The waahhs and the wows!

                   When I say “babies” and If your face lights up, the funny baby videos you watched on youtube come to your mind, then it means just one thing and one thing only…You don’t have one yet! Babies also cry which is fine for a while, but if it doesn’t stop you could lose your mind over it. The constant drooling and the puking can also be dealt with, but they make the nastiest smelling poop! And it doesn’t stop till they do stuff for themselves.

                   Kids are like puppies in many ways. You pick up the poop your puppy made with your hands, and that’s how much you love it. And that’s the same with kids. Yeah they are cranky and clingy, but they are the closest we have of god. There’s too much work involved but we still love them to death.

                 “Bala vihar” is an art class for kids from five to seven from the TFA (Temple of Fine Arts). To watch the kids learn slokas and dancing is a lot of fun. Read it again please! To watch…To teach them is a different task all together.

It was decided to have a musical production. The script was carefully prepared by the dynamic teacher of the class, keeping in mind all the kids (close to forty). The right ones were taken for each part after auditions. There was a monkey dance , lunch break scene, at- night scene, Krishna dance, class room scene 1 and 2 and singing group. The “akkas” (sisters), teen agers who are also dance instructors took the challenge of training each group for the final performance.

                          The first few days of the rehearsal was cha-O-tic! The kids who were quiet and at their best behaviours in all the previous classes have become noisy  and uncontrollable. No one listened and no one wanted to listen. The “akkas” found it very difficult to manage them. There was shouting…from both the sides! There was real struggle!

                           In the commotion a child who was not unwell puked in the middle of the hall. And there was a girl who kept crying from the start of the class (since six months!) The teacher told her in an assertive but not so rude voice to stop crying and then she quietly took a mop and cleaned the puke herself, got back to her group like nothing happened.She handled all kinds of chaos so well and got them back to normalcy so easily.

                           And after class this one woman also dealt with the teenagers. A seventh grader (in charge of the “exercise group”) was in tears after rehearsal, so innocently she asked “is it that difficult for the kids to stand straight? Why won’t they listen to me?” Real tears! Real work!

                            Though I was a mere spectator in the class one day I had to watch six girls till they were called for the voice recording. We were all on the terrace, while the recording took place in one of the rooms downstairs. The teacher was with the recording group. The girls kept jumping around as they were very excited to be there. I was asked to keep them quiet so as not to disturb the recording. I tried everything, nothing worked and a tiny stick of lipcolor did the trick! I let them watch me as I took it from my purse slowly…after all the wuuuuh’s and wow’s they silently waited for their turn as I put it on their tiny pretty lips. Absolute silence! No one wanted to shout or jump anymore. Phew!

                     All the noices and all the tears faded into nothing on the day of performance. It was sheer magic on stage! All the work that went behind the stage finally paid off. The kids all shone like the stars that they are! The proud parents watched, their sons and daughters sing and dance and recite slokas, with tears in their eyes. 
                     The teacher and the “akkas” are still waiting for the video of the performance, as they were standing behind the curtains!

For the love of shoes!

Respect!  A word which is very sacred. But the way it is shown here is sometimes so silly. I’m talking about the removal- of- footwear- respect.   It is out of question in temples, and it doesn’t bother me as I hardly visit one.  “Please remove your footwear” in hospitals and in colleges really pisses me off. The people who work there can, but no one else can’t. How is it fair?  Walking barefoot in a place where sick people visit is something hard to be accepted by me, even as I go there for a consultation myself.

 This is a rule in textiles showrooms, beauty salons, browsing centers and etc. Not all but at most places to be clear. This one act serves both the purposes to show respect and to keep a clean floor, neither is okay to me. This is a common practice in colleges too. Making students come in formals and then asking them to go barefoot in labs is contradictory. Thank god they spared the classrooms.  I asked my students not to remove their shoes one time after a “stinking” experience earlier. And I was informed by the lab in-charge person not to let that happen anymore. How can wearing shoes mean that you don’t respect someone? Okay if it is something religious, then why practice it in common places and in places of learning? 

The birth of many restrictions is because of the fear of negative consequences. Need to clean often?—No footwear, Need to show respect?—No footwear.  We are never prepared for the worst, but instead we are scared to try or accept anything new. And if anyone defies these "rules" then they are "influenced" by western culture! You want their tie, but not the shoes? Emulate the attire but leave the perception and attitude? Yes, some things end up bad and it is wise to avoid it, but there is no point in saying No to anything that is new or from a distant land.

Some of us were asked in a meeting if we should allow students to use cell phones. Only two of ten were for it. And the reason given for its restriction was –they will take pictures too, of girls and even the teachers. Yes that will happen but for that should it be a big No? It is like LPG, every house has one. Many get hurt or even killed when it bursts because of negligence or poor maintenance or of any other reason. Should we stop using that too? It was not in our “culture”  why did we say Yes to that?

