Sunday, October 1, 2017

Love is paramount - On Ahaan's 7th Birthday



Dear Ahaan,
I know you’ll be 7 tomorrow, and that with each step into your future, you will grow tougher and learn so much more. You’ve already lifted your own armor and prepared your own shield. And I see knowledge clinging to you everywhere.
Today I will talk about Love. There is veracity in the proverb that you cannot truthfully love others until and unless you love yourself. This phrase used to piss me off, as I thought it was selfish to do that and wanted my love to count for someone or something else. Don’t let that be your heritage; instead, make love for yourself your precedence — always. You are an incredible being, a bright star.
Let that be your guiding belief, not to swell your head and place you above others (that’s not your way), but to remind yourself of your strength, your wisdom, and your purpose. You do not know your purpose yet. That’s okay. Part of your task as a growing up humble human being, is to plumb your depths, the cosmos that lies inside you, until you find your purpose and live it.
I trust we are all here to love and be loved. So, give of yourself bigheartedly, freely, continually- a lot of love. Wear your heart on the outside and let your love shine forth. It will be a guiding light that calls other willing hearts to you. Yes, you will hurt sometimes. Yes, you will feel isolated sometimes. But let yourself love.
The road ahead will be brighter and promising. You are and will continue learning so many new things – good and bad – in your 2nd grade. I hope you make the right choices.  I know plentiful blessings wait for you along the way.
Ahaan, thanks for being my son, for being in my life – like a driving force. I’m in awe of this life we are living together and humbled by the abundance you bring to it each day.
Happy 7th Birthday Son!
Love, 
Maa

x

Saturday, October 1, 2016

Happy 6th Ahaan! ( Open Letter to my son)



My Dear Ahaan,

As you turn 6 years old today, I have so much to say to you! So I am writing, yet another letter to you, hoping someday when you grow up, you cherish and understand these letters I write to you each year, on your birthday.

I remember all your milestones. Learning to turn on the other side. Learning to crawl. Learning to stand. Learning to walk and then run. I checked the boxes on those easy-to-define triumphs. I even got anxious when you did not reach a milestone on the time I expected you to.  Nevertheless, I soaked it all in and my new Mamma’s heart and swelled with pride and respite as the proofs mounted that you were gaining the abilities you needed to survive in this world.
The milestones from here are less demarcated. There are no agendas or checklists.

It’s no longer about learning how to sit or stand, but “when” to sit or stand. Politeness—simplifying another’s encumbrance, putting some else’s well-being ahead of your own, showing  small compassion, showing that you see others and reckon them to be of value—is a gift the world needs, my dear son.  Offering your seat to someone, for instance? But the rules for doing so are not based on a modest procedure of age and gender.  They are complex.  You need to understand when offering your seat would wound delicate pride. You need to watch for circumstances where a person’s requirement to be perceived as proficient, surpasses the necessity for comfort. It’s complicated.

Someday, you will sit in your class and your teacher will familiarize you with Robert Frost’s poem ( perhaps in German !)  about two roads deviating in a yellow wood. Your teacher will tell you that what Frost wrote was infact true. Our choices in life matter. You will think you comprehend. But it will be my responsibility to tell you that Frost was writing about the “best case scenario”. Life’s junctures are hardly simple forks in the road with two distinct choices. Life’s junctures are congested and the road less travelled is dense and easy to miss. Choices don’t proclaim themselves. Outlining instants disguise themselves in our daily routine. Superficially small choices are chances: to smile or not, to talk or keep quiet, to stay within or step out from your comfort zone, today or tomorrow.

You will learn so much in the years to come Ahaan, that you will be surprised. Trial and error will be your ultimate educator. You will be injured. You will be scrapped. You will get bumps that swell to an upsetting size. That’s part of the growing up my son. Injured knees, means you’re doing it right.

Along the way, you will look up to me for most of the answers answers. I might not have always them.

