The thirty year old toddlers

A few years ago I was on a road trip with friends when the bus we were travelling in stopped at a rickety roadside joint for what was ostensibly a comfort break. As we clambered off the bus, the lady seated in front of us turned to her daughter and asked in a voice loud enough for the entire parking lot to hear “Susu karna hai beta?”

Now this would have been fine if the daughter in question had been a little girl or a toddler fresh out of diapers. Except that she was a grown woman, probably in her mid twenties. As she turned a scintillating shade of red, the rest of us could almost feel her mortification!

A cousin recently narrated a similar experience when she visited family friends with her parents. Now a manager in a leading MNC, heading a team of 20 odd people, to her parents she’s still their little girl. During their visit, her mother first asked her on reaching their host’s house if she needed to use the bathroom. Then her father asked her to join the host’s young children, rather than conversing with the adults.

“It was humiliating!” my cousin recounted “There I was, telling people about the work I do and suddenly my parents make me feel like a 5 year old again!”

Many of us have probably been in similar situations, when our parents refuse to treat us like adults even when we have graying hair and children in high school. Parents don’t mean it, of course. It can be difficult to accept that the dependent little bundle you doted on is a grown, confident adult with a mind and life of his or her own, and needs to be treated as such. It’s not so much fun for the now grown up kids though, when their parents insist on treating them like the children they once were.

Considering that the thought of my daughter going unsupervised for parties and sleepovers in future is capable of giving me panic attacks now, I see a clear and present danger that I will eventually metamorphose into one of those parents who refuse to let their kids grow up. So I thought I’d set out some guidelines for myself, for when my daughter grows older:

1.      In deference to the unfortunate recipients of the comfort break query mentioned above, I promise never to ask you if you need to ‘do susu’, once you’ve crossed the age of 4 and are in full control of your bowel movements. I might whisper it occasionally till you’re 10 though. But never in full public hearing, and definitely not when we have company. I may know for a fact that you haven’t taken a pee break in hours, but no matter how strong the urge (pun unintended); I resolve to not pop the question. 

2.      I will not call you every evening and ask you what you ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner accompanied by a detailed lecture on the nutritive value, or lack thereof, of the same. Not unless you are grossly obese and these are the doctor’s express orders or you’re training for the Olympics and need help with diet planning. After all, if I still need to obsess over every morsel that goes into your mouth thirty years from now, one of us will definitely need therapy.

3.      I promise not to bring up embarrassing incidents from your childhood with others, especially in large public gatherings. I’ve been the recipient of one too many ‘remember the time she had a sip of whisky when she was five and went berserk, bwahahaha!’ to do that. No embarrassing videos or photos on open display either. (I hope you’re reading this, Dad.  Yes, you can put away those cheesy videos of me at 11 years reeling off travelogue in a sing song voice.)

4.      I will not tell you what to do. Once of course, you reach an age where you realize that switching off my laptop when I’m working on it is nobody’s idea of fun and mud baths are okay for the spa and not the park. I mean this within reasonable limits so don’t think I’ll stand by without saying a word if you decide to flush your life down the drain. And I may make an exception if it’s one of those rare situations where you are desperate for direction, or when you can clearly benefit from my experience or….Sigh. Right. I will not tell you what to do.

5.      I will refrain from criticizing your appearance and telling you what to wear. If ripped jeans and faded tees are your idea of high fashion, so be it. I’m sure your grandmother will say this is poetic justice, given that I had taken to donning the grunge look for weddings in my teens. Given your current affinity for wearing matching-matching clothes, replete with accessories and moisturizing your hands with pink cream every few minutes, I may just end up taking some pointers from you in this area.

6.      I will not try and influence or criticize your choice of friends. With your father turning a delicate shade of green even now, every time you get too friendly with a member of the opposite sex, I’m sure I can leave the worrying to him for once. On a serious note, as an independent young adult nothing can be more important to you than having the freedom to choose the individuals whose company you’d like to keep. The last thing you’d want is an interfering parent telling you she doesn’t approve of so-and-so. This means I may have to give up my plans of stalking you on dates when you’re older though. Ah well.

7.      When you have kids of your own, I will restrain myself from giving you unending advice about ‘how we did things in our time’. There can be nothing more irritating than being treated like a 3 year old in front of your own 3 year old, so you’ll get none of that from me.  

8.      I will treat you like the grown up that you are and not lapse into sepia tinged nostalgia from when you were a mere suckling. I will also try and avoid getting overtly sentimental about your babyhood even though I can give no guarantees on this given that I was nearly in tears when you came on stage during your annual concert, causing the lady next to me to move away a few seats. Oh, and I will also not haunt you on social networking websites.

9.      I will trust you to take adequate care of your dental health and will stop eating your chocolates because they are terrible for your teeth and will make you emotionally dependent on cocoa. Yes, I ate the chocolate you were gifted at school today but it’s only because I care about your teeth. And, I may be slightly emotionally dependent on cocoa myself. But none of that once you are older; your chocolates will be safe with me. Although I’m sure you won’t mind sharing, will you? Maybe just the occasional nibble, then. 

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Originally written for 'The Punekar'

When I nearly got run over by the school run

The alarm that didn't go off when it was supposed to. That delicious extra half an hour of sleep that seems even sweeter because it is unexpected. The slow realization coming with reluctant wakefulness that it is a school day and we are now running late! The nightmarish frenzy to get things together in time. The dropping of all the usual efforts for a relaxed morning routine as we run around like headless chickens (the husband and I naturally, not Nikki who seems quite removed from such mundane things as school runs) shoveling breakfast down our throats, gulping tea while furiously multitasking and setting new records for the seven second shower.

In the middle of all the madness sometimes I forget the little things.

"Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!" I screech at my child as she meditates over the exact way to butter her toast.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry!" I squawk as she goes about the business of washing her hands with a quiet industriousness.

"We're getting late!" I work myself up into a lather as she gently blows bubbles with her own.

Forgetting that I am screeching at her for my own tardiness. Forgetting that one of the most unpleasant things about going to school can be crazy, screechy early mornings with manic parents rushing to bundle you off to school and telling you to 'hurry up' and 'rush, rush rush' and 'not be slow' and 'we're getting late because of you!' Forgetting that I was only just setting myself up for a major guilt trip later on in the day, when I could have been relaxing over a cuppa instead.

Till she reminded me. Giving me that look she sometimes does. Of infinite wisdom. And infinite patience.

"There's only so much I can do Mama. Please be happy."

And so I did. I grinned. Sang a silly song. Sat down beside her and made up a story about putting on your shoes on your own. Drove to school with the windows down and the breeze in our hair and 'mein to tuk tuk tortoise hoon' playing in the background.

And we made it to school well in time.

“Everybody wants a boy”

My sister and I were often partners in crime during our growing up years and back then I often thought that if I ever had kids of my own I would want two girls, just like my sister and me. It was a girlish notion, long before motherhood brought with it the realization that bringing a child into this world is nothing short of a miracle and it truly doesn’t matter whether it is a girl or a boy, but I happened to mention this childhood fancy to a colleague during a chance conversation many years later when the topic veered around to that of raising children.

“Two girls?” my colleague asked, raising a sardonic eyebrow “You must mean two boys right?”

I politely assured her that I had indeed meant two girls and she gave me a wondering look, the kind one normally reserves for a particularly slow-on-the-uptake, half-wit and shook her head.

A few weeks ago I was attending a function when I was subjected to the same look, this time by someone I know. At most functions I attend these days people consider it perfectly normal to come up to me and ask when I am planning to “have the second one” in a rather proprietorial fashion. By this naturally they mean to ask when I plan to have a second child since my first born, my daughter, is now considered old enough to have a sibling and something must be seriously wrong with me if I am not contemplating having a second child. Not so long ago this question used to irk me enough to either retort in a rather rude fashion or display my sometimes unfortunate sense of humour depending on my mood. These days though it doesn’t bother me as much as it once did (I like to think it’s the maturity that comes with motherhood) and I waver between mumbling something vague into my glass, if I have one handy, or just smiling in a benign fashion, which usually gets rid of the person asking the question.

I was not so lucky at this particular function though, because the question was followed with the fervent wish that hopefully I would have a boy the second time so that my family would be ‘complete’.

“What’s the problem if it’s a girl instead” I asked politely, secretly marveling at the maturity that comes with motherhood which had ensured that my glass was still in my hand rather than having its contents dumped on the head of the pestilential question- asker.

That was when I received The Look again.

