five years old for that matter. I had extreme hard time putting her in kindergarten in the morning in those days. Now she is totally cool with her mother going for a job. A relief for me. That day when I asked her whether she feels bad on returning home from school? She said, "Not at all, I get to play a lot with others". On asking "J, are you happy as mummy is working again?" Her reply was prompt, "Yes, off course, you told me to give lots of gifts once you get a job, remember."

My job also led to other developments in our life style and that is inclusion of more than one domestic help in our daily routine.
India is a country were domestic helps are easy to get and difficult to retain. After dilly-dallying for few weeks I also entered in the loop of maid, baby sitter, chauffeur kind of a life style. Baby sitter is needed as no after school programme is there in the schools. There are private day cares but then 'J' has to be chauffeured from her school to the day care at the school end. A difficult task. Institute day care is still on developmental stages in many of the government run organisation. But things are getting better with each year. With my lack of confidence on driving and lack of proper public transport in typical Indian cities - a chauffeur came as an time saving answer to travel to and fro from work, expenses are high though. Things go super smooth if the whole team work together in harmony. But the uncertainty is too large for that harmony. Many days one or the other does not come and we end up doing chores on our own, so for now slowly we are also building the machine based support that we got used to of, while living in Europe. A middle way to find a balance.

Next big bang came on my back it self. Constant sitting in front of the computer brought lots of pain on my lower back, poor posture said the doctor. So I am trying to take breaks in between ticking off the to-do list. Little walk up and down the stairs, drinking a cup of coffee while standing near the cubicle of other colleagues, putting my feet firmly on the ground and not let it just loosely touch the ground (yes, I am a short woman) are some of the changes I am trying to bring in my regular sedentary work. Also some exercises are provided by a nice and soft spoken physiotherapist that day. I am trying to do them without fail.

Weekends have become too tight and I am not finding enough time for my proper baking classes. I am working on them. I need to figure that out as the kids have started enjoying cooking/baking. They have started bringing new ideas and they do look forward to saturday baking classes. Socialising/outdoors/shopping/chores all seems to be to tough to handle in two sandwiched days between two work weeks, where heart wants just to lie and read.

After mostly wearing jeans and shirt/T shirts to work for last ten years, I was little skeptical in my newfound corporate world about the formal dress code. But it seems I am enjoying wearing Salwar-Kameez just as I used to, while I was in university. I am enjoying cooking different kinds of lunch to take in my lunch box. Lunch hour at office is a free flowing time where many of my colleagues to have lunch together. A time not devoid of recipe exchange, gossips and discussion on new movie or fashion!

It seems to me that the new kind of days have started falling into routines and the ripples will either stay or fade away-that only time will say.

Back into 9 to 6 time table

2011-08-03T08:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, after few months of hiatus and afternoon naps, I am back in the work life. For this moment this job is providing me the specifics of living in same place as my husband's, allowing me family time and a decent packet. Although this is not first job for me but there are many things I am doing in this job for the first time.

This is the first time I am working outside of an university.
This is the first time I will not be handling any chemical.
This is the first time I will not be collecting data sitting in front of a big machine.
This is the first time my supervisor's designation is a manager and not a professor.
This is the first workplace for me where I see lots of women from lower level to the highest level of the career ladder.
This is the first time I will not spend lots of time finding answers to the questions imposed from last experiments.
This is the first time I won't be blocking machine time to run experiment and then keeping my finger crossed to get those blocked time unhindered to finish the experiments ( no machine break, J not getting sick etc.).
This is the first time my colleagues are not scientists or scientific co-workers. Most of them are actually medical doctors.
This is the first time I am working in India.
This is the the first time I am involved in collaborative projects which runs across countries and time zones and not just between two laboratories in a same institute or university.
This is the first time I am not overburdened that I need to perform for development of my own career. It is a team work that matters in my new job and projects are done as a part of a team commitment
This is the first job for me where the timing jotted down through swipe card really counts.
Actually money and time are very much connected to the deliverables.
This is the first time when I don't feel guilty on leaving office at 6 in contrast to my past life of a researcher.
Now I am more close to write about science or drug development and drug safety professionally.
I am learning the process of writing science more as a art of communication than to report it as facts and figures.
My new work is absolutely not related to my last life of a scientific researcher.
My new work is but very closely related to all the transferable skills I have acquired while doing bench science.
My long term staying outside India is coming handy in understanding and maintaining the international commitments required in this job.
After spending first few weeks in the work place I have adapted to my daily routine now.
I primarily started liking my work place.
People are relaxed and helpful, a major plus point in a work place.
The nature of work is definite and structured, a relief from boundless work I always had before.
Training is provided to the new comers and each and every step is structured, formatted and peer reviewed - an art which is absolutely absent in academics thus leading to dilution of focus and objectives in so many cases.
I hope to keep learning new things and keep going in unknown career directions with my handful of transferable skills.