But, I still would love to  hear the questions.
And when there are new learnings along the way, it will hurt me to watch you go through the ones that will make you sad. But I will be at peace as you will learn them at your own terms, not because I stood in the way and tried to make you see life through my eyes. On the contrary, I am trying to see life a little more and much better through your eyes these days, and I am thankful for your vision.
Happy birthday Ahaan. I love you. Thank you for teaching me, bit by bit, a little more about how to live this beautiful life.
Love,
Your Mom


Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Teaching my son how to fail



Recently the board results were announced in India and my social media updates have been brimming with the stories about all the winners – interviews with them and their families on how they achieved success. A 22 year old Delhi girl in India, has recently cracked the Union Public Service Commission exam in the first attempt and there have been tons of articles on “How to achieve success”. While, I appreciate and marvel these winning kids, but can’t help but think about the kids who did not do so well – the back-benchers, the less favorites, the average scorers? A child who secured 70% or lesser grades may have a better understanding of a few subjects than all and the ones who score 99% who may just be able to memorize well. But do we ever think like that?

Failure is agonizing. But it’s not as painful as watching your kid fail. It’s not just that parents are naturally automated to care about them. We surely want them to be successful, partially so they have a great life and partially because, honestly, their accomplishments echoes well on us.

I know of several parents ( in my own social circle) who go great lengths to make sure their child excels in everything – sport, studies, extra-curricular activities – almost everything! A mother I know has even beaten her child for not being able to write (at the age of 4+) because the mother’s life constantly revolves around competing with fellow kids.  That was an extreme case, but a common one with many parents I know, but I can’t help but wonder that as parents gradually navigate their kids’ lives so that they evade failure, those kids lose a significant life skill, and one they will certainly require later: how to discover the courage and inspiration to recoup and get up again. So how do you help your children fail, or rather, how do you help your children cope with failure?

I noticed a few months ago that my 5 year old son was getting very used to things going his way - and devoid of adequate effort on his part. There were some sulky moments even when I cycled home faster than him. Other days, it was some other form of a race, which he would be losing. Some of this is age, some of this is situation, and some of it may just be fluke. As much as I love seeing him prosper and thrive in all he attempts, I became a little anxious at times. He was getting very smug and blasé about various accomplishments. He had started to develop a bit of an overfed ego. He evidently needed bigger challenges. As it occurred, I had a frequently arranged meeting with his kindergarten teacher, and brought this up. She told me that boys, in general have this “urge to win” more than girls (driven by her years of experience with children). We decided that challenging my son a little more in some other areas would be apposite - that possibly having to work a little harder in few other areas could help his complete outlook. While we would never set him up to fail deliberately, if, in these bigger challenges, he failed in some way, it possibly would be a "good" thing - good for him to comprehend that one can't always get what they want, good for him to have to attempt a little harder to be successful, and good for him to value the successes he has had - and we would let it to happen rather than intrude.

We worked on ways for him to deal with this constant pressure of winning. To my surprise, his teacher recently informed me how when other kids in the kindergarten were instigating each other about how they came “first in drinking water”, when my son coolly retorts – “Okay! Ich genieße mein Wasser” (its fine. I am enjoying my water”). Made me smile a bit.  Getting kids to cast themselves in their own story helps kids remember what they contemplate success and prompts them what their goals are. We don’t want to be victims in the narrative. We don’t even want to be heroes in a narratives.  We want to be the writer of the story. And we can’t do that lest we own the story and dig into it.

Childhood drifts away rapidly. We do our children a huge disfavor when we don’t provide them with the sensitive, psychological and physical liberty to simply be kids; prospective grown-ups with training wheels. Several children today are growing up feeling the persistent force to excel. No wonder that by the time many are in their teenage years, they choose to give up on sports all together rather than risk the humiliating verdict of over bearing, insecure and self-doubting parents who need to prove themselves through their children. Which is why as parents we need to motivate our children to play for the sake of playing and learn for the sake of learning, not for the sake of the applause it may bring along.

