Q - What do you do?
A - I'm a stay-at-home mother
Q - Ok. So, what do you do apart from just taking care of your child? How do you keep yourself occupied?
A - Well...I...(my response from there on is shaped by how I'm feeling at that point - tired of own my status, belittled by the person's achievements, humored at the silliness of person's question since he/she him/herself doesn't seem to have done much in life, or just plain mad at the person's myopia.)
When I was ranting about this to my brother once, he said -"If you were doing some research work, creating or inventing things; I would have understood your frustration. You were working in MNCs only adding to their moolah. A small part of someone else's big plan. So enjoy this opportunity of being able to shape a child into a beautiful and confident human being". I was mad at my brother for saying this. For not understanding my plight; but eventually I came around to see what he meant.
Honestly, its tough getting used to the idea of not having your own money. It took me more than a year to start using Pratim's debit card. I would simply refuse to use it, even when he showed me the practicality of it. I remember calling him up a couple of times to check if I could buy that dress I so loved. Confused, he would say -"Why are you asking me? I'm not really there to see it!" After all, whether I should spend money on something or not was never his prerogative before!
Some say that parenting is the toughest job in the world. I do not agree with that. Watch "Dirty Jobs" on Discovery and you'd know why!! But being a full time parent does come with its own challenges which are extremely tough to deal with. To begin with, I tend to take sole responsibility for my child's actions. While I know that there are other factors influencing his behavior and reactions (father, friends, school, teachers, environment, etc.) and that every child comes with some "factory built" traits as well; still as a full time parent, I find it difficult to detach myself from Kabir's behavior - whether its good, bad or ugly.
Just to quote a couple of examples - whenever Kabir is unhappy/cranky, I tend to question myself first before even thinking whether something might have gone wrong at school. If he ever talks disrespectfully to someone, I feel maybe I haven't taught him this aspect well enough instead of wondering if he might have picked it up from some other child and just needs to be told not to do it again. All this because I believe I spend most of my time with him and efforts on him. It definitely takes a toll on me and there isn't much breath left to do anything else apart from just taking care of my child.
Giving birth to a new life, keeping it healthy and giving it a shape, a meaning is a tall task. It takes the right mix of love and tough love, passionate involvement and displayed detachment, detailed teaching and leaving scope for self learning, positive reinforcement and negative action to rear them for life ahead - and all this keeping in mind that your child is unique and your mix of all of the above has to be tailored for him, for that situation.
C'mon, someone has to get this globally accredited as a full time job, and a tough one at that!
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Coffee and Cruelty...
As I was reminiscing and writing about my days in KV some weeks ago, there was this one disturbing incident that came to my mind but it didn't quite fit into the subject of what I was writing about. In fact, its an incident which does not even fit into the person I believe I am today. Well about that last bit I could be wrong and you can always tell me so :)
I was in Standard 5 (in Medak, near Hyderabad) when we were given a science group project and I was assigned to a team of 8 members. I don't exactly remember everyone who was a part of it; but there was this one girl - Saroj, who I distinctly remember. That day we drew up our plan and decided on the stuff we needed to buy for our project. After school we met at my house at around 4 pm and walked down to the only stationary shop in the only little huddle of stores that existed in Medak - called Tower (because it was situated next to a TV tower. How creative??!!).
Now Saroj used to live very close to Tower and met us directly at the shop. After we had bought the stuff we needed, she invited us home for coffee. She said her dad made the best filter coffee in the world. This invitation threw us off and we started making our excuses immediately. The thing is, Saroj's father was a cook and server at the Inspection Bunglow (guest house) of the Ordnance factory where our fathers were employed. Many of us being officers children had been served by him in the past on many occasions and to meet him as our classmate's dad wasn't very appealing. But Saroj insisted aggressively and we gave in.
Once we reached her house our discomfort only rose. She lived in a one room house with her parents and siblings. As it turned out, they had no seats/chairs to offer and we had to stand outside the house and wait for our coffee to arrive. And coffee seemed to take way longer than usual. The awkwardness of the whole situation brought out the worst in us. We started off by whining about how we couldn't stand around like that for too long, to how the locality looked hostile and unsafe, to how late it was getting and how our parents were disapproving of such tardiness. One of us even asked if she was a Bramhin or not - else we wouldn't drink the coffee. Saroj bore all this with the patience and maturity of a statesman! She tried to douse every "concern" with genuine reassurance - one of which was "Of course, we are Bramhins. Else how would my father cook at the IB?"