Bindaas Bombay: sounds, smells and smiles

2011-07-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

Bombay or more correctly Mumbai is a city with no limits.

For me Mumbai is as they show in Bollywood movies, plenty of Hindi movies from Gharaonda to Baaton Baaton Mein to Wake up Sid to Dhobi ghat have used Bombay as there canvas to tell a story and they have highlighted the sea, the nariman point, the hajiali, the malabar hills and also sometimes the extreme dingy small streets, the dirty ones, the wet ones and the unknown ones. But those slums depicted on the screen did not look bare.

Recently I stumbled upon R's mom blogs and on reading about her hectic, heavy duty yet chirpy daily life description, I found so much of the presence of city Mumbai and the caricature of its Buses, rickshaws (Auto - as we call them in Kolkata as we still have hand pulled rickshaws there) and over all about people of Mumbai in her blog.

Mumbai is very well written and described about, so what that I want to tell you today?
Well my own thoughts, right!

Mumbai or then it was Bombay - the city from where my father brought me two frocks when I was a kid. He told me about fantastic hotel Taj and how he was almost getting lost there. I was a mere 6-8 year old and was amazed on the thought that my father could also get lost! The frocks were wonderful from fine material and I cherished them a lot.

And then Mumbai was not there in my life any more, well some friends sometimes moved in there but that's it. Recently when we returned back to western ghats of India, Mumbai started taking part in our tours. Mumbai is the main metro city of western India, so it is also gateway of India for going out or to come inside.

Mumbai is the city to get visa's, many companies have head offices here, it is an educational centre so we coming here on several occasions. Well we don't really spend time it seeing this city. We come, finish our work and go back.

But still with all these one day trips, Mumbai, the economic capital of India started to unfold for me.
On my first trip all the bubbles of romanticism created by Bollywood got busted. The traffic jams, the trash heaps, the crowd and the humid weather - no, I could not find any method to its madness.

Then one day we could see Nariman point in between our trips to some office, and I immediately regained the romanticism, it is really a nice view, well built an maintained. I could realise the affection of Mumbaikars for it. But I will never exchange my small town girl status for only this much.

Just now I am staying here for few days, and this is yet another experience. First of a kind for me.
The roads are always blocked, whenever I am out there. Monsoon can make them worse. People are always in a hurry. It is a challenge for working class to come in time either because of traffic congestion or rains or some kind of accidents on the roads (third highest reasonof death in the whole while world).
Along with all these I must pen down my experiences with the Auto Wallahas - Indian Autos are slowly becoming an emblem of India just like the red phone booths or red double decker buses of London/England.

Day 1
I got help from another person, he called the Auto for me, came with me to the destination and told me about the twists and turns. In Europe I was provided with maps, any where I went and people would explain on drawing a map. But here this guy could not explain me like that and decided to accompany me. Good for me!