I believe that the most prosperous grown-ups are seldom those whose childhoods were one long twine of triumphs, awards and highest scores. Rather they’re people who’ve had their share of failures, wounds and combats along their trail to adulthood. They’ve discovered that failure is an experience not a person, have put up the gravel and self-assurance to follow aspiring goals that motivate them. They are sure competitive and play to win, but results don’t define them. Their scores don’t define them. They define themselves.

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Sunday, March 6, 2016

Happy Birthday Anshul

“Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.”

As my husband turns a year older and (hopefully) wiser again this year, I write a customary letter to him, like every year. But this year is different: it’s completion of a year in Germany – a foreign land with a foreign language and with everything that wasn’t so familiar or friendly at first.

First year here, was a rush — a flood of emotions, anxieties, tears and laughter. There was a profound fear of living in a new country, and though it reduces after a while, it never completely disappears as time goes on. It simply deviates. The unrest that was once focused on how you’re going to make new friends, adjust, and master the nuances of the language gradually becomes one recurrent question “What am I missing?”  That said, too often, we focus on the needs of the mother and child, who are to settle in a new country and often forget that daddies need love and support too – for it’s a new unexplored world for them too. For us, Anshul played the glue that bonded us together, while trying to find our place in a new country, while he carried out silent acts of tenderness between the seams. I couldn’t have made it through the past year without my husband – and I can’t imagine going forward without him.

The past one year has flown by, and it feels like a drop in the bucket, doesn’t it? As I sit here, writing this for him, after yet another failed attempt at making a cup cake for his midnight celebration (It’s awful!), and my endless other failures like these, I know, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  Also, it fills my heart with pure marvel to know that the “best” is right now; and still yet to come. Here’s a letter to my husband.

Dear Anshul,

This life time is void of matter comparable to you
But
In the past one year, I have so many words to express, what you mean to me
You are a squall of wind when I can’t breathe
We hike the world together, passing long and rigorous pine trees
Your back is a mountain, trials cannot triumph over it
Your eyes are the hurried oceans,  that calm me
You are the lone pharaoh, of our dwelling
You are a belief and assertion, when I cannot form one
You are endurance, in our marathons you run
You are still in contention, you are always here
You are strength, when I have an insolence
You are almost more than 2,980 days of the right choice
You are the pillories of why I rejoice
You are a comrade, shield, and love like no other
A toast to you, My Husband…
Shall I pour another?

Happy Birthday to you.
Love, M


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Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Mamma, why are girls beautiful?


There is something about preschoolers, isn’t it? The questions fly quickly, sometimes too fast for a baffled mom to keep up; ‘Why shouldn’t children watch too much TV mamma. What is “too much” TV?’ ‘How did that building get so tall Mamma?’ ‘How does Santa know if we have been a good child or a bad one?’ and so on and so forth.

I recently read an old article about a story from France where a 52-year-old mother took parenting to different pinnacles. Wearing Converse boots, tight flashy jeans and excessive makeup, she impersonated as her 19-year-old daughter and tried to take the English exam on her behalf. She got away with this for whole 10 minutes! (* slow clap *).

I'm dismayed by parents who get disappointed when their children don't become engineers or doctors or whichever career they had wished for them. I also know that we all have aspirations for the kind of personality our children will become. We want them to be compassionate. We expect them to be intellectual. A sense of humor would be nice perhaps.

What triggered me to write this post however was a casual conversation between a few of my friends recently. I was mentioning to them about how my son is very curious and asks too many questions – which actually have answers. For instance “Why are girls beautiful mamma? Why should boys tell them that they are beautiful? (Well, yes! He has heard my husband compliment me several times). One of the lady from the group sarcastically remarked made an impolite and not-so-nice comment, “Really? Thank God, my son is “shareef” (a Hindi terminology for being naïve – and not daring to ask “such” questions). It had me thinking. Not that, the comment affects me in any way - I know my child, trust him and happy for what he is.  