It is time for us to change, to stop being adamant and accept good things from any part of the globe.

The “serial” killer!

I love my mom. I am grateful that she’s not one of those moms who’s control-ly or bossy. She’s not a happy-go-lucky type but she’s not an angry woman either.

I am the opposite of her. Like most women here she lives for the society. Every move she makes in her life depends on what others would think of her. Her life is designed based on the “thinking” of others.  She cried her eyes out  on the day I told her my divorce was final, while I treated myself to biriyani and a chocolate fudge  cake.

One day she said that my marriage was a mistake. I told her I would be more careful the next time I do it!  

I love teasing her and her ways.

But the thing that puts me off is her addiction to the crappy “serials” on tv. Oh my god! The shit they show! It is unbelievable.  Art is exaggeration of life I get it, but the serials cross the line.

Sample :  A small girl loses her ability to speak when she witnesses a man’s fall from a building.  After so much drama and wailing of the chorus singers she goes back to school. Everyone is nicer to that girl, except one. That’s another small girl for crying out loud. She is shown with a background score that is suitable for a horrendous villain when she’s merely  jealous of the attention the other one gets.  The next scene she plans something BIG and BAD and I coudn’t watch any of it no more.

I am kinda addicted too to Hollywood and sitcoms. The movies I watch are too gross or too scary or too violent to my mom. At one point you merge with what you like I guess. I remember the poem I read long time back in which Elliot says that the dancer and the dance become one. I am like what I watch and my mom’s like what she watches.  It is  one  of  the  external  factors  that  leaves  its influence on us. Like the people we meet, like the books we read, what we watch on tv too leaves something inside of us.  We choose and we become!

sex is s*x!

What is wrong here? Why can’t we mention “sex” in our conversation? Axn, Romedy now, Zee café, Star world, Star movies, HBO...go silence when characters say  such words!

“ You had ----“ Phoebe said to Monica.

But in the subtitle…”you had sex!”

Or as in some channels “you had s*x!”

 How hypocritical!

That is how it is on tv and in real life. You can have sex, but talking about it and saying “sex” is a taboo.

It’s not just “sex”  Even the word “whisper” gets the girls uncomfortable while it makes guys giggle in my class.

I announced  that they were gonna play  “the Chinese whisper”  in one of my classes  and that shocked them to the core. They froze for a few seconds. Why? “whisper” is a popular sanitary napkin brand!

What pisses me off (…oops! here’s another word!) is that most people are okay with this restriction. They throw the culture crap and say it doesn’t belong to our country – open talk about intimacy and even personal hygiene. Well I’m not for swearing either (which I need to work on myself) but when it is absolutely necessary why hesitate to mention “the words?”

It is not good to pretend like it doesn’t exist in our society. Ignorance is bliss but are we all ignorant? Our kids come to know about how girls get their period, masturbation and sex through their friends in school. I call this “extreme parenting” -  Overprotection on one side and just letting them deal with such important areas on their own on the other side.  Internet teaches them more than what they should know and it is the responsibility of the grownups to give them the actual truth or fact about things. But how many of us do that?

Why do we have to “whisper” such words? Why not say it loudly like it’s no sin?

In one of the class group discussions a student said that it was the girl’s mistake that she was gang raped in a moving bus and thrown away to die. He said that it was not in our culture to have a boy friend or to go out with a boy late in the evening. What was appalling was many students supported his view. We have,  as a society,  made a 20 year old think that way!

 Restrictions in the name of culture and that too only for women.  No offense to the gay community, I always root for them. But I wish all men become gay, and leave us alone!

All the restrictions do not make it any easier on any one. It is just like a boiling molten lava underneath that gushes out when a tiny pore forms on the surface.

The pee collector!

     I am an ordinary person who has made many million mistakes…so far.  My earliest memory of a mistake was collecting my pee in a mug only to  pour  it out after wondering about the yellow tinge of it. Gross? Yeah…but what can I say, I was a curious child.

     I stole coins from my piggy bank. It was the love of ice cream that made me commit the “crime.”  I  would climb up sneakily to the loft, an “unreachable” place where my mom kept it. It was a small tin box  with  a slot on the lid (dad’s work, “Reuse” in the 80’s) When the thought of ice cream crept into my mind in the hot days of summer I climbed upon the door and would take as much as I needed.
 
No guilt!
   
     I was punished a lot in school  for not doing home work and for failing in almost all subjects. I wondered why the grown ups were so cruel.  What they perceived as “me” was not “me” to me. I was clueless of their ways, but I had me! 
    
     Later years , it all continued… my mistakes.  Still no guilt. 
    