Day 2
I call them as Bhaiya (Invariably you call this to an Autowallah) as they are all men, and in India we make relationship with everyone, so all of us are bhaiya (brother), didi/ bahanji (sister), Bhabhi (sister-in-law), Uncle, Aunty or most probably Sir/Madam if you are in an educational or office set up.
So upon hearing me they made the gesture of stopping (but they just slow down a wee bit) and I had to shout my destination. They promptly and curtly said, "No".
After few such no's one decided to take me to the destination.
And on the way he told me that, outsiders should not come to Mumbai during monsoon as it becomes quite hard to deal with mumbai traffic and its monsoon all at once. I was little annoyed with the fact of outsider as I am an Indian after all.
But he followed the meter and took the right money from me.

Day 3
It was a bad day, raining heavily, I stood in three different stops, asked for Rickshaws, not a single one nodded yes. Then another girl much younger to me came to the stop, she asked me my route. We both were going on same route so we stood together and got a kind Rickshaw, who took us to our respective stops. We both in the mean time passed our phone numbers and talked a bit about our past and present. We both told the Rickshaw wallah that they are very unfriendly lot and it is not the way they should do business. The man did not take it personally and accepted the allegation and smiled.

Day 4
It was dry when I went out to hire a Rickshaw, I was dreading though, thinking of repetition of last day's cycle. But hey i was lucky! The first one I asked accepted my request and I reached home before time.
I told the Bhaiya, that I have won a lottery today. The Autowallah smiled and commented that everyone get lucky one day.

I very much started realising that why no body cares of filthy roads, and dump grounds in this city, no one even care about the road rules. To carry out each and every step of life in Mumbai needs lots of time, effort and negotiation, as for every one supply there are several demands and that does not leave much room in a person's life to think about other luxurious topics like environment, hygiene and road safety.
Ironically this is the story of the working class of Mumbai- a city which also houses some of the world's richest people - they live in a different Mumbai - the green, clean and shining Mumbai - which as you can see, I did not get a chance to peep in.

Jet - lag, mosquitoes, birthday party etc.

2011-06-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

On returning back 'J' didn't get any buffer time to start for school. It was bang on next day. We are bad parents that way, I know.

She had to get up at 7 a.m Indian time meaning 3.30 a.m German time. So her body was highly jet - lagged. But going to school, seeing class-friends again does have the adrenaline pump and she started managing to get up fine from first day of her school.

I was happy seeing that, she is looking forward to school. For friends, for her own space in her society and for few favourite teachers she has.

Problem was that she was not able to sleep at 9.30 p.m (her standard sleeping time) as for her body it was 6 p.m. (in Germany). So I was trying to tell her that she will not be able to continue like this for the whole week.

She seriously replied, "I have another 'J' in my mind, and when the you put the lights off, that 'J' starts talking with me about several topics, and although in the beginning I don't listen to her but slowly I get excited and then I start talking too. Then sleep goes away from my eyes."

I had no answer to her. I just said, yes you are right. We also are going through the same problem now-a-days. Insomnia - very well described by a kid.

Mosquitoes are in their high form in this monsoon season and are biting 'J' on every nook and corner of her soft skin in spite of Odomos and mosquito net. She is scratching all the time.
I was showing my empathy to her. She said, "I knew this will happen once more. I was so used to of moving my limbs and mosquitoes also made friends with me. But now that I went to Germany and came back, they have started biting me again. I am also no good in moving myself all the time now. I have to start doing that and then it will be fine."
Adaptation!

One member named 'A' of my "All fun baking club" had birthday recently. I was thinking whether it will be a good idea that we give her a surprise by baking something for her. I did not put the idea forward as I thought, lets see what is going on in the minds of other members.

A birthday party was announced to be held on Saturday by 'A's parents. On Friday, 2-3 members of baking club came to me and told me that they want to give a surprise and baked gift to 'A'. So I should tell 'A' that this Saturday there would be no baking session and she would not know about the surprise.

"Yes, Off course", I said. I assured them that I am actually very good in keeping secrets!
So on Saturday morning we all rushed together and baked a vanilla-chocolate marble cake with Gummi-bears (Haribo) on top. 'A' and all other kids/adults in the birthday party liked it and 'All fun baking club' members were very happy.
I have promised 'A' that we will bake the same again with her in the team.