At some point during these exchanges our awkwardness slowly changed to horrible embarrassment as our own cruelty dawned on us. To make matters worse, Saroj's father stepped out especially to meet us and expressed how thrilled he was to have us over. In a little while after that, coffee was served. It was freshly filtered, piping hot and creamy. It was truly the best coffee I'd ever had!
And yet, on our way back home, none of us talked about it. Its our cruelty which had left a bad taste in our mouths I guess...
I was in Standard 5 (in Medak, near Hyderabad) when we were given a science group project and I was assigned to a team of 8 members. I don't exactly remember everyone who was a part of it; but there was this one girl - Saroj, who I distinctly remember. That day we drew up our plan and decided on the stuff we needed to buy for our project. After school we met at my house at around 4 pm and walked down to the only stationary shop in the only little huddle of stores that existed in Medak - called Tower (because it was situated next to a TV tower. How creative??!!).
Now Saroj used to live very close to Tower and met us directly at the shop. After we had bought the stuff we needed, she invited us home for coffee. She said her dad made the best filter coffee in the world. This invitation threw us off and we started making our excuses immediately. The thing is, Saroj's father was a cook and server at the Inspection Bunglow (guest house) of the Ordnance factory where our fathers were employed. Many of us being officers children had been served by him in the past on many occasions and to meet him as our classmate's dad wasn't very appealing. But Saroj insisted aggressively and we gave in.
Once we reached her house our discomfort only rose. She lived in a one room house with her parents and siblings. As it turned out, they had no seats/chairs to offer and we had to stand outside the house and wait for our coffee to arrive. And coffee seemed to take way longer than usual. The awkwardness of the whole situation brought out the worst in us. We started off by whining about how we couldn't stand around like that for too long, to how the locality looked hostile and unsafe, to how late it was getting and how our parents were disapproving of such tardiness. One of us even asked if she was a Bramhin or not - else we wouldn't drink the coffee. Saroj bore all this with the patience and maturity of a statesman! She tried to douse every "concern" with genuine reassurance - one of which was "Of course, we are Bramhins. Else how would my father cook at the IB?"
At some point during these exchanges our awkwardness slowly changed to horrible embarrassment as our own cruelty dawned on us. To make matters worse, Saroj's father stepped out especially to meet us and expressed how thrilled he was to have us over. In a little while after that, coffee was served. It was freshly filtered, piping hot and creamy. It was truly the best coffee I'd ever had!
And yet, on our way back home, none of us talked about it. Its our cruelty which had left a bad taste in our mouths I guess...
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Kendriya Vidyalaya - Hopefully the complete story this time...
I recently watched a wonderful TED talk* in which Chimamanda Adichie, an acclaimed writer, shared her views on how single stories create prejudices, stereotypes and false perceptions. I was deeply moved by what she said and it set me thinking about how many such single stories have skewed my perspective of things or worse still - how many such single stories I must have told!
In the recent past, I had joked in a large gathering about how my son, despite being born to Indian parents, rolls his "R"s and only speaks English; whereas I wouldn't speak in English until I was forced to do so in college and then later at work place. My self deprecating humor about having studied in Kendriya Vidyalaya schools being the main source of this difference in my son and me was grossly misunderstood and I now hear that its become a notion among some people here that KVites can't speak English.
My attempt at poking fun at myself misfired; and a misconception became their only story about KVs. And of course its all my fault!
Unlike most good (read expensive) private schools, KVs have students from all walks of life, their economic standing cutting across the entire cross section, multi-cultural and of course multi-lingual. In this setting, I was the "officer's daughter" since my father was one of the higher ranking government employees by the time I started going to school. Most other students were children of "factory workers" or "admin staff" and were naturally lesser mortals in the scheme of things. Our family and a few other classmates' families lived in better government houses classified as Type 5 (they have five rooms!) while the lesser mortals lived in much smaller Type 1, 2 and 3 houses. Overall I was much better off than most growing up around me. Though mostly unspoken, yet a great divide existed between the two kinds.
KV definitely taught me all the subjects that the Indian education boards regulate - science, math, history, geography, Hindi and of course English! In fact, it taught us quite well. It is no surprise that a lot of my friends, both my brothers, their batch mates and many more I get to know of are doing well in their lives. They are successful in their professions, financially stable and are certainly in the main stream of society. This despite their very humble start in some seemingly run down KV, in a satellite town of a Tier II Indian city, in the mid eighties. Education at a KV is good (certainly not the best!) and serves well to those it caters to. But, more importantly the aforementioned unique setting of a KV teaches you lessons about life. Lessons which private schools will never teach you. Here are some -
Play It Down - If I had to make friends in school I had to very self consciously play down my fathers' designation and all the tangible/intangible perks that came with being his daughter. And since I was the minority, breaking ice and building bridges in relationships always had to be my prerogative.