“What a silly question” the pestilential QA, let’s call her X, sneered “Everyone wants a boy.” The motley group of women that happened to be hanging around as this conversation happened looked on in silence, some nodded knowingly, almost as a sign of tacit approval. What I found most disappointing was the fact that X was of my own generation and profile; an educated, financially independent woman with children of her own and enough opportunity and resources to broaden her thinking. And yet she believed that a woman cannot be truly happy unless she has given birth to a boy. The sad part is that she is not alone. There are many women out there who believe that a family is incomplete unless there is a male ‘heir’ in it and will go to great lengths to ensure that they get one, from consulting the Chinese calendar which offers pre-conception advice guaranteed to produce a male child to the infamous sex selection clinics in Thailand.

I come from a family of fierce feminists, where nobody bats an eyelid when a girl rides a horse while her brother bakes a cake, and to that extent I was fairly sheltered from the followers of the Chinese calendar when I was growing up, so it came as a bit of a culture shock when I first encountered them. And encounter them I did, in hordes. Women, who think only a boy can carry the name of the family forward, financially support his ageing parents, and for whom they will not have to shell out a substantial dowry when time comes to get him married, only to send him away to live with strangers. Women who dolefully shake their heads when informed that I have only one sister and no brother and who assure me that they will pray that there is a boy in the family soon.

These women I speak of are not from the economically weaker sections of society. They are women from financially affluent homes, educated and superficially broad minded. Women from my generation; born in the late seventies, or early eighties. You politely point out to them that girls from our generation are increasingly keeping their maiden names post marriage, thereby debunking the ‘ghar ka chirag’ myth, are financially independent and perfectly capable of looking after their families, often chose their partners themselves, who like them do not subscribe to the concept of dowry and are supportive of their partners’ decision to continue being financially independent and supporting their families if need be.

Yes all that is true, is the response you get, accompanied by more doleful head shaking, but a girl’s life is so tough. Girls are always unsafe, subject to the prying eyes of men, girls have to leave their homes and go to another family, girls have to go through the physical trauma of giving birth and then they have to give up these careers you speak of to raise their children. Girls are cursed from the day they are born so naturally, everyone wants a boy.

At this point if you have the tenacity to continue the conversation, you could ask these women, that given that we have arrived at the morbid conclusion that girls indeed are cursed, what could we possibly do about it? Can we ensure that our daughters are equipped to protect themselves by educating them about safety, self preservation and perhaps teaching them some form of self defense? Should we not talk to them (and their brothers) about sex education from an early age, keep clear and open lines of communication with them as they grow up so that they are equipped to make the right choices in future? Can we give them the best possible resources so that they in turn can realize their full potential?

At this point I usually realize that I am engaged in a rather futile rant because these women are just doing the doleful head shake all over again and muttering that all this is too much trouble. Why not just consult the Chinese calendar instead? And if all else fails there is always that trip to Thailand.

Further probing often reveals that they find it too embarrassing to discuss the ‘S-Word’ with their kids, leaving that instead to the vast knowledge they will surely gain from their peer group, and are inordinately proud of having had normal, epidural free childbirths, because you are not really a woman until you have lived through that kind of pain. And of course if you have to endure that kind of pain you may as well have given birth to a boy, because at the end of the day everyone….you know the drill.

This is the point where I end the conversation abruptly because it is usually the precursor to the gory birth story, and also because I have a raging headache by then.

I did the same with X after she mournfully informed me that she and her husband had both been very disappointed when my daughter was born and they would continue hoping that I would someday be blessed with a son. She then went on to add that whenever someone in their social circle is expecting a child, they always hope that it is a boy because there should always be one boy in the family, and after that having a girl is not so bad, because they are like add-ons (!).

I found myself wondering what would have happened if X had herself had no sons. Would she have continued consulting the Chinese calendar or pinning her hopes on the Thai clinic with the latest technology in the senseless quest for a boy? Would she have brought up her daughters resenting them, always longing for a boy? Would she have kept reminding them how they had been a disappointment to their parents by coming into the world? I can’t help feeling a little glad that X doesn’t have any daughters.

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Originally written for 'The Punekar' (March '12)


Selected for BlogAdda's Spicy Saturday Picks! Thank you BlogAdda!

 

Book review: Urban Shots

I discovered the wonderful book review program run by the people over at Blog Adda some time back and when I'd finally gotten over the fact that there were people out there willing to send you books you might be interested in to review, I promptly signed up and began applying for books with a zeal worthy of the gold diggers of ancient Australia. Much hopeful application and wistful trawling through e-mail later, I finally got a congratulatory e-mail a few days ago and soon after a copy of 'Urban Shots' was delivered to our doorstep. In terms of timing, this couldn't have happened at a more opportune moment for two reasons: 1)This blog is in urgent need of resuscitation and the requirement to do a book review will hopefully act as a much needed kick on the posterior in that direction, 2) Intensive practice for the child's annual concert (thought playschool was a hoot did you? *insert sound of hysterical laughter here*) was happening around the time I got the book and it made for a light, breezy read between rounds of concert drop offs and pick ups and watching Nikki do her banana-in-pajamas act on stage (more on that later).

And so, it was with a sense of general contentment and bonhomie(well at least as much as you can squeeze in while a bunch of preschoolers run amok in the vicinity) that I settled in with my copy of Urban Shots. The Urban Shots that I read was the first publication in the series (they have since come up with a few more titles) and is an anthology of short stories contributed by writers with varied backgrounds from all over the country. The book makes for an interesting bouquet of tales reflecting relationships, love and longing in their myriad forms against a backdrop of urban India. The collection starts off with 'Hope comes in small packages', a touching account of a young woman's struggle to come to terms with devastating bereavement and how she finds hope in the unlikeliest of places. Getting off to a promising start, the stories then span the lives and relationships of a multitude of characters, from the intuitively perceptive Chamundi in Malathi Jaikumar's 'Liberation' who learns to free herself from the man she is bonded to for life in her own unique way, to the liberated Kajal in Ahmed Faiyaz's 'It's a small world' who finds herself facing the prospect of a gilded prison of an altogether different kind. I quite enjoyed the frothy, perky 'Apple Pies and a Grey Sweater' by Prateek Gupta and Kunal Dhabalia's 'Love-All'. The sepia tinged 'Dialects of Silence' by Vrinda Baliga left a lasting impact with its strikingly simple and yet stirring narrative and is a story that I know is going to stay with me.

Many of the stories are easily relatable, these are situations we have been in, people we know, sometimes even people we could have been ourselves. The book has been edited by Paritosh Uttam, author of 'Dreams in Prussian Blue', launched under the Penguin 'Metro Reads' series and he has contributed several stories to the anthology as well, stories which take familiar, well worn situations and subtly introduce an element of disruption that jolts you out of your comfort zone to reach a startling revelation. Young, restless, often unreasonable love is brought out beautifully in 'A mood for love' when the protagonist Ruchi hankers for an elusive soul mate as she thinks 'I could love you. I could love anybody now...'

Many of the stories are layered and offer themselves up for a slower re-exploration. Some however do disappoint, they are either too flat or too uni-dimensional to really strike a chord but these are few and far between. Overall, Urban Shots makes for an interesting read, and offers a unique perspective into the young and the restless, the bold and the beautiful as conjured up by some of young, urban India's finest minds.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

Mommies need appraisals too!

This weekend I caught up with a few of my ex-colleagues from one of the companies I had worked for in my corporate avatar, back before I gave it all up to be chief slave to the little tyrant who now rules my home (and my life ) with an iron fist. This particular group of colleagues had also grown to be good friends over the years but it had been a while since all of us had got a chance to meet and I was looking forward to catching up with them. I was therefore a little surprised when my initial excitement at seeing them all together was returned with wan smiles and terse ‘hellos’.

“We had our year-end appraisals today” they explained morosely “And now we need a stiff drink each to forget them quickly!”

It turned out that three out of the four friends I was meeting had been given a rather rough time during the appraisal by their immediate bosses and the fourth friend’s appraisal had been, in his own words, ‘too confusing to make any sense of’ and he had left the meeting with more than his fair share of existential angst!
“You’re so lucky you don’t have to go through these corporate feedback sessions anymore!” one of my friends exclaimed as we reminisced about one joint appraisal we had gone through years ago, when we were still mere rookies in the corporate world. I laughed in response and the moment was drowned in a fresh round of minty Caprioskas brought to the table, but the words came back to me hours later when I was back at home, ensconced in my daughter’s room as we built large teetering towers with blocks and shaped little red butterflies with blue dots out of Playdoh.

True I didn’t have any formal feedback sessions anymore, ever since I had swapped my demanding corporate job for my even more demanding role of mommy, but sometimes I felt I sure as hell needed them as much if not more than before!