Need inputs for our 'All FUN Baking Club'

2011-06-16T22:36:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow we are again going to meet for our All FUN baking/cooking club, after a break of 6 weeks.

Yes, the main emphasis of this club is to have 'FUN'.

So far we have made many fun things like self designed Pizzas, Chocolate muffins, Chocolate swirl muffins, Apple pie, Chocolate Souffle, Alu ka parantha (Indian flat bread with potato stuffing). A friend has gone for ice lollies and fruit sticks (they have another name- I cannot remember it right now).

The club is a group of five kids, all girls of age ranging from 6-8. They are very interested and very active. They and also I love the messy part of baking and also the part where we are allowed to lick the bowls and spoon of chocolate cake mix. Only I have difference that in the back of my mind a cleaning up monster keeps shouting and so after many minutes of messing up I start telling them that we need to clean upend a good chef always keeps her/his bench clean.

Well till now everything was quite informal. From time to time I took some photos, I tried to pursue them to read cook books before starting some thing so that they get ideas about measures and weights also it helps them build reading habit, talk about the ingredients and stuff like how baking powder or yeast does magic and raises the doughs, also I asked them to maintain a notebook where we wrote our measures of a particular recipe even if the idea came from a cook book or from other blogs . But that's it.Spending time with them was fun, some times tough also as they can ask really tricky questions and they can get really messy or they can sometimes be in real mood to do something else like watching T.V!

But with helps from other moms, it worked out.

'J' sometimes got very agitated thinking that I was giving more chances to other. She was in the beginning in a mood of 'it - is- my - mother- kind - of - thing', but with in 4-5 weeks on having some arguments and discussions, she started being like other kids and not just my daughter. I liked this change in her.

After few weeks of arranging the club, I was wondering if we can start making a scrap book, where we will put the recipes, kids will draw and write whatever they feel like and I will supply them with some photos. So this way they will have a book to see and laugh in future. What do you think? Kids are all for it.

The secret is that I have never done any scrap book. Well I have a scrap book where I have comments collected of my various friends for me from class 4 to M.Sc. and I occasionally love to read the book. So, with this much experience on scrap-booking tomorrow my journey is beginning to make cooking scrap book with 5 other kids.

I have some vague ideas. I am thinking more in the lines off food we eat in different seasons, festivals, about our favourites and regional/world cuisines. Also may be once in a while I will try to be imaginative and ask them to think about food on mood or share stories about the special food they like at home and how can they make them if they are somewhere else. Sometimes I will ask them to have a day of self cooking where they will do what they want and I will be just watching them. No instructions, no discussions. I think I am looking forward to these days in particular. Now lets see how my 'bumble bees' (I call them when they buzz too much!) carry these ideas forward.

I am sure along the line 'FUN' factor will stay intact and may be also the scrap book factor.

If you have experiences of arranging kids activity clubs and making scrapbooks then please feel free to drop few lines of suggestions and advices.

If you don't have any experience in these but you find this idea any fun then also you are welcome to write your comments.

Till then Adieu!

Little nuggets

2011-06-10T02:44:00.000-07:00

When only I and 'J' used to live together, once I was quite sick (flu and fever). 'J' was quite thoughtful and she suggested me that if I die of sickness then she will stay in her friend 'P's house and they will phone 'J's papa to give the message. She will go with her papa once he come to pick her up.
After saying that, she added that she will be really sad if I die.

In the same year, once 'J' got up in the morning with high fever. I was checking her fever with thermometer. 'J' seriously asked me if I have already phoned my boss that I might need to take a leave as she is very sick.

There was a time when 'J' wanted to become a shop owner and wanted to buy all the things all by herself.
She still likes to wander in supermarket and act as if she is the salesgirl and shows things to the people. She always keep things in proper places and if I happen to carry a thing and then put it in another shelf, she takes them back to the proper place. Each time I feel ashamed of myself and proud of her.