Fair Play - Much to my dismay and others' delight, we learned that fair play existed. Despite being an officer's daughter (oh! how I hated the tag), I never qualified for any event on Sport Day in all my school life. I was bad at it and that's all that mattered.
Relative Misery - While I always wanted my own girlie bike and hated my brother's hand-me-down boy bicycle, I realized I had classmates who would walk 4-5 km one way to school everyday, in all seasons. In fact, very often they would stop to fill water at our house (which was just a km from school) since they knew it was a long journey back home, under the scorching sun, at 3 PM. If you look around carefully, you'll see that your misery is always relatively smaller when compared to some others'.
Depreciation is Overrated - Not everything you own depreciates with the passage of time. I valued every single hand-me-down book and never fussed for crisp brand new ones because I had friends whose parents couldn't afford them all the books in one go at the start of the academic year.
Early Prudence - You don't have a school canteen. You don't have fancy vendors with kiosks, like the ones my city bred cousins boasted of. You don't have friends who can afford even the street vendors very often. What are you supposed to do? Well, I had a super-mom who happily packed a tiffin everyday. And for the most part I appreciated every bit(e) of it!
Defining Basics & Extravagance - I had just one pair of these boring brown shoes (Bata of course!) for all occasions. I really felt like my basics were not being met - until I noticed some school friends wearing our school uniform shoes when I ran into them at the market-place in the evening, or at b'day parties and even during the once a year community festivals.
These moments of truth were in my face and were too glaring to be denied. However, I would like to clarify that these haven't made me a pseudo-socialist. What a Kendriya Vidyalaya does to you is something more basic. Something much simpler. It genuinely prepares you for life ahead and in turn gives the world thousands of it's students that are level headed, value driven and sensitive to its environment.
*Here's the link to the TED talk -http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html
In the recent past, I had joked in a large gathering about how my son, despite being born to Indian parents, rolls his "R"s and only speaks English; whereas I wouldn't speak in English until I was forced to do so in college and then later at work place. My self deprecating humor about having studied in Kendriya Vidyalaya schools being the main source of this difference in my son and me was grossly misunderstood and I now hear that its become a notion among some people here that KVites can't speak English.
My attempt at poking fun at myself misfired; and a misconception became their only story about KVs. And of course its all my fault!
Unlike most good (read expensive) private schools, KVs have students from all walks of life, their economic standing cutting across the entire cross section, multi-cultural and of course multi-lingual. In this setting, I was the "officer's daughter" since my father was one of the higher ranking government employees by the time I started going to school. Most other students were children of "factory workers" or "admin staff" and were naturally lesser mortals in the scheme of things. Our family and a few other classmates' families lived in better government houses classified as Type 5 (they have five rooms!) while the lesser mortals lived in much smaller Type 1, 2 and 3 houses. Overall I was much better off than most growing up around me. Though mostly unspoken, yet a great divide existed between the two kinds.
KV definitely taught me all the subjects that the Indian education boards regulate - science, math, history, geography, Hindi and of course English! In fact, it taught us quite well. It is no surprise that a lot of my friends, both my brothers, their batch mates and many more I get to know of are doing well in their lives. They are successful in their professions, financially stable and are certainly in the main stream of society. This despite their very humble start in some seemingly run down KV, in a satellite town of a Tier II Indian city, in the mid eighties. Education at a KV is good (certainly not the best!) and serves well to those it caters to. But, more importantly the aforementioned unique setting of a KV teaches you lessons about life. Lessons which private schools will never teach you. Here are some -
Play It Down - If I had to make friends in school I had to very self consciously play down my fathers' designation and all the tangible/intangible perks that came with being his daughter. And since I was the minority, breaking ice and building bridges in relationships always had to be my prerogative.
Fair Play - Much to my dismay and others' delight, we learned that fair play existed. Despite being an officer's daughter (oh! how I hated the tag), I never qualified for any event on Sport Day in all my school life. I was bad at it and that's all that mattered.
Relative Misery - While I always wanted my own girlie bike and hated my brother's hand-me-down boy bicycle, I realized I had classmates who would walk 4-5 km one way to school everyday, in all seasons. In fact, very often they would stop to fill water at our house (which was just a km from school) since they knew it was a long journey back home, under the scorching sun, at 3 PM. If you look around carefully, you'll see that your misery is always relatively smaller when compared to some others'.
Depreciation is Overrated - Not everything you own depreciates with the passage of time. I valued every single hand-me-down book and never fussed for crisp brand new ones because I had friends whose parents couldn't afford them all the books in one go at the start of the academic year.
