Happy Deepavali!!!!

Dear Vik - Happy 2nd birthday

Vikram....

Adores his brother..shrieks to greet him back from school..calls him anna or for the most part Arya.
Vies for daddy's attention..calls him addy and tugs on shyam to take him outside.
Says Amma and hugs Sangeetha as if he has not seen her in 10 yrs when she comes back from work.
loves playing with cars
loves to be outside
almost eats by himself...and just needs to be tucked in for bedtime...

All in all its been a great year with a lot of accomplishments. We are all very proud of Vik/Ikabi/eyeball (as Arya calls him).

Devi

When you see her face, the first thing you would notice are the eyes- Big innocent ones looking at you with the same earnest as the stray dog brownie that we would feed our left-overs to. She wore the same pavadai-sattai-davani everyday and her oily hair was plaited in a tight knot and you could smell oil when she came too close to you. Sometimes you could see the lice in her hair. That was devi and she came to learn type-writing at the lakshmi institue that was situated in the first floor of where I lived. She lived in Vijayaragapuram - a slum that was situated across our community. My friend Radha was the one who introduced her to me. Devi was the daughter of a weaver and was one among many children. What caught our attention was that she wanted to learn typing and always was interested in learning and doing something worthwhile with her time. She didn't follow her mother when she went for household-work. She wanted to be different. So me & Radha set about on the task of educating her with an all-important attitude at this sudden responsibility. Everyday we would whisk her away and started with our English lessons on the extended sunshade in the mottai madi. We started out with English words and then went on to sentences complete with instruction on active & passive voice. Sometimes we would give her homework from Wren and Martin or from our school's English lessons. We even made her cry when she made mistakes and reward her with choclates or biscuits if she did well. I, on my part, would keep thinking of what to give her as homework all day in school. The zeal was infectious and I even tortured my dad to find a job and that too I wanted him to find a nurse job for her. We would teach her more nurse related sentences like: How are you? Good morning! etc. I have to admit that with my little hospital experiences in India I have never been greeted by any nurse. I have been yelled, of course. But in our minds our instruction had to be perfect for devi. Now thinking about it our fathers (both mine & radha's) joined in this koothu (comedy) to either instruct devi or go about scouting for the nurse's job ;-). One day Devi insisted that we come home with her and we went. She lived in a hut that had 2 rooms - in one room there was this huge weaving mill, and in the other small room they would all huddle into. We got a free weaving tour and we were amazed at all the hardwork this family had to put in to earn their daily bread. We were their special guests for the day and were made to sit in the only 2 cane chairs that they had. Coffee was bought from the nearby tea kadai and served in the only stainless steel cup that they had. All her neighbours sort of peeped in and stared at us. Her mom was in tears and thanked us profusely for helping her daughter. We came back home - happy and contented with a feeling of accomplishment. We strove to do more for her.

Then one day, Devi stopped coming to the institute. We asked around and no one had a clue. We didn't know the way back to her house and plus our parents were not too happy about us wandering into Vijayaragapuram. Months passed by and one day her mom came to radha's house and asked if she could pluck some ari-nellikai from the huge tree that was in their backyard. She said nothing about Devi and we sort of burst out and asked her. The answer she gave is something I can't forget- Oh! She married my brother 3 months ago and is in the family way. She asked for something sour and I knew you had a nellikai maram so I thought I'll ask you a favor and see if I can pluck some.

Disillusionment and Dissapointment are not words enough to feel what we did that day. That was the last we heard of devi.

P.S This is not fictional. It is a true story and it happened to me.

Taare Zameen Par - Not a review

Kids...
You have to win them over and work with them.
You have to win them over and teach them.
I don't think you can be strict with them - Unko maaza ana chahiye.
You have to make it interesting for them for them to learn.
You have to teach children the way they want to understand.
Each child is different -You have to take the time to reach out to them.

These are excerpts from an interview Aamir gave when making Taare Zaameen par. Please watch it.



Why am I talking about this movie after a year? Because I just watched it and it touched me immensely.One of the best movies of recent times.....I salute the filmmaker in aamir for this beautiful movie - I am sure all of us parents can take a leaf out of this movie when dealing with children. We were recently at our friend's place and he was mentioning how he could relate to the dad in the movie. I think just that is victory enough for this film (I think this is India's oscar entry).

I especially liked this scene - The kid would have gotten into trouble for not doing well in school. His parents would be angry with him and would have given a big sermon. The dad would be getting ready to leave to work...and the kid would ask him where he is going. The dad would go - I am leaving and never coming back. The kid would be scared and say: Sorry, papa! I will never do that. The mom, very typical, would go: Why are you scaring the child? Beta- Your dad is just going to the office and will be back.