While new in her latest school 'J' had to tackle a classmate who was very demanding. 'J' used to come back home with a very unhappy face.
On asking she would say, "My friend got katti (Hindi meaning not talking any more) with me." On asking, "What did you do?" She would reply, " I was also talking with other girl." Or somedays, she would say, "I was faster than her in writing down the answers."
She was sad, as she was strongly trying to make a friend in this new place. I asked her, "Why does this bother you so much?" " She is my friend mumma, how can she always say katti to me?" was her answer.

At age 7, friendlessness can be very sad. I agree to that as I feel the same even at mid thirties.
But I dread these moments as a mother because I know any instruction or suggestion from me can mould her character just like a play-dough.
I sat with her in a comfy corner, took hold on a cushion and casually told her, "May be she doesn't really want to be katti with you all the time. May be she gets upset and then says katti out of habit, but may be she does not really mean it."
I also reminded her that sometimes she used to be so with her best friend 'P' in the last place we lived. She always wanted to control 'P' on her friendship with other children. Yes, 'J' can be very possessive.
Her face brightened up little bit on this although she was not happy when I pointed out to her nature, but she understood how 'P' would have felt because of her pressure.
Then I suggested her that when her friend gets angry 'J' can remain quite and tell her that it is fine to be katti for a while and give her some time. I told 'J', "I hope your friend will understand that and will come to you again."
Next day, 'J' was beaming with smile and told me that it worked.
I was glad.
But, two of them were not meant to be together and there were further issues cropping up and 'J' was always distressed. So in the beginning of the new session, 'J' decided to change her 'friend'. And now she is friend with another girl who is being a positive influence on 'J' from day 1. Her old friend is also happy with another friend.
I observed this episode and I must say, children's world is not all innocent and happy and I was relieved to see that 'J' could come out of a attachment string where she was not happy and did not linger to it just because she ought to.
Although not totally innocent but kids are free of baggages and courtesies.
I hope she will be so de - cluttered in managing her relationship in future too.

Yesterday, 'J's papa announced that he can take 'J' to his office today, only if she gets up by herself, get ready by herself, pack her things and prepare her breakfast (Cornflakes and milk) and eat it up. And all this 'J' should do before papa. 'J' took the challenge and went to sleep very excited and tensed.
Today morning when I got up, 'J's papa was still sleeping, I saw 'J' was all ready for going to the office and was sleeping on the sofa. Empty cereal bowl was on the dining table.
On getting up she told me that she has taken her homework notebook and pencils in papa's rucksack.
In the meantime papa was ready too.
'J' was grinning from cheek to cheek as she could defeat papa!

Lonesome but wholesome

2011-06-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

This summer vacation is little different for 'J', at least from the last two ones.

In last two years, in her summer vacations she had to cope up with a working mother and a faraway father. Her summer vacations were mostly spend in holiday clubs and in friend's house. Some days I took off. Some days her father managed to come to visit us. We managed few short trips to nearby places.

Overall they were action packed days and not the real summer holidays we remember from our childhood.

She did not like that most days she needed to get up early in the morning, get ready and go to holiday club. She wanted to stay at home like many of her friends. She wanted to have lazy days, watch TV and not action packed days in holiday club.

Anyway we tried to find a balance and now sometimes she remembers those time in after school club or holiday club with great delight.

This summer with me staying at home, she knew her summer vacation will be like the ones she wanted.

More fun factor added when we decided to spend the whole summer in a rented apartment and not in her everyday living space.

She started dreaming of holidays full of watching TV in her pyjamas, having her mum for all her needs, playing with NintendoDS, reading storybooks, doing tiny-weany home-works and some bits of travelling. Perfect for her!

I could see the same horridness in her face like Horrid Henry.

On arriving to the selected apartment we figured that there is no TV. The internet connection we have got has limited download capacity so watching you tube is not working for 'J'. It is a non English speaking country so finding new storybooks is also a challenge. Only rescue can be some DVDs she has brought and the DS games. Her dreams got bursted one by one.