Motherhood brings with it a barrage of advice and feedback, and it starts even before the star of the show, the baby, makes its first appearance. Right from the moment you break the ‘good news’, or, if you’re the reserved kind, from the moment the bump begins to show, everyone from your vegetable vendor to complete strangers you run into in the parking lot, consider it their moral obligation to offer nuggets of advice and wisdom. When the baby does arrive, the stream of advice flowing in multiplies manifold and swells incessantly until you’re ready to throw in the oars and make a mad swim for it. Most of the advice is well meaning and can even be helpful of course, but the sheer overload of information coming in can often be overwhelming for an unprepared first time mother. Over time you get used to it and you even begin to discern the good advice from the unnecessary stuff, but one thing remains constant: your new found status as mom ensures that the advice keeps flowing in thick and fast at every stage of your child’s growth.

Given that parenting is one role that doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I’ve often felt that sometimes it might help to get objective feedback on probably what is the most important role I will ever play in my life; that of shaping and nurturing another individual. And so I decided that I would put my business education and my corporate training of many years to good use and give myself a ‘mom-praisal’. My husband decided to play the part of objective third party since my boss was too young to conduct the appraisal and could not be trusted to not throw a tantrum or make ludicrous demands if things didn’t go her way, and we got started. I decided to give my mom-praisal the importance and structure it deserved and created a list of performance parameters against which I rated myself, borrowing generously from the many performance appraisals I had gone through in the corporate world. Here’s a quick peek at what my mom-praisal score card looked like:

1.Displaying a Sense of Urgency:
This is one area where I score hands down, even though it would not be entirely untrue to say that my performance on this parameter is driven more out of fear of failure than anything else. For my boss does not tolerate tardiness at any cost! From a dirty diaper to a demand for food, right from the early days of her birth, my daughter made it very clear that not displaying a sense of urgency when it came to her needs being met would mean retribution of the most severe kind: ear splitting shrieks and mutinous howls. Displaying a sense of urgency soon became second nature.

2.The ability to innovate and think out of the box:
Much as I’d like to gloss over my (many) shortcomings as a mom, this is one area where I’d have to admit defeat. For when it comes to parenting I’ve always found a sense of security in following the text book approach. Parenting tomes of all shapes and sizes occupy pride of place on every conceivable surface in our home now and everything ranging from a tantrum to a refusal to eat the midday snack sees me rushing to consult my trusty mommy manual. Definitely not an example of innovative thinking, though I must say I have invented a pretty nifty technique of speed reading my ‘What to Expect in the toddler years’ while simultaneously entertaining my daughter with a snazzy rendition of ‘Dorothy the Dinosaur’. The husband however is one of those dads who can think out of the box and make it look as easy as shelling peas, so there is hope for me yet!

3.Monitoring and communicating progress frequently:
Another area where I can proudly pat myself on the back. Right from my bai, to my daughter’s playschool teacher, to the hapless husband, to anyone else who cares to listen, I make it a point to update everyone with any semblance of progress. Right from the first utterance of a new word or a particularly complex sentence construction, to a tantrum free day, to successful trysts with the potty, all progress is painstakingly monitored and communicated. The bulk of these communication updates happen with the husband who is given a blow by blow account as soon as he walks through the door. Yes, this is one area where I think I deserve a notable mention or perhaps even some mommy accolades for exceeding performance benchmarks. The husband doesn’t seem particularly pleased about it though!

4.The ability to manage stress with ease:
Now this is a tough one because I am one of those people who tend to get stressed easily. And while I make sure I don’t let my sky rocketing stress levels get to my daughter (mostly), I don’t exactly handle it with ease either. My way out of a stressful situation is usually to stuff myself silly with the most calorie laden food I can get my hands on. Like the time I binged on a pizza the first time my daughter fell ill. Or the walnut brownie with fudge overdose to help me cope with the first day of school and having to let my baby go into the care of strangers for two whole hours. Or the innumerable bars of chocolate to soothe my frayed nerves before her first solo stage performance. I’m getting stressed just recalling all of these instances! Think I’ll just take a quick nibble of some chocolate to help deal with the, er, hunger.

5.Do I strive for constant self development?
Now this is something I haven’t thought about for a while. I’m always thinking about ‘developing’ my daughter, of course. Developing gross and fine motor skills and physical balance and co-ordination are routine playground conversations with other mums. I make a sincere effort to foster a love for reading and am working at developing her socializing skills since she has been displaying marked signs of having inherited the anti social gene from her mother. I try and bring on the creativity by getting the husband to spend time with her while I re-read my book on ‘how to foster creativity in your child’. So yes, I get full marks for trying when it comes to developing my daughter. But me? I guess I never really thought about me. I suppose I’m in a happier place than I was before since my daughter took over my life. I’ve finally become patient and selfless, qualities I always admired in others and sorely lacked myself. I’ve learned to stop, slow down and relax. More importantly, I’ve finally got my priorities right and figured out the things that really matter to me, and that’s made me feel more settled. So yes I guess I have managed some self development without consciously striving for it.

I’ve decided to make my mom-praisal a regular feature to ensure that I don’t stagnate as a mother. Maybe, when my daughter is older she can take over the appraising bit and give me some feedback to make me a better parent. Until then, I will have to make honest and brutal self assessment work for me, I suppose. I have to admit though, that unlike the often dreary appraisals from my corporate past, doing my mom-praisal was kind of fun. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that this time round I am hopelessly in love with my new boss!


Originally written for "The Punekar"

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Manasi Vaidya, Author of "No Deadline For Love"

Break a leg!

Just popping in to tell you that my short story has appeared in the latest issue of Femina (the December 14 issue, with Asin on the cover)! I love Femina and I've been reading it since I was about nine (hi mom!). It started off as a covert love affair, with every new, minty fresh copy of Mummy's Femina as it used to be in those days, being surreptitiously smuggled into the loo where I'd spend a blissful twenty minutes or so lost between its covers, before my mom started hammering the door down. We lived in Moscow those days, in the erstwhile USSR, with trips to India being few and far between. Once every three months or so, we would get a goody bag of sorts from India, a tangible link to home, with VCR tapes of the latest Hindi movies, mangoes or sarson ka saag or kamal kakri depending on the season, various types of attas and pickles, copies of Champak and Tinkle and sometimes, Target for me and my sister, and a copy of Femina for my mom.

Safe from the ever alert eyes of my mother I would pore over every page of Femina, reading and re-reading articles that I particularly liked. The short stories often featured in it were a huge personal favorite and I still carry deep mental imprints of some of the stories that left a lasting impression, even though the paper clippings that I tried to preserve are long gone. So it was a huge honor when I got an e-mail from Femina asking me if I would like to contribute a short story for the magazine. Its a three part story titled 'Break a Leg' and it will appear in three consecutive issues of Femina starting with the Dec 14 one, so if you get a chance to read it, do please let me know what you think won't you?

In other news, my sister is down from the US for a couple of weeks and I've spent the last few days at my parents' gorging on my Mom's awesome Konkani dishes like batata song and matar chi amti and then spending the afternoons passed out in a food induced stupor, rousing myself only when Nikki, who is not one for afternoon naps, or really sleep of any kind, decided she would play 'horsey-horsey' with me as the horsey, or Red Indians and proceeded to send some eardrum splitting shrieks my way. My sister also got me a goody bag of a very different kind as a gift, and while this one didn't have the Tinkles and the Targets of yore, which I sometimes still miss, it did have a wonderful array of creams and lotions and body scrubs and what-have-you's which saw me spend the weekend steeped in Bath & Body Works bliss. And now its on to my favorite time of the year; family coming down from different parts of the globe, the festive season right around the corner, birthday and anniversary a few corners further down and then a big family wedding. This time I'm planning to go all out and introduce Nikki to Santa and his band of helpers. Rudolph is already a bit of a favorite in these parts ( I suspect it has something to do with the red nose). I'm getting us a tree and decorations and have plans for a traditional X-massy spread if I can manage it. Now all I need is a modern day, Johnny Depp look alike Santa to make the festive season really cheery. And you? How're you planning to ring the new year in?

“Lingerie shopping is good for the soul”

Many years ago on an overcast Saturday afternoon, I found myself at one of those fancy foot spas that promise to take your worn-out, roughed-up, sandpaper-y feet and turn them all silken and velvety. I’d been gifted a voucher for the spa and since I was in the neighborhood for work anyway, I decided to squeeze in an hour of indulgent pampering before getting back to the grind. It had been a particularly trying week at work and I was glad to lose myself in the luxuriously plush surroundings of the spa for a while and switch off.

