What do you do when ..

Being a full time mom for the first time has proved a few points to myself.

1. I can be incredibly patient

2. I can be incredibly impatient

3. I still think too much about things!

Patience is a virtue that comes with childbirth - I seriously believe it.

And much to my surprise, it comes quite easily out of you, as opposed to the lil one - that doesn't come so easily out of you ;-) Thinking of which - impatience indeed is harboured to its max during the same time - verging dangerously on the brink of intolerance.

So basically this deadly combo of patience and impatience comes with your bundle of joy!

So what do you when ..

1. ..you are done with baby duties and lil one is napping - you have one whole hour to yourself.

unload and load dishwasher, unload and load washer,tidy kitchen, take shower, cook your meal, switch on the TV to enjoy the meal .. WHEN .. lil one's had enough of sleep and its PLAYTIME - or if you can't play then its HOWL TIME!

time to practice your patience or impatience? :-)

2...you are done with baby duties, lil one napping AND you are done with your chores as well. You can watch TV , surf net , read book or nap. You surf and surf for what? '...how to start weaning the baby..give fruit purees, baby rice etc etc..' And you are filled with ideas of nice first recipes to feed your baby and you can't wait to do it!

time to practice your patience or impatience? :-)

3...you are done with baby duties, (super mom you think :) ) - baby is wide awake, happy, with clean nappy, full tummy, pleasant mood - all that moms ask for! You read books together, you play with building blocks (messy living room again) , you play peek-a-boo (Mommy is tired), you go out for a stroll (mommy more tired - and living room still in mess! But who cares, baby is happy and so is mom!). Perfect 'mommy-baby' day! Dinner cooked.Lil one fed, bathed and tucked in bed. Perfect 'mommy-daddy' evening (anticipated). Daddy dear comes home, looks at the house and shoots - 'What did you do all day!!??'

Time to practice your patience or impatience? :-)

All you mommies out there - what do you do when these things happen ?

Creative Writing

When I was in 7th grade ( in the great JPP), I had attended a workshop for creative writing in one summer vacation.
In one of the sessions, there were 3 bowls labelled 'location' , 'characters', 'situation'.
Each had chits in it - for example, the bowl labelled 'location' had chits with - 'old building', 'jungle','factory', 'palace', 'desert' etc
The 'Characters' bowl had 'thief and police', 'teacher', 'friends', 'magician', 'aliens', 'horse and hippo' etc
The 'situation ' bowl had 'adventure', 'envy', 'celebration', 'revenge', 'murder' etc
We were supposed to pick a chit from each bowl, and then write a short story taking place at that location with those characters in that situation.
Say I picked 'factory', 'magician', 'revenge' - then I should write a story about a magician as my central character, which takes place in a factory and has revenge as its theme and so on.
I actually drew out pretty lame chits - 'friends', 'adventure' and 'old building'. It was a straight-forward draw - friends out on an adventure which happens in an old building.
A few days in the workshop, I already had an upper hand in the creative area - amongst a bunch of 7th graders, I was doing quite well. We were evaluated regularly by the instructors, and I was being 'noticed' for my creative flare. (*wink*)
So - these chits of mine weren't 'challenging' enough for me. So I did a 'Roald Dahl' spin on my story. It got rated the best in that workshop. Below is that story I wrote a long long time ago.
(The main language being used in the workshop was marathi - and the story I wrote was in marathi)