I was also little concerned as over the years of parenting, TV or internet have become my helping hands, at times.

'J' never desired her holidays to be like this. She started to get irritated. The fantasy of having mamma all the time was not that fantastic anymore.

But then, to adapt, is human nature and after a day or two of hanging face, she figured out that the apartment is funny one with a curved staircase and a small room in attic.

The staircase became a place for 'J' to play with her stuffed play mates and to read.

In the attic she made a world of her own. Role play in pyjamas is now her main amusement, she did not do that for long. She started drawing and colouring nice themes sitting in her room in attic. Some real ones and mostly imaginary phone calls to her friends keeps her happy. On weekends we travel to nearby places. 'J' wants to open a boutique with her friend in future (her latest obsession) so she is seriously collecting ideas for designing new dresses while travelling through these places. We talk and plan a lot about this boutique of hers. She has started writing e-mails to her friend recently and I like the way she impatiently waits for the reply.

In the afternoon she watches her DVDs or plays with her game, but the affinity is not that strong as they are getting boring upon repetition.

We go for walk most evenings.

We have finally found a rhythm in our daily routine and I don't miss the faithful babysitters of mine.

Just now 'J' is highly irritated by two flies humming near her ears. She is trying to work on the school home-works and she is learning how to keep her calm in the middle of two buzzing flies.

Bitten by a travel bug!

2011-05-29T16:48:00.000-07:00

Travelling has been part of my life, from the time I remember myself. Mostly as getting uprooted from one place to another and then starting to live there. Along with this there has been touristic travelling, I have been part of.
I have liked most of them.

When went for touristic purposes, I always felt difficult to tear myself off and go back, where we missed visiting one or two spots due to lack or time or money or energy or all. Sometimes weather did not support us or we simply reached the place in wrong time. Museum/castle/palace/garden got closed as we reached late. Although these are minors. Just like few poppy seeds in a colourful carpeted floor.
Still I keep reminding them to myself and to the people around me and keep dreaming that one fine day I will be able to see, feel and enjoy that place.

The next time rarely comes.

Next time when we again sit to set our itinerary for a short trip or a big one. We check in internet and figure out that we don't have enough time or money and finally energy to see the whole of the place we are planning to. So we prioritise, heavily and new poppy seeds fill up my carpet .

Another part of our recent travel acts is that even in a family of three we do have different kinds of travellers.

I am the vagabond one, who wants little of everything, reading a book under the Olive tree, a museum telling about Van Gogh or Pablo Picasso, or about clock bearers in the black forest, walking on the farmers/antique markets, see that historical monument mostly a church or a castle where the last drops of sun lingers making bohemian shadows, a glass of table wine, just sitting near a fountain and watching local people hustling or relaxing in their daily lives, taste of local cuisine, eves dropping to hear the folklore, eye on the local art and culture, entering into the souvenir shops and buying books on that place, mountain passes or country roads, take a diversion from the planned itinerary towards an unknown direction and discover a new thing with a sense of getting lost in this big wide world and so on and on.

I know this is absurd being so detailed traveller with no sense of time and extreme hunger for seeing it all. May be I am too much influenced by the memoirs and travelogues and I want to get as much as possible from a place before leaving it.

There is a small one in our family who wants sand castles, slides, swings and shops as main part of her travels. Sometimes seeing a lake or a mountain range she says, "Waw! This scene is so beautiful I wish I had my sketch book with me. She is happy if we go somewhere touristic and then decide to stay indoors, so that she can play in the nooks and corners of that temporary living space of her, she can go up and down of the bunk bed or check functionalities of all the switches and furnitures. Recently she has also started looking and enjoying the available local food and asks whether it will be possible to make them in baking class. Her enjoyment includes going to the different shops on the motorways for stopovers. She finds it funny to see the soft toys and other stuff these shops sell. She tries and sometimes manage to get hold of some of them on the way through her own cheeky ways.