The interiors of the spa were divided into semi private enclosures which seated up to five women at a time and I found myself grouped with four other ladies, all engaged in an animated conversation. They got talking with me too as we waited for our respective therapists to show up and I discovered that they were sisters-in-law out for a weekend treat. During the course of the hour long ‘happy feet therapy’ as the spa manager put it, I got a fairly detailed look into the lives of the four ladies as they merrily chatted away. Apparently they were part of a large joint family which was strictly controlled by the father-in-law who ensured that he had a say in everything from the weekly menu to the household budget. With six growing children in the house, a busy kitchen to manage and a fairly hectic social schedule, life for the four ‘co-sisters’, as they referred to each other, was as full as it could possibly be and they often found that they had barely any time to spare for just themselves.

That’s when the eldest sister-in-law had come up with a brainwave; one that would allow the four ladies to step away from their roles as wives, mums and home makers for a bit and get some much needed me-time. Once in a while, whenever they could get a breather in their busy schedules, the ladies would head out together for an activity they all enjoyed: shopping, a trip to the spa or salon or just a relaxed meal at a restaurant. While the mother-in-law and their respective husbands were perfectly okay with this arrangement, the father-in-law didn’t particularly approve of what in his view were frivolous activities. And so, whenever time came for their occasional girls’ day out and they were questioned by the father-in-law, the ma-in-law would just inform him that they needed to go out for some ‘lingerie shopping’! That would naturally put an end to any further discussion and the ladies would enjoy their time off and get back to their routines, no questions asked!

“You know our father-in-law is actually a very nice person” the eldest sister-in-law who was seated right next to me confided “He is just a little old fashioned and given his age we don’t want to get into any direct confrontations with him. Our mother-in-law on the other hand is wonderfully supportive and luckily for us the four of us get along so famously that we have a readymade support system right at home. These occasional sessions really help us bond and rejuvenate and just forget the daily irritants of life for a while and we get back feeling so refreshed. Like I say, lingerie shopping is good for the soul!”

The ‘happy feet’ session ended soon after and bidding goodbye to the co-sisters, I tripped away on my barely recognizable, sparkling new feet, with these words ringing in my ears. In their own way, these four women had found a way to weave some fun into, what seemed to me, a fairly regimented life, by ensuring that they regularly took some time out for themselves. We’ve all read about the importance of ‘me-time’ but very few of us, yours truly included, actually make a conscious effort to make time for it. And yet I find that whenever I do make the effort and take some time out to ‘just be’, as a friend once put it, it makes a remarkable difference. I feel rejuvenated, more focused and often I find that this time helps me cope better with the day ahead.

And so for some time now, I have been making the effort to fit some ‘me-time’ into my routine as well. It doesn’t have to be an extravagant shopping trip or a trip to the spa; it could be as simple as getting some time to yourself in a busy day.
For one girl I know it is the half hour after the rushed morning routine has passed, and the husband and child have been packed off to office and school respectively. She brews herself some tea, puts her feet up and puts the rest of the world on hold for that half hour before heading to her own workplace. For another friend, a hot foot soak last thing at night is what helps her unwind.

I’ve been really lucky to have made some new ‘mommy friends’ since my daughter’s birth. Every once in a while, we leave our toddlers in the care of their baby sitters (dads!) and head off for a movie or brunch. And when the mommies or the baby sitters or both are not around, I like to get my alone time after everyone else in the house is either asleep or doing their own thing. I pull out my favorite treasure, a stash of much thumbed girlie magazines I’ve had since college and give myself up to an hour of bliss.

“Why are you reading that rubbish again?” asks the husband as he wanders past “Haven’t you given that stuff to the raddi chap yet?”

“No and I don’t intend to,” I reply, with (what I hope is) an enigmatic smile “because lingerie shopping is good for the soul!”

Originally written for "The Punekar"

------------------------
Manasi Vaidya, Author of "No Deadline For Love"
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Taking care of Mama

It was a misty, silvery Saturday morning; the kind where the sun plays hide and seek with the clouds and bathes the leaves with a mellow glow. Mama stood in the living room battling a familiar inner conflict: the thick sheaf of tempting Saturday newspapers and a mug of ginger chai or the little girl playing alone in her room? Mama always looked forward to her quiet Saturday mornings with the paper, but this Saturday was a little different. This Saturday Daddy had had to rush off for an urgent meeting at the office leaving behind a very upset little girl who always looked forward to her extended Saturday 'Daddy brunches', and a weary Mama. A massive volcanic eruption masquerading as a tantrum had followed Daddy's departure and now that the dust had finally settled, Mama was wary of provoking any further unrest. Besides the little girl seemed happy now and was even humming to herself...but then again she had looked so terribly forlorn when daddy left...

Just ten minutes. Mama promised herself. And then she would go and build towers with the little girl. And make little pink playdoh pigs with curly yellow tails.
She sank gratefully into the welcoming couch and gave herself up to the thick Saturday newspaper.

Not for long.

"Mama?" The little girl stood beside her with her basket of hair clips and rubber bands and a definitive gleam in her eye. "Your hair looking so funny. Room-it your pony's tail and Nikki make your hair pretty pretty just like Nikki."

"Okay" Mama said meekly. She knew better than to offer any resistance and she also did not think she had the capacity to weather another tantrum.

Besides there was the whole debacle of U didi. U didi who had sidled insidiously into the little girl's life, to help take care of her and who had left just as insidiously without so much as a by-your-leave a few months later. Now U didi hadn't been good at many things but if there was one thing she had been rather proficient at, it was making fancy hairstyles. While Mama had thus far considered it a major achievement to pin the little girl down for a few seconds while she hastily ran a comb through her hair and put a clip or two in place, U didi spent copious amounts of time creating elaborate hairstyles. Right from the simple 'fountain' on top of the little girl's head to hairstyles reminiscent of the fancy bouffants of Bollywood's leading ladies of yore, she attempted several hair-dos and managed to create outstanding results. It almost became a ritual of sorts; the little girl would sit patiently by the large French windows in the dining room while U didi wove her magic, and then much ooh-ing and aah-ing would happen over the little girl's latest hairstyle. And then U didi left one day taking her hair styling skills with her and breaking the little girl's heart. Overnight the little girl didn't want anything to do with her fancy hair clips and scrunchies and hair bands. She refused to entertain thoughts of having her hair styled into even a ponytail despite Mama's best efforts. Even combing her hair seemed to upset her. So when she began displaying an interest in combing Mama's hair instead, Mama was willing to do anything to help her get over that evil U didi who had left without a second thought for a little girl who had thought the world of her (curse her pointy little bouffant-ed head).

Besides after the initial few attempts at 'combing Mama's hair' which had comprised much jabbing and poking and shrieking of the anguished kind (by Mama), the little girl had managed to master the art of putting a comb to Mama's hair without irreparably damaging her scalp and Mama didn't really mind her hair being made 'pretty pretty' any more.

So when the little girl appeared beside her with her basket of trinkets, she obediently loosened the clasp that held her locks at the nape of her neck and settled down on the floor to make it easier for the little girl to wield her comb.

"Very good Mama! You're a good girl. Now I make you look pretty pretty okay?"

The little girl got to work in a determined sort of way and since she didn't seem too inclined for conversation, Mama decided to continue reading. After all this didn't really hamper the reading process at all. Actually, maybe this was a good thing, this obsession with combing Mama's hair. Maybe Mama could use this as an opportunity to stop cribbing about all the unread books piling up on the bedside table and actually get some reading done for a change! The little girl could comb away and Mama could read. Yes, it was brilliant! Mama was so happy she smiled a little smile to herself.

"Why you smiling Mama?"

"Because I'm reading."

"Now your eyes tired. You take some rest. Close your eyes."

"But..."

"CLOSE. YOUR. EYES. Mama."

"Okay. Sigh."

Mama let the newspaper drop to the floor wistfully and closed her eyes. So much for catching up on her reading. Now she'd have to sit here for God knows how long with her eyes closed till....actually it had been a while since she just sat with her eyes closed like this. It felt kind of good. Relaxing, in a meditative kind of way. Actually maybe this wasn't such a bad idea either. After all everyone was always telling her to take a chill pill and learn how to relax, and now that she thought about it, she was beginning to feel a little bit relaxed. Yes, Mama could get used to this. Just sitting here, no unnecessary thoughts crowding her mind, no talking...ahhh, bliss!

"Why you again and again smiling Mama?"

"Hmmm? Oh nothing, just feeling relaxed!"

"Hmmmm."

Short pause.

"Okay Mama. Now you sing. Sing 'Aloo Kachaloo kahaan gaye the'. Start."
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Selected for Blog Adda's Tangy Tuesday Picks! Thank you Blog Adda!