At that point the camera zooms on the kid's face portraying all kinds of emotions like : How can my dad do this to me? How could he scare me so much. I love him and look how he is hurting me!

Of course there are many times when I insist on the kids doing something that I want so I accept I'm guilty as well. I would regret it later but does the child know that?
After all its their time to be mischievous, funny, loud- ain't it? They are not going to jump on the couch when they are 30 yrs old or will they want someone to sleep with them when they are in their teens or will they want to be fed? Why can't we give them the gift of time?

If you haven't watched this movie, please watch it. Its worth your time!
Here are some nice segments...



I have to end by saying - I love my children and I can see their emotions everyday in little things that they do. They offer me unconditional love which is why it hurts me to see them hurt. I hope I'll do the right things to them and they enjoy their childhood and have lasting memories like I did with mine. Thanks appa & amma too for letting me be myself.

Nostalgia - 3

Who can forget the nice creative DD TV ads?
Solidaire Cat 1000 Ad (Amazing choregraphy and an English Ad)-
Here are the lyrics as far as I can remember...
Solidaire for various news, Solidaire for Sports, Solidaire for Sunday movies. Solidaire Solidaire...We want, we want true colors.We want to hear good sound.We know what we want ...We want Solidaire.

Other English ads like campa orange flavor(would sponsor different strokes on sunday afternoons),gold spot etc were great!

Woodwards gripe water(Cute ad)- Enna achu, Kolzhundai azhlugarathu! - gripe water kooduthutiya. Nee chinnavana errukaracha ada thaan kooduthen! All pattis in a family would show up.

Nirma Washing powder, surf lalithaji ad, amruthanjan, vicco vajrathathi were good too.

In the radio - I remember these ads -dollar biscuit, gopal palpodi.
I also loved listening to cibaca geet mala on friday nights on the kutti transistor that we had. Buds & blossoms on Saturday afternoons was good to hear western music. All in all I had a great time.

Here is an old ad for your viewing pleasure.Good old days...

The art of doing nothing....

In the movie office space(which btw is a classic movie), peter gibbons (the guy's name in the movie) would be asked by his friends: What would you do if you had a million dollars? For which he would reply- I would do nothing.

That is precisely the point of this post-There is joy in doing nothing. When I see the kids in this generation (now I sound old), they have lost the art to do nothing. This can be partly our mistake - jostling the kids from painting classes, to music classes, to kumon, to balavihar - Their day is chunked up into activities. In fact some parents overdo by making the kids go to Sunday school at the local temple(concept borrowed from christianity). The kid needs to be doing X at any given time or if there's nothing he/she sits before the TV or if they are older there's the Wii or Ninetendo DS.

I remember sitting out in the verandah with a cup of coffee staring blindly at nothingness in the hot afternoons of Madras. Or watching a east-man(I think that's how you spell it) color movie that's atrociously boring but since there's nothing better to do - just watch it. Or the times when we look at the street dogs, or the ants or staring at people on the streets. This was not only restricted to the kids who didn't have any responsibilites but my neighbourhood mamas who were vetti on the weekend afternoons will hang on the gates and watch the road passer-bys. So you may ask what have you accomplished - Just a sense of calm and serene that today's kids are missing out.

But again, not to contradict my post, I don't think the kids or the parents are to be blamed entirely. We mean well for the kids - We don't want them to waste time and the entire system which includes the school is very activity oriented. The children belonging to this generation are very analytical - They will tell you they are bored and will not follow some instructions just because you are elderly - You do need to reason out with them. So very understandably we are in a age which is different from what it was. This has also trickled to us- the older generation - We too have lost the art of doing nothing. If there is one weekend which I have no plans - I would first rejoice, then scout around for things to do but I almost always end up calling someone for dinner/lunch making it a busy weekend. Well, I guess it would be nice if someone came by and asked me to do nothing for a while - i would grab it. How I wish I could go back to the days where I would sit in the verandah and gape/stare at nothing.

I have trouble making Arya sit doing nothing because sometimes I think he should be able to do that. I don't even use the word timeout nowadays but just tell him to sit doing nothing because I want him to enjoy doing nothing.

Anyway the point is that times & lives are moving fast - Things happen in a certain way because that's the day and age we are in. Our kids cannot do the things we did and neither will their kids do the things that they do.

So just savour each moment because down the line this will your most enjoyable one. Accept the generation gap and move on....