There is yet another person who is very important for our travel trips, as he decides which transport we will be choosing for travelling. He is our time keeper and chauffeur till now. I dream of giving helping hand to him for driving at least in long travel routes, and time he can continue keeping it. He loves driving and most of the time (since last 7 years) our trips have been via roads. The other reasons for this choice are that in Europe, mostly roads are safe, cheap and comfortable to travel with a small child, friends or parents. Another strong preference of his is to eat in leisure, sitting near to a grand monument or a view. Along with the travel spots he wants to keep in memory the ambience of the restaurants or streets where he have had his meals or coffee/ tea and snacks. He prefers holiday apartments over hotels. The reason is to have a sense of home even if we are travelling. Europe has good options for that. Living in many hundred years old houses decorated accordingly do add up to our trip's character. Also it saves us from spending too much money on small but extremely essential indulgence of ours like drinking tea or coffee at odd hours of a day and some lunch and dinners where we prefer to eat our homemade Indian rice, dal and chicken curry or grilled chicken (depending on the kitchen appliances and the available time). He does not like travelling on shoe string budgets.

So these three are member of our core travel group and many times friends / other family member join in.

I am nostalgic about train trips and the 'chug - chug' sound of old fashioned trains symbolises travel to me, travelling by roads is not enough romantic for me. I had therefore reservations for long road trips just as a family, where one will keep driving and other will look after the child. As a compromise therefore I always preferred to go in groups, mostly with like minded friends. Recently I must say I have started enjoying the road trips. But I have made it to a point that we do make affordable trips via trains whenever possible. Small one is a great supporter to me on this.

Unlike me, he does not feel any compulsion of getting escaped from the regular life. He will prefer not to travel if we don't have enough money for a sober trip. We have started balancing on some long trips and some short trips over the year, to care about the money and time available to a middle-class Indian family.

As he is the time keeper and I have no sense of time there arises sometimes some crisis. We have learned to keep going even upon disagreement about certain matters.

Museums and stuff, he doesn't like much but sometimes digests them because of me and sometimes he prefers to stay outside while I enter and satisfy my thirst about this world, mankind and its development!

Our small one have car sickness specially for uphill drives. Things are getting better with age. She also always had strong will about her food, she used to be extremely picky eater. There was one trip where she just wanted to eat sausages. The place was though famous for pizzas and pastas. It took us lots of time each meal time to find places who offers boiled or grilled sausages too. We were also accompanied by two friends of ours. They were still not parents and amazed to see how dutifully we were abiding the tantrums and not telling the small one a word or two. Anyway they got the answer when they got a kid and had to run to the shop early in the morning to buy packet of a particular kind of cereal as the recently bought new packet of different cereal was not acceptable by their small one. On a serious note we have learned to say a word or two to our small one as she is growing and now the rule is while we are travelling we all will eat properly as and when we get to eat as we don't know where we can get food again. This sense of adventure gives her appetite to eat! Also she has started being non-picky eater recently (after she reached 5, we agreed that she will always try a new food at least 2-3 times and if she does not like them even after that then she can refuse that - in most cases it is working) and therefore our search for sausages and likes along with travelling has humbled down to a great extent.

This, I hope is the beginning of a tale which will tell you many travelling stories about travels of an Indian family in several parts of this world. I hope with time this page will capture many travel moments of our lives, like this one day trip recently we had.

Revisiting Europe - Certain Observations

2011-05-22T03:33:00.000-07:00

This summer we got a chance to revisit our long time home Germany. All credit goes to 'J's papa and his work. 'J' is having summer vacation so I and 'J' got tagged along. These are the times when I feel lucky of not having a full time job as a break of many weeks would be out of question then.

So we started preparing for our revisit to Europe. 'J' again got into her confusion mode, she doesn't like to change places (understandable as she had to change several places in her short life span and now she has started showing her dislikes towards it), added to that, she doesn't know German any more so she became unsure about her days in Germany. We bought tickets from Air India being the cheapest one. And we stuck into the uncertain situation where certain pilots of Air India were striking- they want salary hike-actually they are in one of the highest paid positions. So anyway, we went to the airport and were relieved to know that international flights are not hampered.