An extract from ‘No Deadline For Love’ (Penguin Books India)

‘Whoa! What happened, Megha? You look like a fright!’ Vijay had looked a little startled when I’d bounded up to him and I didn’t blame him. I was having a bad hair day and all the running up and down the stairs hadn’t helped matters. It probably looked like a tornado was swirling around my head by now.
I hurriedly explained the situation to Vijay and he told me that I would find Yudi at the little coffee shop in the basement of the building that housed our office.
‘He’s gone there for his daily shot of caffeine,’ Vijay grinned. ‘That guy is a tea-totaler—he can’t stand the sight of tea and there isn’t any coffee served at these high tea sessions! Hey Megha, tell him I’m looking for him too, will you? Oh, and Megha?’
'Yeah?' I turned around just as I was rushing out of the cafeteria again.
‘Tie up your hair, will you? It’s kind of, you know, frizzy,’ Vijay said kindly and I smiled and continued on my way. A comment like that would have normally unleashed my temper but Vijay had said it so sweetly and in the most well intentioned way that it was impossible to get angry. Besides, he was right. I paused to glance in the mirror of the office elevator that was transporting me to the basement and cringed at the sight of my hair. It was in a particularly mutinous mood today and each strand had declared independence from gravity; any more frizz and I would look like I’d been electrocuted. I whipped out a hair band and quickly secured my hair into a tight knot at the nape of my neck. I normally avoided tying up my hair because everyone said pulled-back hair made me look very young and vulnerable, like a little lost soul. I had interpreted this to mean diffident and under-confident and had taken to wearing my hair loose most of the time. I was so used to it now that I felt strangely exposed with my hair pulled back, as though a crack had appeared in the facade of supreme self-confidence that I kept up most times as I lurked behind my gloriously swinging mane. Vile Varun could’ve probably eaten me alive if I’d walked into the appraisal with my hair tied back like this.
The lift lurched to a stop, jerking me out of my reverie, and I hurried along to the coffee shop, my eyes peeled for Yudi. A strong whiff of espresso hit me as soon as I swung the door open and I inhaled huge gulps of it, the familiar smell comforting me somewhat. The Beans Coffee Hut was a popular hangout for the office crowds that worked in GF as well as the surrounding area, and even though the food sucked and the coffee tasted like dishwater, nothing could compare with the fantastic juke box they had in the corner which churned out melodies from as far back as the ‘70s. The owner, Samarpreet, had some ‘connections’ in the Bollywood music industry through which he had acquired this treasure and he took loving care of it, servicing it personally every week and polishing it until it shone. I had spent many a post-work evening there in the reluctant company of Vijay, who was more of a rock music buff, listening to old Hindi film songs and melting my office-related woes away over some piping hot masala chai which was the one thing the Beans Coffee Hut did a reasonable job at dishing out.
I looked around and my heart sank suddenly as I spotted Yudi in a corner, partially obscured behind some potted greens. He was in the middle of an intense discussion with Priyanka who was looking at him devotedly, her hands clasped in front of her. My mind whizzed back to the thousands of times I had seen Yudi and Priyanka together—at work, in Goa, at the restaurant where I’d met Gautam. They were definitely a couple from the looks of it and if not that, they had to be interested in each other given the amount of time they spent together. Maybe Yudi had turned his cell off so they could be alone, I realized, as I remembered the 'not reachable' message on his cellphone. Maybe they wanted to celebrate Priyanka’s success in private and here I was all set to crash the party. Well, there was no going back now—I had no time to lose if that stimulus material was going to make the flight with Yudi. I took a deep breath and approached their table, suddenly feeling terribly self-conscious and acutely aware of my slightly dishevelled appearance. Priyanka could make me feel like a country bumpkin in severe need of a makeover on the best of days, and today was not one of my good days. The recent work overload had taken its toll and I was looking like a dehydrated raccoon with dark circles occupying prime space on my tired face. I had rushed to work that day in my raggedy old jeans and a faded tee, taking advantage of GF’s Friday dressing policy, because I was much more comfortable working in them than the formal work wear I normally donned.
‘Umm . . . Yudi?’ I said nervously, walking up to the table. ‘Can I talk to you for a minute, please?’

Read the rest here!

An extract from ‘No Deadline For Love’ by Manasi Vaidya, reproduced with the permission of Penguin Books India, exclusively for ‘The Punekar’.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh Bai!

A few weeks ago a visiting aunt who’s been living in the US for over the last twenty years dropped in for tea. As we chatted over some hot ginger chai and crisp samosas, my cook ventured into the living room to enquire if we’d like some more tea.

“Ah what a blessing it is to have domestic help!” my aunt sighed wistfully “Back home in Seattle we have to do everything ourselves and even getting someone to make a cup of tea for you is a luxury! You’re so lucky!”

I glanced warily at my cook who shot back a pleased smile and trotted off to the kitchen looking mighty chuffed. She had finally showed up for work that day after nearly a fortnight’s absence during the course of which she had been systematically dispatching members of her extended family to join the heavenly choir in the sky and subsequently taking leave as a result of the multiple illnesses, deaths and funerals in her family. The month before that it had been a mysterious illness that had afflicted her, before that she’d had a wedding in the family and before that the roof of her rented room had suddenly collapsed one fine night necessitating a week’s leave. Just that very morning, fed up with her litany of excuses (impressed as I admittedly was with her creativity at storytelling) I had threatened to give her the boot and she had miraculously chosen to turn up for work instead of attending her chachi’s mami’s first cousin’s husband’s funeral.

As my aunt went on about the luxury of having domestic help in India I found myself thinking about my unending bai woes over the last couple of years. Back when I was footloose and fancy free, or for that matter even after I had settled for matrimonial bliss and set up my own home, bais had never really figured on my list of worries. A spot of cooking and a dash of cleaning were good enough to fit the bill and on the many days that the bai didn’t show up for work I was only too happy to experiment with some cooking or try out the hip new eatery in town while adeptly ignoring the dust bunnies and the mountainous stack of laundry at home. We existed in blissful oblivion, the bai and I.

All that changed when my baby came into the picture and I began spending significantly longer stretches of time at home with her. All of a sudden managing the home front and ensuring that the domestic machinery was ship shape assumed utmost importance. Grabbing a masala chai and a brun maska on the go was no longer a viable option for breakfast when you had a baby demanding to be fed. Dust bunnies needed to be banished into oblivion and the pile of laundry (now multiplied manifold with baby in the picture) screamed for immediate attention. The bai suddenly became the fulcrum on which the domestic chakra needed to whir without a hitch. And not just any bai would do, it had to be one who was clean, sincere and efficient. And one who showed up for work.

I found myself floundering in the Bai Market as I desperately searched for such a domestic diva. It all began with the Great Bai Hunt, which required you to keep your eyes peeled and be on watchful alert when you were out and about. I found myself carefully assessing the various bais on display in my society. I drew up a list of parameters and must-haves against which I ranked them based on their appearance. Finally, satisfied that I had perfected the Great Bai Hunt to a finely honed art, I approached the top choice on my list of prospective bais with what I thought was a suitable job offer.

“I’m not a bai, I live here!” barked the lady in question turning a delicate shade of green and shooting me a poisonous look that turned my intestines into jelly. She marched off to another group of ladies nearby and began speaking to them in an aggrieved tone while simultaneously throwing more poisonous looks my way.

“Please find me a bai!” I whispered in desperation to the watchman as I sped to the safety of my apartment, deciding to abandon any further plans of the Great Bai Hunt.

The watchman rose to the occasion rather admirably and I soon found myself facing round two in acquiring a bai; the Bai Interview. Prospective candidates began streaming into my house in response to the job vacancy. The interview process itself was mercifully short. I would open the door to find myself being given the once over by a pair (or sometimes two) of beady, knowing eyes.

“What is the work? How much time? How many people? How much money?” the bai at the door would bark out the questions in a series of staccato bursts before shaking her head disdainfully and marching off.
Many bais came and went but no one seemed remotely interested in taking up the job. My confidence sank to an all time low and I began seriously doubting my ability to hire, let alone retain any help, when one fine day in response to my meek answers to the standard interview questions, a bai actually acquiesced to take up my offer.

“I will only work for two hours, accept X amount of money, take Sunday off and have two cups of tea with four teaspoons of sugar each, if you want me to work here” she declared walking in and looking around with an air of detached contempt.

“Fine, as long as you do the job well” I said meekly, too dispirited to negotiate.
“When can you start?”

And so began my tryst with round three, the most complicated round of them all: Hold On To Your Bai For Dear Life! For after months of painstaking training, supervising and offering a variety of retention incentives, just when you thought that things had finally fallen into place and when you least expected it, the bai would quit for the flimsiest of reasons and vanish into Bai Oblivion, setting into motion yet again the Great Bai Hunt for a new bai.