Amit and Sujay were great friends. They were always together. They had grown up together - and though they went to different schools, they spent most of their free time together.
Their parents adored them both and treated them like brothers. They were in-seperable.
As boys of their age are, they were very active and adventurous kids. In summer vacations they went to different camps or new places with their parents. But their favourite place was the small town where Amit's grandpa stayed.
It had all the attractions these kids would enjoy. A small hill to go trekking, a river to go swimming and fishing, Amit's uncle's farm where they could ride the tractor and eat sugarcane. And, of all the things, the town had an old building - crumbling and deserted , even haunted some people said - where no one stayed. Both of them itched to go and explore it, but were always restrained from going there.
But not this summer - they had decided that they will sneak up to that building and get a good look.
They waited for a good opportunity everyday.
One fine day - when the weather was all cloudy and dull - even the elders dozed off after lunch - Sujay and Amit sneaked out. They carried their back-packs with a torch, a rope and water. They also packed some sandwiches for the road and set out.
The building was not very far from the hill by the farm. It was a good walk and the boys were glad that it was cloudy - sun would have made the climb harder.
The afternoon seemed darker that usual due to the gathering clouds when they reached the building. There was a slow rumble in the clouds.
There was a door frame, but no door to it. They went into a huge hall with solid wooden beams and mud plastered walls. Cobwebs hung everywhere and pegions cooed from their nests in the ceiling. The place smelled musty.
The boys were thrilled. Amit went on and on about the things there.. "Sujay - these wooden beams must be a 100 years old - even these side pillars - come here - feel them ! "
" Suji - the windows must have been huge - we both can pass through them without bending"
" Hey - feel the walls - its as if we can knock them out in a punch ! "
He held Sujay by the hand and led him from wall to wall and urged him to touch and feel and knock everything.
Sujay was silent. He was excited, but also anxious. His ears picked the slightest sounds outside and within. He had noticed that the rumbling clouds had started to pour now. He could feel the dampness in the walls - his nostrils flared at the wiff of rotting wood. The floor beneath their feet was old and worn out - it felt as if it would cave in.
The rains were now getting worse - thunderstorms, howling winds and even occasional lightening. Something was wrong thought Sujay.
Amit still was dragging him by the hand here and there. Sujay gripped Amit's hand and said -"Amit, something feels wrong. Lets get out. The rains are making the smell worse and the touch feels damper every time - I feel something is wrong - come lets go out - NOW! "
Amit could feel the urgency and anxiety in Sujay's voice. But he wanted to check the rooms, and go up the stairs. "Sujay - I know you don't find this as exciting as I do - but we'll explore together - please lets spend some more time here " he said.
But Sujay won't listen. He now was forcefully dragging Amit towards the open door - he could trace his way back.
Amit knew there was no staying back now - he took the lead and came out with Sujay - all the time thinking to give Sujay a good piece of his mind once they were out.
They came out into the pouring rain and headed towards a tree near by.
Within moments there was a loud crash as two wooden beams just above where they had stood came down crushing the walls on the side - had they still been there, they would have been buried alive!
Amit looked at the heap in shock and his mind filled with guilt -" I should never have brought Sujay here - I should have listened to him sooner when he said we should come out - I should have been the one protecting him and looking after his safety ". His eyes filled with tears as he squeezed Sujay's hand with gratitude.
Sujay lightly tapped Amit's arm. The rain had stopped and sun peeped from behind the clouds. The two friends set out for home, hand in hand - as Sujay tapped his white cane on their way back.

PARP!

When people pass wind, or fart (as the common word goes) - I doubt if anyone ever goes 'awwww.. you parped!' - the reaction more or less is '...how disgusting .."

( I guess a few enthu people like you who are reading this post might just think the same '..how disgusting .. she is writing after a long time ..and that too about parps! ' )

Well - a lot of water has ran under the bridge - and things have changed. I have a very adorable addition to my family now - and that makes me look at things in new perspective.

As I type this, my little one lies in the cot - sometimes chuckling, sometimes sighing in content and sometimes - well doing 'pur pur' in the sleep - and my heart goes - 'awwwww you parped - chooo chweeet ! '

Observe And Learn

I came across this interesting weekly feature in a marathi daily - Loksatta.

Its basically about how parents have deliberately put in an effort to spend quality time with their child or how they have ensured that they participate more actively into enriching the 'growing up' phase of their child.

Every week there is an article about such efforts.

One article featured how a father encouraged his son to participate in the re-decoration of the house - generally kids are exlcuded from this process which is considered an 'adults-only' decision. One wall in the living area was exclusively kept for the kid to decorate - but on his hesitation to do so, the father joined him in painting a scene from some tribal art onto the wall - much to the pride of his son.

Another one featured a celebrity couple always on the move due to frquent tours of their play. How they divide time to ensure atleast one of them get to spend quality time with their daughter.

The article that caught my attention though was one where a child-psychologist explains how a child finds regular jobs by tradesmen very fascinating than all the glitz and glory of TV shows and cartoons.

Simple everyday tasks like watching the laundrywalah do the ironing, the mill walah load and unload his mill to grind flour, panwalah folding up a meetha-paan and so on!

Memories of childhood flooded back - how my Dad always ensured that we got our fair share of these treats.