Thus, started our journey.

On reaching Germany, it was a feeling of reassurance; nothing has changed. The roads, the traffic, the places like airports are exactly the same as it was when we left it many years ago. Proper rules are there, people are following them and thousands of cars, buses, trucks are passing through state road, motorways/highways but there are no accidents (so visible in any high way of India just because of simple negligence of both sides and because of no fears of getting caught by police), no honks, no bump to bump driving and no showing of anger and splitting of bad words from one vehicle to another. As I mentioned, about the roads before and how that has become my own handicap to driving/walking on the roads, upon reaching here I realised that I am back to my walking mood. I got my mood back to go for shopping on my own. I got my energy to travel to other cities on bus and trains for my own work or leisure. 'J' commented, "Mummy, you are crossing the roads perfectly not so hurriedly as you do in India."

'J' on the other hand is loving the 'cobblestone' walking zones in the middle of the market places and defined, clean and usable footpath zones all over. She does not remember any more that she doesn't know German as there are signs all over and people are friendly to her.

Urban planning is an important subject of engineering in European countries and they are so well used if you see the cities over here blended with old architecture and new developments. And above all each and every step taken first is researched on local level, and then employed.

Not that you make roads, without proper or maintained drainage, there are occasions of accidents because of opposite traffics, so make dividers, where several cement blocks will remain lying for ages causing more blockage to the traffic and then monsoon will come and roads will be drowned as the dividers just made are not good for passing the water out, and proper drainage were not there on the first place. Don't we do that in India all the time?

Yes, I can go on and on about this and I can keep comparing. But lets stop it here. I know India might change one day but that will not be now for sure. With the monsoon around the corner all the citizens of big cities of India are just wondering how much water will be clogged in their cities this monsoon? Here are the questions raised by one of the cityblogs. The hope is that at least equation are raised.

Next observation is the relaxed attitude of common people. Cars always wait for the pedestrians to cross the door, the people entering in a supermarket always hold the door for the next one to enter the shop, in a crowded bus no one dives to sit on the only empty seat available near the window. It is not only the government but common people make life easier for others too. People think little more than themselves only.

I also observed that in the tourist places manual rickshaws are becoming very popular for being pollution free and fun. Also they can run on cobblestoned streets. The rickshaws are far more developed than the ones we use in India.

Europe has a long trend of having a market square, comes from the middle age period, it is amazing to see that how carefully they have maintained that trend in spite of welcoming the new living styles. Their urban/rural planning is so much meant for them, the glass box buildings are t to harness the scarcely available sun rays here. No fashion is involved in it, it is a pure need. This understanding of creating things for our own need fascinates me.
In India, because of long colonial life we have forgotten to create technology, style or standards for our own. We keep copying them or buying them, without thinking how useful they will be for us.

Market squares in Europe - free open, clean space

In the shopping areas the preferences are given to florists to put their shop in equal intervals so that they bring some green in the middle of the materials.

The city centres are free of traffic and are famous place for biking, so providing a free exercise zone to the people plus is a green solution.

There are several play parks, gardens, fountains in the middle of the cities to provide areas of relaxation to the common people and they are safe.

Most benefit of all these goes to children, the future of any country, they get so much free space to run, bike, skate and chances to enjoy.

Some scenes from city Mainz (Germany)

The separation of trash is done at each home, at each park, at each corner where dustbins are kept, there are always three bins, one for paper, one for glass and one for rest. Old cloths are also collected separately. Yes, human hands are less here so ragpickers are not available but this system I find is more humane than it used in India. Yes, I agree it will be a daunting task to arrange trash bins every few meters and to clean them regularly. But then we have many hands right?

Separation and recycling of trash in proper practice

All in all the main observation is that development is not only about rising skyscrapers and shopping malls and parking plots. It is also about creating awareness, providing a social security, giving freedom to the people to walk freely, safely in fresh green surrounding.

A concept India is not understanding or is not trying to understand.