After many years of handling the process of searching for, hiring, training and losing bais, I have finally reached a happy place where it really doesn’t bother me anymore. Unlike old times when I would go through a despairing cycle of shock, anger, regret and what-ifs, the disappearance of a bai now merely gives me cause to shake my head with a reproachful tut-tut and with steely determination I venture forth yet again into the Bai Market. Of course there are stories (not mine, I seem to have been blessed with more than my fair share of bad maid karma) of the faithful retainer who’s been loyal to the same family for years at a stretch and I live in constant hope that I too will one day find such a domestic goddess. Until then though, I make do with what I have and keep a watchful eye on the clock every morning as I pass through the dreaded hour between 7.00 and 8.00am during which the course of my day will get decided; will the doorbell ring heralding the arrival of my bai or will it be the phone call instead informing me that Sopu Kaka’s maushi’s brother has had a heart attack and there will be no bai in the foreseeable future.
And when the bell does chime and the bai walks in and later as I sink with gratitude into my first cup of tea for the day, I realize that for better or for worse I am stuck with my bai, and all said and done having her around does take the bite out of daily domestic drudgery a fair bit. Here’s to all the bais (or the lack of them) in our lives then, all those formidable ladies who are a daily and integral part of our households and who still have the capability to make all the visitors from abroad go green with envy!

Originally written for "The Punekar"

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Manasi Vaidya, Author of "No Deadline For Love"
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The 'happy party'

So its been a while since I posted here last. Not counting the Punekar posts which were written some time back and which I decided to put up just to fill in the increasingly growing gap between posts. The last three months have been far from rosy and for a while I had just given up on everything, blogging included. It all started with P falling ill, followed in close succession by Nikki, which I blogged about here. Just when life seemed to be limping back to normal and things were getting back on track, Nikki fell ill again. Except that this time round it wasn't the routine fall ill- go to the doctor-take a dose of antibiotics jig that we had kind of gotten used to, given the number of times she's been unwell ever since she started playschool. No, what happened this time round made the whole go to the doctor- take antibiotics routine seem like a faraway, rosy dream. It was a complete nightmare from the word go, comprising a week's stay in the hospital, two days of which were spent in the ICU. My first and only visit to a hospital before this was when Nikki was born and that was something I had prepped for, for over a year. This time round it was unexpected and scarily so. Its been well over a month, nearly two, since this happened but even now just the thought of that hospital stay gives me nightmares. The only good thing that came of the entire episode, even though I wouldn't have thought such a thing possible at the time, was that the short, harrowing hospital stay helped me get a lot of things in perspective. They say illness always gives you a new, sometimes improved perspective on life. Very true in my case. This episode happened at a time when I certainly needed some perspective and I got it by the cartloads. And cliched as it may sound, I think somewhere it has left me a wiser person. I can handle any shit Mr Murphy (he seems rather fond of me) chooses to throw my way now. Having said that, an illness of this magnitude for Nikki is certainly not something I want to undergo ever again. I would much rather happily go under a truck. Even a multitude of trucks. Its one thing to be ill yourself or even watch another adult suffer. Its excruciatingly difficult when its your young child and its not something I think I have the fortitude to bear again. Food for thought that, considering I've always considered myself to be a rather strong person otherwise, but this episode left me shattered. For weeks after we'd got back home and even after Nikki was back to her usual naughty little chatterbox self, I was moping around wallowing in self pity, feeling quite fed up with life.

Life, meanwhile, went about her business with nary a care as she is wont to. The maid vanished into thin air a few days after we got back from the hospital without so much as a by-your-leave. The dhobi continued to delight with burnt shirts and mysteriously stained collars. The people who live on the floor right above us carried on with their all year round home renovation program which gives one the constant impression of living under either a bowling alley or a hammer wielder with a particularly nasty temper, or on some particularly good days, both. All delightful little reminders that the show must go on and you really have no choice but to pull up your socks and get on with it. And eventually, time will heal all wounds even if it doesn't necessarily erase all memories, and life will seem less miserable even with the bais who don't show up and the errant dhobis. (I draw the line at the people on top though, they really are a a royal pain.)

In other news, in all of this general chaos and turmoil, my beloved book was launched. I really couldn't give it the attention or the time it deserved, much less blog about it but I hope to be able to do that now. All in all, it has been around for a couple of months now and by the grace of God its doing well. The reviews have been very encouraging, its made it to the Landmark best-seller list two weeks in a row(Woo Hoo!) and readers have written in to me with very ego boosting kind of stuff which could have potentially gone to my head if it hadn't been for the able support of my family who've taken it upon themselves to keep me grounded.In their own special ways, of course. A couple of months ago when the book had just been launched, an impromptu get-together was organized at my aunt's home. "Read from the book!" someone shouted.
I blushingly obliged. Surrounded by a gaggle of aunts and cousins, heart thumping so hard in my mouth I could barely get the words out, I nervously read from what I hoped was one of the funnier bits in the book. A frozen silence ensued. Baffled looks were exchanged.
"Erm, are we supposed to laugh now? That was the funny bit was it?" inquired a bewildered voice.
Yep, don't think there's any danger of my developing a swollen head anytime soon. They help me stay grounded, my family, they do.
************************************************

I was chatting with my mum on the phone about the last three months the other day and I told her I was fed up with all the worrying and the fretting and that 'the pity party was over'.
"What is a pity party Mama?" chirped an inquisitive little voice at my elbow.
"Umm, a pity party is when you're feeling sad Nikks. But Mama has decided not to feel sad anymore."
"So Mama will be happy now? Have a happy party?"
"Yes."
And a happy party it will be. Let the good times roll.

The Little Things That Matter…

Last evening Nikki and I attended a Hannah Montana themed birthday party. There was a large Hannah Montana cake, Hannah Montana balloons, goody bags, paper plates and cups, Hannah Montana streamers on the walls; by the end of it I pretty much had the effervescent Hannah coming out my ears. The party was rather nice, if a little impersonal, and it was probably just me, but I found the sight of several little three year old girls dressed up as Hannah Montana clones a little disturbing. I told the husband about it as we trudged home bearing a large (Hannah Montana, naturally) goody bag and we found ourselves reminiscing about the vastly different birthday parties of our own childhoods. The simple, do-it-at-home affairs where you would plan the party games yourself and spend the afternoon of the party feverishly making chits for the passing-the-parcel planned for the evening while your mother worked in the kitchen to provide the few guests, each of whom she knew by name, with homely fare.

There are very few, if at all, of these parties anymore and you can’t really blame the parents. It’s a little difficult to explain to your young child, after having attended a Winnie the Pooh themed birthday party complete with the Hundred Acre Woods, that she should be happy with a simple party at home. Having given in to one of these themed parties myself for Nikki’s first birthday however, I’ve emerged from the experience weary but wise, and with a rock solid resolve to try and pass on to Nikki the simple but soul satisfying birthday parties of my childhood.

This got me thinking of a few other things that I would like to pass on to Nikki from my childhood. The simple, little things, that you could easily overlook, but when you really think about it, went a long way in making your childhood special.
A love for reading and books would most certainly top the list of these. There are very few experiences in life that can surpass the joy derived from a good book and a rewarding and enriching relationship with books is something I definitely want to pass on to Nikki. A lot of people scoffed when I began reading to Nikki when she was just about three months old, but when I peek into her room now and see her little head bent in rapture over a book, and when we bond over the adventures of Silly Sally or Bubbles the Monkey at bedtime, I know that with books, it is never too early to begin (or for that matter, too late!).

Next on the list would be the family dinners my parents imposed on us when we were kids and whose value we realized only years later. Every evening, come hell or high water, or to be more apt, exam or new TV soap, all of us were required to show up at the dinner table to have the evening meal as a family. The television and phones were strictly off limits during this time and we were all required to participate in some dinnertime conversation. It was a simple, routine thing to do, something that we did every evening without really thinking too much about it, but when I look back now I realize that back then, no matter how much I overtly resented this intrusion into ‘my space’, subconsciously I looked forward to these dinners as a time when I could just switch off from the rest of the world and connect with my family, and those shared meals helped us grow closer.

And so in my own little family now I try and recreate those family dinners of yore by putting Nikki firmly into her highchair at the table and dragging the husband there as well, and insisting that all phones and the TV are turned off. It can get challenging at times with Nikki insisting on using the rotis to play Frisbee with and the husband twitching nervously with severe BlackBerry withdrawal symptoms, but we manage to emerge unscathed from most meals and feel only the better for the time spent together. As the years pass and Nikki grows older I hope we can use this time to strengthen the bond we share and practice the fine art of conversation and the finer art of listening.