     On one rainy night I found two baby bats on the steps to our terrace. I took them and fed them milk. There was no wikihow then. I took a wild guess and gave them drops of milk which they very happily licked. I was glad I found them. A little proud too as I rescued them while my sisters were scared to even look at them. After a few hours I left them in a flower pot on the terrace hoping their mom would pick them up from there. The bats that were flying by unusually close that night made me do it.  
     The next day when I went up I saw the babies dead. I had left them in the cold night. It was my mistake that they were dead. GUILT! 
     After killing the two baby bats, it was a two day old puppy that I stepped on in the dark. GUILT! 
    
     Then the three squirrel babies that recently died on my watch. GUILT! 

     Is it possible to love myself?  

     We change as we age. As we grow we become very hard on ourselves. The support we got from ourselves when we were kids become unavailable. We begin to see what the world sees of us. I was me but every mistake began to haunt me.  And how can one live without making any mistakes? 

Self love is vital to  happiness…to survival. 

Sometimes  I  need to be the girl I was when I stole the money for ice cream. I remembered how easy it was for me to forgive myself then. 
She taught me to love “me” unconditionally.

I am the only one who can free myself from guilt and that is the  most precious lesson growing up has taught me. 

Puppy Love

My landlady is a  very kind and thoughtful woman. One of the big reasons for me to choose this house to rent is her. The first day I went to check out the house I saw two mongrel puppies, Cherry and Amigo. Later she told me that she found them on the road and didn’t have the heart to leave them there. She took them with her and they were loved by her and the teenagers of the family. They grew up happily, they grew up fast.  

Country bred puppies with no training whatsoever, results in mayhem. The dogs were let out and they brought back trash that were dumped on the roadside.  Both the dogs got huge and one of them, cherry, was very unmanageable.  The house has enough open yard for the dogs to move free, so I asked them to keep the gate closed and avoid letting the dogs out on the street. I am a dog person, but I dint like it when cherry showed its love by jumping on to me. They stink as they stayed on the road most times. One day as I was parking my two wheeler when we got home , cherry pushed down my daughter and the backside of her leg was burnt by the silencer. The whole neighborhood heard her scream in pain.  

 Amigo was no trouble, it ate garbage and was quiet, and so that was let into their house while cherry was driven out.  Cherry was taken to a far off place and was dumped there.  Most dogs end up like this as the owners fall out of love with them.  But Cherry  came back after a month and a half. Stupid faithful dog!  when  Amigo died because of snake bite, they felt very bad that it was not Cherry.  Cherry became a lot quieter after its return.  It got pregnant and gave birth to a litter of beautiful puppies. This time they kept a male puppy and the rest were given for adoption, a smart decision.   

I talk with the mother or the daughter of the family as they are nice. The house owner is a very rude moron.  I told the girl that keeping the male puppy was not a good idea as there was Cherry.  But it was the dad’s decision she said.  It was nice to see cherry and the puppy playing with each other happily.  That changed soon. Baby’s diapers became the new thing to play with by the stray dogs of the neighborhood.  Some “super smart” humans kept throwing the used diapers on the road and the “stupid” dogs tore them and threw them all over the street.  There are like seven stray dogs in the area, including Cherry and the puppy. But the puppy was punished.  

An angered “smart” lady resident  hit the puppy with a cane. It didn’t end there. The house owner began to tie the puppy up. It cried and moaned but “it was for its own safety.” The diaper incident continued to take place though.  And the puppy stopped fighting and accepted the chain. It made me very sad to look at the puppy chained.  Every time it cried  because of rain or cold I rang up the lady, and the puppy was taken and chained upstairs where they live.  

Everyday I leave for work looking at the puppy that gave me a sad face.  The spirit of it was crushed already. It was the saddest puppy I ever saw. It peed,  pooped and ate at the same place. Another “smart” thing about humans is how they try to change nature. Many dogs are fed rice with little or no milk.  

We destroy nature in so many ways!     

Yesterday I was surprised to see the puppy not chained. But it was at the place where it was tied down. I thought to myself that may be it was “institutionalized” Morgon Freeman’s theory in The Shawshank Redemption.  This morning I heard it moaning and found it lying in its own pee.  It was dying. I spent some time with it telling it that it was okay to die. I could not control my tears as the lifeless puppy reminded me how  happy it was once playing with its mom! I rang up the landlady and told her that it’s better if one of the kids be with the dying  puppy. No one came down. The puppy died, and the “father” of the family came down, dug a hole in the front yard and buried the puppy.  The mean cruel things we do to others!  

Are humans capable of  love? Do we know what love is?  

This is the same pattern I find when we fall in love. we are attracted to someone, fall in love…happy times, that ends soon.  we want the person to change in some way. we try to change the person forcefully or subtly. Bottom line we think the person whom we were attracted to  once doesn’t seem attractive enough!  Why does love fade away?  

It breaks my heart every time I hear a dog cry. They are chained and caged. I wish such dogs to spread some deadly diseases to the IDIOTS who torture them.