Early Prudence - You don't have a school canteen. You don't have fancy vendors with kiosks, like the ones my city bred cousins boasted of. You don't have friends who can afford even the street vendors very often. What are you supposed to do? Well, I had a super-mom who happily packed a tiffin everyday. And for the most part I appreciated every bit(e) of it!
Defining Basics & Extravagance - I had just one pair of these boring brown shoes (Bata of course!) for all occasions. I really felt like my basics were not being met - until I noticed some school friends wearing our school uniform shoes when I ran into them at the market-place in the evening, or at b'day parties and even during the once a year community festivals.
These moments of truth were in my face and were too glaring to be denied. However, I would like to clarify that these haven't made me a pseudo-socialist. What a Kendriya Vidyalaya does to you is something more basic. Something much simpler. It genuinely prepares you for life ahead and in turn gives the world thousands of it's students that are level headed, value driven and sensitive to its environment.
*Here's the link to the TED talk -http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Fat Ass 2011
I attended one of the most interesting running events ever - Fat Ass 2011! A run unlike any other. The runners decide whether they want to do 6/12/24 hrs of running/walking and the distance they want to cover in that time frame. Also, 12 hrs and 6 hrs participants get multiple start time slots to choose from. So basically, no pressure of finishing a set distance in a given time, which makes it really fun.
In Jon's words (one of the organizers, an ultra-runner and a friend) - "It is the only running event which is free of registration fee, no pre-race jitters, no hassles, relaxed atmosphere and yet you would find yourself in the company of some of the competitive and/or veteran ultra-runners. Camaraderie is certainly the defining quality which binds ultra-runners."
Red, me, Rinna, Jon, Bong (from the left) Precy, Albert and his three sons (at the back)
(from the left) Eugene, Precy, Albert (at the back), Pratim, Rinna
In Jon's words (one of the organizers, an ultra-runner and a friend) - "It is the only running event which is free of registration fee, no pre-race jitters, no hassles, relaxed atmosphere and yet you would find yourself in the company of some of the competitive and/or veteran ultra-runners. Camaraderie is certainly the defining quality which binds ultra-runners."
I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a part of this madness, but I didn't want to leave the opportunity of meeting so many runners either. A total of 160 runners registered for different categories. The run started at 6:30am at Stotsenburg Park, Clark. The rule was simple - you register every loop (of 2.2K) you complete with the race marshal. Apart from that there were no rules. One could take a break, go home, sleep, rest, eat, go to the casino (which is right opposite the park) and come right back!
The weather was good and there was a lot of energy, enthusiasm and excitement on everyone's face. Families/support crews had set up camps, arranged food and drinks and music was playing at full blast. It almost felt like a picnic. It continued to be pleasant till around 8am but it got terribly hot after that. Thankfully the breeze continued to be cool. I ran very slowly throughout, walked as little as possible and took plenty of breaks to hydrate myself. I got to talk with a lot of "serious" runners along the way and found that for most of them this was a test run for the Bataan Death March - a 160/102K run scheduled for next month. Having never done heat training before, I was dog tired after 11 loops but wanted to complete 30K (14 loops). Camilla Brooks, an ultra runner and winner of the Mt Pinatubo trail challenge in the female category decided to pace me to get me to finish my last 3 loops. I finished my 30.8K in 5 hours 42 mins. I was tempted to do another loop in the remaining 18 minutes and make it 33K, but decided against it owing to my persisting knee problem. I'd rather be in the game and enjoy it longer than burn myself out over petty milestones. Knowing your limitations is just as important :)
Camilla, winner of 12 hour category (38 loops!)
I had one of the most sumptuous meals after the run - chicken adobo (a popular Filipino dish) with rice, prepared by Albert - winner of Fat Ass 2010 (24 hrs), race marshal, ultra-runner and a friend. Rinna (winner of Fat Ass 2010, 12 hrs), Albert, Red and Jon - my friends and race marshals - made the run special for me by being there and constantly encouraging me to keep going on. Precy, who also ran and did 30 loops in 12 hrs, was also there for me throughout the run and was very encouraging, as always! It was simply the best running events I've attended and seen so far. The atmosphere, the mutual respect and kinship among participants, and most importantly the strength and endurance of 12/24 hrs category runners that I saw is just amazing! This experience has certainly strengthened my love for the sport. I will carry on...
Camilla, winner of 12 hour category (38 loops!)
Red, me, Rinna, Jon, Bong (from the left) Precy, Albert and his three sons (at the back)
(from the left) Eugene, Precy, Albert (at the back), Pratim, Rinna
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