Which brings me to the next item on my list; the art of listening- really listening, to other people and taking a genuine interest in their lives. I’ve met so many self obsessed people in the last few years that I can almost sense it when a person genuinely interested in others walks into a room. I’d like Nikki to be one of these few, increasingly rare, but precious people, something that I’m sure will go a long way in developing her personality and helping her forge real, lasting friendships.

And lastly, I’d like to teach Nikki the ability to be comfortable in and to enjoy her own company, because at the end of the day, no matter how large your circle of friends, you are alone with your own thoughts.

There are many other things I’d like to pass on to Nikki as well, and like every other parent if I had to list them all out I’d probably end up with a compendium in several parts. But if I had to list just a few, I would choose these. Little things yes, but things that will help build a rewarding childhood, filled with the simple pleasures of life, the way childhood should be.

What about you? What are the things from your own childhood that you would like to pass on to your children? And if your kids are all grown up already, what are the things you think you did well to pass on?

Originally written for "The Punekar"

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Manasi Vaidya, Author of "No Deadline For Love"
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The Lost Art of Doing Nothing…

I was first introduced to the concept of summer camp for toddlers the summer my daughter turned two. I was blissfully day dreaming about the long, lazy summer days ahead on the last day of what had been quite a hectic school year (getting a two year old to preschool is no easy feat!) when I was accosted by another mum who was part of the mother toddler club that I attended with my daughter.

“So which summer camp are you signing up for?” she asked me urgently, while waving a few brochures that screamed ‘Summer Camp!’ in bold letters in my face.

“Eh?” I answered in my customary eloquent manner.

“Summer Camp!” she snapped impatiently “There are just a few days left before seats fill up everywhere. You have to act fast if you want to get in!”

“Really?” I was quite horrified “And you think this stuff is necessary for our kids? I mean, they’re only two!”

“Of course it’s necessary!” said the woman looking at me as if I was a particularly slow species of the human race “It’s an important part of their educational base! You don’t want your daughter losing out in the long run do you?”

I headed home suddenly feeling a lot less happy about the lazy summer vacation I had been looking forward to. What if that other mother was right? Maybe summer camp was an integral part of toddlers’ early education these days! After all, the times our kids are growing up in are very different from our own, relatively simpler childhoods. I took a few deep breaths and decided to tackle the summer camp issue in a calm and rational manner.

“We need to send Nikki to a summer camp!” I shrieked like a banshee the minute the husband walked in through the door that evening “It’s an important part of her educational base! She’ll lose out in the long run if we don’t enroll her right away!”

“What nonsense” said the husband without batting an eyelid, “There were no summer camps when we were kids and we turned out fine!”

“However,” he added quickly seeing that I was about to get into the wailing banshee mode again “You can always take a few trial classes and check them out. See how you and Nikki like them.”

And so a few days later, armed with all the research I had done on summer activities, I set out to attend a few trial classes with Nikki. I had identified a summer camp which had a variety of activities for toddlers, designed to hone their gross and fine motor skills, sensory abilities, cognitive behavior, speech development and every other skill a young person is supposed to be equipped with these days.

Our first stop was a yoga class for mothers and toddlers, which aimed at getting the tots introduced to fitness while the mothers improved their flexibility and mental well being. A matronly looking woman greeted us as we entered a room where a few mums and their babies were already perched on yoga mats.
“We will begin with some basic exercises” she announced “Please lie down on the floor and stretch out your arms and legs.”
I obediently lay down and stretched out my arms and legs as instructed. As I took a few deep breaths I felt a feeling of calm envelop me. This was brilliant; I would soon be relaxed and supple and I was introducing my daughter to the benefits of yoga at such a young age!
“We will now begin the deep breathing” the instructor called out “Please inhale deeply and exhale with an Ommmm”
I took a deep breath and began to exhale slowly “Ommm….OW! Owwwwwwwwwwwww!”
Nikki, seeing me lying prostrate on the ground with my arms akimbo, had assumed this was some sort of new game and had clambered up on me.
“Horsey horsey Mama?” she asked brightly and began bouncing up and down on my tummy like it was a particularly springy trampoline.
“Ommmmmmmm” said the instructor, quite oblivious to my predicament.
“Owwwwwww” I yelped in agony, desperately trying to get Nikki off.
I saw the instructor shoot me an irritated look from the corner of her eye. Thankfully the stretching exercise was over soon and we got ready for the next posture. This involved balancing on gym balls and doing some more stretching.
“Look Mama, beeeeeg ball! “ Nikki said delightedly and made a lunge at a bright red gym ball on which a plump woman was precariously balancing herself. I grabbed her in the nick of time and deciding that slip disc surgery would probably be the outcome if I tried any stunts on the ball with Nikki around, beat a hasty retreat.

Our next activity was art where I hoped we would fare better since Nikki enjoyed doodling. The room itself was lovely with a multitude of art and craft materials strewn around, and Nikki grabbed a handful of crayons delightedly and began scribbling away.
“Do you know how to draw a circle?” a teacher came up and enquired. Nikki obligingly drew a squiggle.
“No, let me show you” taking the crayon from Nikki, the teacher drew a perfect circle. “Let’s try a triangle now” she went on.
“I want to draw!” Nikki took another crayon and drew a few more squiggles.
“No, no, no!” the teacher looked vexed “That’s not a triangle!”
She tried taking the crayon from Nikki again who decided that enough was enough and began flinging the crayons on the floor like a missile bomber on a combat mission.
“That’s enough drawing for today Nikki! Maybe we should try something new!” I took Nikki out again and looked around for another activity. Music! Just the thing we needed to calm down. I walked into a room strewn with musical instruments where a few parents and babies sat in a semi circle around the teacher, a kindly looking elderly gentleman, who was explaining to the group that he would now introduce the kids to the concept of ‘sur’ and ‘taal’.

“Mama I don’t like this uncle!” Nikki announced.

The teacher took a deep breath and broke into a ‘sa re ga ma’. With near perfect precision Nikki threw her head back and burst into a loud howl matching him perfectly in pitch and crescendo. The elderly gentleman, now looking significantly less kindly, was beginning to give me pained looks so I gathered a bawling Nikki and headed out to the garden, dejected. I sat down on a clump of grass and contemplated the summer camp debacle. Beside me Nikki sighed contentedly.

“Mama, I so happy now.”

“What?” I gaped at my daughter. She hadn’t been remotely close to happy in the state of the art yoga class, art class or the music class and here she was sitting around, doing nothing and proclaiming great joy. “You’re happy Nikki? Why?”
Nikki gave me a look of infinite wisdom “I so happy Mama, because I do nothing.”
And I finally got it. It was all quite simple really, just the way my childhood had been, until I had tried to over complicate it with my own misplaced zeal and paranoia that my child would get ‘left behind’.

We didn’t sign up for any camp that summer, Nikki and I. Instead we spent a lot of time in the park, counting birds, chasing butterflies and watching the clouds make funny shapes in the sky. We pottered around at home in the kitchen and baked a cake. We went shopping for vegetables and fruits. We made up games and wove imaginary stories out of nothing. And when we got bored we thought of ways to amuse ourselves. It was a happy, contented summer. And at the end of it I really didn’t feel like Nikki had missed out anything or lost out on building her educational base. Because you learn a whole lot more when you are just doing nothing.


Originally written for "The Punekar"

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Manasi Vaidya, Author of "No Deadline For Love"
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New Mum on the Block

In my pre-mommyhood days, what sometimes seems like a lifetime away now, I used to be a very different person. I was a driven career woman, climbing up the corporate ladder; laptop bag in my hand, stars in my eyes. I met deadlines, dealt with demanding bosses, thrived on coffee-fueled early morning meetings and late night presentations. On weekends, I enjoyed lazy lie-ins and luxuriated in bed with a book and the papers. I experimented with food and dined in exotic places. Long lazy brunches and quiet dinners during which I mulled over the little perplexities of life. I took pride in my appearance and indulged myself with lazy soaks in the tub and frequent trips to the salon. My clothes were impeccable, my hair shiny and blow dried. I went dancing and to the movies and the theatre when the whim struck me, curled up with a good book at home when I preferred a more mellow way to unwind. I travelled often, to far-flung exotic destinations, at times long trips, sometimes short ones, embarked on an impulse. They were rather nice, those pre-mommyhood days.

All that changed when my daughter first announced her appearance in my life with an ear splitting shriek. “Mother” that shriek seemed to say “I am here now. Get ready for your life to change. Big time.”