He would not stop at buying a bicycle for us - when there was a puncture - he would ask - "Do you know how this is fixed?" " Have you seen the repair man do it? "
If not, he would accompany me to the cycle-shop (owned by a person he called anna), park our 2 wheeler there, and we both would sit there and watch one of the assistants in the shop fix the tyre tube.
Dad would ask some basic questions - to see if am getting the process, and would give simple answers if I couldn't..- 'why use a pail of water ? ' ( so the tube when immersed, sends out bubbles at the punctured hole)
'why sandpaper the affected area?' (so the glue works better) ..and so on!
I would feel very proud and knowledgble at the end of the process - I now KNEW how a puncture was fixed!

If an electrician or carpenter was called over at our place to fix something - and Dad was around - he would encourage us to watch what the skilled person was doing - he would point to the tools being used and ask if we knew what they were and how they were used.
I remember some really novel items like 'rawal plug' - a small maleable plug that was pushed into the hole in a wall before the actual nail or screw - so that it fits in snug and tight.

Same applied when we got our chappals or school-bags mended from a cobbler ( we could argue with the cobbler how instead of using glue, putting a ribet (rivet) is better for the chappals' longevity! ;-) )

We could identify choona from kaat (or kattha) as the paanwalah made paans - and could request favors like more gulkand and less supari in our paans! ( Whenever there was a big family lunch at our place, it was the duty of we cousins to take the order of post-lunch paans for everyone and get it from the paan walah on the corner)
Making veedas at home was also later added to our list - make veedas , lock them with cloves, and string them together using thread and needle. Parents taught us a few basic folds for these veedas - like peti-veeda (flat one) and govind-veeda ( a pyramid like fold, which if managed well - would be promoted to be kept in poojas) . Ok - I digress..

Thankfully, our childhood provided us with ample opportunities to watch these tradesmen at work - many of these trades are forgotten arts now.
There were door-to-door tradesmen coming once a month - like 'Kalhai - walah' who would coat the insides of brass vessels with tin/aluminium (not sure ..) or 'dhar-walah' who would sharpen knieves, 'vili', scissors etc on his special cycle mounted wheel.
There was this one guy who would fix iron/ tin bases to old metal buckets which were leaking. I always wondered where he got those tin-cutting scissors of his!

And how can we forget the vendors - ice-gola walahs, kulfi-walahs ( they rub the kulfi moulds or the ice glasses in hand to melt it a bit, so it comes out clean in one shot! ), chanya-manya (!!) bora walahs, mogra walahs ( their measurements used to be like chatak, aat-paav etc which Dad and Ajji used to explain were quite appropriate for these kinda goods).

Then there were the bhadbhunje ( people with big furnaces or bhattis) - we would take dried corn to make cornflakes, or jowar / sali to make puffed lahya. (popcorn)
They would use huge iron woks with heated sand on coal fires - and use it to puff the grains into popcorns - it was fun to watch !

There used to be regular trips to girniwalahs (flour mill) - one for routine stuff like atta, besan and jowar - bajra flours, and special one for yearly stock of red chilly powder, turmeric, shikekai.
Both these mills were very different in scale and size, and comparing those machines and techniques was fascinating! It was like being into a previledged world!

We as kids have watched mattresses and pillows being made, customised shoe racks and cabinets being hand-made from wood, dining table frames being welded, petrol pumped out and fed into another scooter, names inscribed on vessels, new notebooks being bound from old, unused pages of last-year notebooks, breads and biscuits being baked in bakeries, pots being shaped and baked by a potter - even silk sarees being rafooed ( very fine art of mending a small tear in expensive fabrics)
I even remember watching how colored glass toys were made - some place in Bhor I guess where my friend S's dad took us to - and later gifted us all with a set of small glass animals!

So many times I remember my Dad telling us - '....just stand and watch - observe how they do it - it may appear easy - but it requires a certain amount of skill to do it - thats the beauty - they make it seem very simple! '

Today, we have programmes on TV like 'How Stuff's made', 'How do they do it' - which is an informative treat to watch. But better than that, as a child - this more human experience is far more enriching - not just in terms of information but also in terms of the emotinal quotient it offers.
Simple task of observing and watching skilled people at work has enriched our childhood with experiences that would last for a life time - and at the same time filled our minds with everyday knowledge and a wisdom to respect those people who know how to do their job - and do it well - however small it may be.

We will always be grateful to our parents who taught us to admire , acknowledge and respect these tasks and the people behind them!