When Ahaan was born, my husband and I contemplated what his traits will be. But we cared less about what he will be. However, to be honest what I was conscious about was – what if he is incurious? What if he doesn't want to explore what an alpine mountain looks like or what sun, moon and stars are made of? What if he remains obstinately uninterested in why skies are blue or where did Dinosaurs go? What if he regards all that "Why" and "How" as, principally futile? Yes, I do agree that sometimes too many questions to get exasperating, but I'd rather my son asked too many questions than too few?! The only thing worse than explaining you child about how babies are made would be a child who didn't even want to know?

But if Ahaan’s curiosity level is high, that doesn't imply it always will be. Curiosity is an impulsive quality, which increases and decreases throughout our life, depending on where we are, what we are doing and who we're with. This is both comforting and intimidating. Comforting because it turns out that we, as parents, play a big part in the development of our kids’ curiosity. Intimidating because doing so includes a constant and cognizant effort. I wonder why some parent discourage questions from their children? “Shhh... That’s not for your age”, “You’re too young to know that” or just “I don’t know!”

Luckily, my husband and I answer everything that our son asks us. The reason being that by the time children from curious families go to school, they have an edge on their peers. Having immersed themselves in more information from their parents and family, they obviously know more, which implies they find it easier to learn and absorb more. Parent play a pivotal role in early years of children in determining whether they will become curious youngsters and curious grownups.

Part of the magic of childhood is the capacity to get lost in the realms of discovery and imagination. Nurturing our children’s curiosity will only fortify our connection and help them grow.  I am glad for my son’s curiosity for it compels him to connect with the world, reach out and test its frontiers, discover where they end and everything else starts. 

I am still a parent in preparation - I don't know what constitutes the stars, or why Dinosaurs disappeared after the Big Bang. I'm not even sure I know why the sky is blue to be honest? But I do have some answers. So yes, Ahaan – It’s good to, once in a while,  tell a girl that she is beautiful. But say it only when you really mean it, my son. Just like your dad.

Happy Growing Up, My Curious George! Mamma is geared up with answers.

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Friday, September 18, 2015

Some lessons for you Son, while you're growing up!



Seemingly women  aren’t the only ones affected by gender disparity—we all are—and it is up to me to do everything I can to confront the continual cordon of pigeon-holes, prejudices and disproportion that society throws at kids right from when they are born. It is up to us to make sure that the teachings of feminism and gender equality (and all types of fairness, for that matter) are so intensely entrenched in our family’s core that they brim over gradually and persistently. There is no dearth of lists on feminist teachings for young girls, but while many things on these types of lists are unanimously pertinent, as a mom to a boy, I wanted to pen down a few things, I’d always want my son to remember while he grows up to be a “man”.