And change it did. I went from being the driven career woman to perpetually harried first time mother, grappling with the new found challenges of motherhood. The laptop bag was replaced with the diaper bag. The stars in the eyes remained, but they were borne more often than not of a sleep induced haze. Coffee continued to be my best friend. Except it wasn’t to handle deadlines and meetings anymore, it was to keep up with a sleepless infant. Lazy lie-ins became a thing of the past. The child arose each morning at 5.30am sharp. Except weekends of course, when it was 4.30am sharp. My appearance now was the last thing on my mind. I was usually just grateful on the days when I made it to the shower. I had cereal in my hair. The lazy soaks in the tub were quickly replaced with two minute dashes in and out of the shower, in the middle of many of which I often emerged dripping wet with my heart in my mouth because the child had let out a blood curdling yell (which as it turned out was because she was just imitating ‘Oliver the Monkey’ on television). I still danced, but only while entertaining the child at mealtimes. Mealtimes themselves were quick shove-the-food-down-the-gullet affairs for me, and more elaborate ones for the child, stretching on for hours while she mulled over the little perplexities of life and I mulled over what I would serve for the next meal that she might eat faster. I rarely went to the movies anymore and the few times that I did, it almost felt like a surreal, magical experience and I felt like a child at the candy store looking at all that Pepsi and popcorn. I still travelled but only to child friendly places and with luggage enough to make people wonder if I was considering a permanent move to a different planet. Naturally, ninety nine percent was the child’s luggage.

And yet, in spite of all these changes, I was the happiest I had ever been now than before my daughter was born. Motherhood is a transformative experience. It was for me. The most life changing, gut wrenching, overwhelming experience of my life. Yes it is tough and challenging and oftentimes frustrating. But it is also hugely rewarding and satisfying and capable of filling you with a fizzy, warm happiness that touches your soul. Those little arms wrapped around you, that little head trustingly resting on your shoulder and that little voice that says “I love you Mama”. The eager little eyes that search for you in a crowd and, when they find yours, the way that little face lights up with radiant joy. The discovery each day, of a new wonder, seen through those innocent, hopeful eyes, something you would never have caught with your own jaded and cynical ones. The experience of watching that tiny bundle you got home from the hospital grow up, the gradual shaping of that little personality, the understanding of what unconditional love means.

Yes I do think of my pre-mommyhood days sometimes. I even miss little bits of them. But I wouldn’t want to trade my mommy days for anything in the world; not even the ones where I have cereal in my hair. For I know that nothing can compare with being my daughter’s mother.

Join me then, dear reader, as I walk through first time motherhood with my daughter, sometime stumbling, sometimes waltzing along. For all the parents out there, especially the mothers - new mothers and old ones, mothers to be, those who’d like to be mums someday, those who value their own relationships with their mums, and those who like a good laugh. This column will take a tongue- in-cheek look at everything that has anything to do with mommyhood. And about being a mum in Pune. And also a little bit of life on the side as I see it. Until the next column, then.

Originally written for "The Punekar"

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Manasi Vaidya, Author of "No Deadline For Love"
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For my other two year old

Two years of doing something I thought I would never be able to keep up when I first started. I used to write a diary (at one point of time I even had three different diaries!) but that was different. Nobody ever read my diary, I guarded it fiercely and never let anyone so much as peek at it. The pesky younger sister was often given an earful when she was snooping around my stuff, as younger sisters are wont to (yes you are, admit it!), because I was convinced she wanted to read my diary even though it was far more likely she was just scouting around for a bar of chocolate. I found it incredibly difficult to fathom how people could blog about themselves so easily, put themselves out there just like that. I was convinced I'd never be able to do it. Then I was introduced to the wonderful world of mommy blogging and I wanted to be a part of it too. I've written about that here before; wanting to have someone who would listen, understand without judging,like I saw all the mommy bloggers doing. And so I took the first tentative steps. Without revealing my identity because I really wasn't sure about the whole thing and I really wasn't comfortable with people I knew reading what I wrote. It was incredibly comfortable to write as 'new mum on the block'. There was this strange sense of freedom. I could write what I wanted, experiment as much as I liked, be who I really wanted to be without thinking about being judged or evaluated. I miss that sometimes, writing from that safe comfort zone now that I have revealed my identity, but it couldn't have gone on forever and I knew that when I started. I'm glad I started like that though because even though 'new mum' doesn't blog anymore I still remember how I felt when I had the freedom to blog as her. And that really helped me overcome my initial hesitation at writing in a public forum and to write without any of the mental barriers I am otherwise rather good at imposing on myself.

Today morning I was out with friends and someone mentioned my blog and someone else 'oohed' and 'aahed' and said it was so cool that I had a blog, and I found myself sharing her amazement. Yes, I had a blog, me the 'guard what she writes with her life' girl, and I found that I was really proud of my little, woefully neglected in recent times, blog. Happy second birthday, blog.I'm sorry I nearly forgot your birthday and it had to take that chance conversation to remind me, that two years ago on this date I first met you. You're one of the best things that's happened to me in the last two years. And next year, I'll throw you a proper party to celebrate your birthday. For this one, lets just go out for a drink tonight, just you & I.

P.S. I wrote this post yesterday! Just had to keep it languishing in the drafts till now, because we did do a celebratory dinner for HM after all and by the time we got back it was wayyy past midnight!

Paranoia and chocolate cake

The title for this post is fully inspired by a book I read many years ago; the delightfully titled 'Prison and Chocolate Cake' by Nayantara Sahgal. Much like the author of the book, who came to associate chocolate cake with prison because of an incident in her childhood, over the last month and a half I've developed a morbid sort of paranoia for chocolate cake myself. It all started with a trip to Nikki's pediatrician around the same time, when I decided that waiting for the doctor in his clinic was probably not such a good idea given that Nikki, who now recognizes the doctor's clinic rather well and associates it with jabs and other unpleasant things, is given to start bawling her head off anytime we're near it. There's a cheery looking cake shop right under the doctor's clinic, specializing in chocolate cakes, so I decided to wait there instead and distract Nikki with the assorted goodies on display till the doctor showed up. It seemed like a good idea then, but thanks to a series of illnesses that saw us going back to the doctor again and again and, would you believe it, yet again and then a few more times, beyond a point that cheery cake shop just made me want to barf. There's something quite tragic about sitting in what should be, and is for other people, a happy place, a place where they come to treat themselves, when all you can think of is that next report from the pathology lab or what the doctor is going to say and whether your poor little sick child is going to have to take another dose of nasty antibiotics. Of course Nikki was quick to associate the cake shop with the doctor soon enough and the whole thing just blew up in my face, so I was back to waiting at the clinic again.

Anyway, so we've been battling a series of illnesses over the last month and a half. Nothing major, but its just been one thing after the other. Poor little Nikki was the worst hit, because she also ended up missing a lot of playschool and then when she was fully recovered she didn't want to go back. Anyway things are back on track now and life is slowly limping back to normal, even though the slightest sneeze, or the hint of a cough is enough to make me start shaking like an aspen. Oddly enough the advent of any new illness was always on a weekend. By the end of it I had become so paranoid, I had come pretty close to sitting in the prayer room fingering beads each time a fresh Friday dawned.

In the meantime, life went on as usual as it is wont to, and even though I realize I've been painting a pretty gloomy picture (you always knew where Nikki gets her drama queen genes from, didn't you?)there have been other cheerful things that have been happening as well. For one, my book finally saw the light of day, erm, bookstores and its already been around for nearly a month now. The initial response has been pretty encouraging and lets just say I don't have to spend the rest of my life sniveling under that cover anymore. You can read some of the reviews here, and I will post other updates soon. Have any of you had a chance to read it? Let me know what you think!

In other news, all this illness made me re-think my own fitness levels and I realized a drastic pulling-up-of-the-socks was in order. Too many late nights, cheese loaded pizza binges and not enough working out was simply not on anymore. Since it had mainly been Nikki and P who were ill, and I was the sole caregiver, I'd also begun to feel rather Florence Nightingale-ish what with all the late night bedside vigils and administering of medicines. With cries of 'I must be a hundred percent fit! I owe it to my family!' ringing in my mind, I threw myself on the treadmill in a bout of misplaced zeal and began to workout like I was training for a marathon. The tryst with fitness lasted only a couple of days because in my enthusiasm to nullify many weeks of living slothfully in just a few days, I ended up straining a muscle and found myself laid up in bed for a change. Thankfully both P & Nikki were well on their way to recovery by then so no major harm done, except to my ego and my dreams of being super fit. Just when I had pretty much memorized the 'how to max your treadmill workout' primer, the doctor has advised me to, in fact, stay as far away from the treadmill as possible. Oh well, at least I'll have more time to blog.