Dear Ahaan,

1.       Feminism does not imply “womanly”. It means egalitarianism. Equality beyond gender.
2.       Being a boy doesn’t imply you cannot be a feminist. Neither does liking cars and planes and action movies.
3.       It’s OKAY to cry. It always is. The phrase “you are crying like a girl” does not hold any meaning. Respect your emotions and let them out.
4.       Befriend girls. Conquer your shyness and reticence. I befriended boys and some of my best friends are boys. It doesn’t really matter.  
5.       Girls can like superheroes, cars and Transformers, just like boys can like princess stories, Dora and kitchen set. I will never feel embarrassed for gifting you a kitchen set on your 4th birthday. Just goes to show you will be a caring man when you grow up.
6.       The expressions “like a man” and “like a girl” hold no real significance really.  Learn to snub them.
7.       Be resilient and sensitive; remember - the two are not discordant.
8.       Open doors for women. And also men, as a matter of fact. Not because of any chauvinist customs, but just because holding the door is thoughtful and respectful. It is just politeness. Similarly, push in your chair after meals and put the toilet seat down.
9.       “No” just means NO. Silence also means no. And “perhaps” also means no. Always remember that only “yes” means yes.
10.   Surround yourself with individuals who let you to be your best self. Be cautious of people who want to modify you.
11.   Always – Always remember this - Equal work justifies equal reimbursement; equal reimbursement necessitates equal work.
12.   Your sex does not describe you. Neither does your profession or the money in your bank nor your fancy car. Be compassionate and courageous, be a loyal friend and a hard worker and treat everyone with respect—those are the merits that will describe you.
13.   When you get married, your wife may or may not fix your last name after her first. Neither choice has anything to do with how much she loves you – Remember that and cherish it. Surnames do not love people. People love people.
14.   Don’t ever forget that there are more ways to support your family than monetarily.
15.   Being a stay-at-home parent is tougher than all the jobs in the world combined, irrespective of its lack of a remuneration.
16.   Contrary to the popular belief, always remember that men are capable of changing a nappy, making the bed, ironing the clothes, and tending to other household chores and child-raising activities.
17.   Don’t hesitate in apologizing. It is not a symbol of softness, but a valiant act of bravery and courage.
18.   Don’t ever take for granted the privileges you are blessed with—whether monetary, scholastic, cultural, social or otherwise
19.   Be thoughtful, compassionate, sensitive and empathetic.
20.   There may be differences between the two genders – a man and a woman—just like there are dissimilarities between all living beings. Remember, that’s a good thing! Avoid overanalyzing this. And don’t fear the differences; revel in them.

My dear son, these lessons, are meant for you - not essentially because I want to protect you, but just because they are important for equality, impartiality and respect. I have faith they can change the world—one step at a time.

My love for you, always.

Mom

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Saturday, May 9, 2015

I am a Mom!


I am a Mamma.
I am a builder, exploring ways to build a magical wonderland full of forts and castles in 60 seconds with bowls, spoons, plates and a pan.
I am a Master Chef, taking orders on "the fly" in order to gratify a son who wants a bagel sandwich, then pizza, then chicken wings, then omelet, then fruit mix... and then nothing at all when he decides he’s "not hungry."
I am a diplomatic negotiator, strewing classic public breakdowns using any technique needed.
I am an addict, puffy eyes and twitching, looking for the nearest caffeine dose after a long night of constantly inspecting monsters under the bed and well, sometimes over it too.
I am a ninja, refining my talents of inaudibly escaping my son’s room after bedtime story.
I am a joker, performing bizarre tricks, jokes and dances at my son’s demand.
I am a law enforcement agent, struggling to impose rules while the guilty party attempts to escape from the scene of the crime.
I am a storyteller ( that’s the best part I guess), persistently creating convoluted tales about what how Santa manages to squeeze his fat tummy through a chimney or what the Tooth Fairy does with all of the teeth she collects?   Or how the Easter Bunny visits every child’s house without getting exhausted.
I am a fashion designer, crafting Superhero costumes, spiky hair n some days and matching shoes on the other.

I am a forensic expert, scrutinizing mysterious items/stains and trying to ascertain their source.
I am a singer, required to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” with full lyrics on a daily basis. And then learn some more.
I am an abstract artist, attempting to find beauty in blobs of colors, scribbled stick figures.
I am an event manager, organizing frequent play dates with my son’s friends
I am a politician, compelled to exploit bribes, marketing and prolonged dialogues to persuade my son to do the simplest of tasks.
I am a Mamma.
So are you. Cherish it.
There is not just the second Sunday of May that can express, with fierce and undaunted honesty, the sacrifices made, body changes undergone, and uncertainties that obviously sneak in, about ever getting back to where you were, who you were, and what you were doing before becoming a mother -- all while concurrently cherishing your new designation. Its complex stuff, the grey areas of human emotion, and it is all carried with grace within this beautiful ballad.
Here’s to all doting moms, especially mine, on Mother’s Day – You are a Hero!

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