Random. Structured. Haphazard. All Me.
A Tangled Yarn of Thoughts Being Unravelled…
This morning MLM and his father saved a wiggly worm. It was in a pool of water and unmoving and to me it seemed like a piece of bark but my kid knew different.
He wanted to see it move and have it taken out of a potentially watery grave and Red obliged.
This is the leggy critter after it dried itself out in the sun.
Am sure it’ll multiply and leave squirming larvae all over the area.
No good deed goes unpunished :)
I don’t know what has changed me more: growing up didn’t do much but becoming a parent sure did. And hearing about what goes on in the world around us on a daily basis is one shocker after another. This post may make me sound over the hill and preachy but it still stands because it does seem that many of us, women especially, still haven’t woken up to the fact that it’s a pretty gross world out there.
A couple of friends and I went to a club last night. The club was as most clubs are- darkish with strobe lights, lasers, LOUD music and lots of cocktails. One more instance of growing older was revealed to me last night, that I prefer my drinks to *not* have witty, funny names and not be too diluted with all and sundry ingredients. They should be a healthy splash of alcohol/ liquor, ice cubes and served in clean glass. But that’s another blog post for another day.
Our group was dressed differently from our usual everyday attire and we were getting silly amongst ourselves and saying harmless silly things amongst each other to elicit laughs. What I mean is that we weren’t hyper vigilant in our surroundings but neither did we take this break from status quo to go crazy.
There were plenty of “young” people there who had lesser inhibitions than we did. See one of the biggest disadvantages of being a youth is that you’re lacking in experience for a lot of things in life but you have bucketloads of confidence that whatever happens you’ll be able to see yourself through it. The reason I say it’s a disadvantage is because you can’t always be prepared for what you don’t know is out there.
The PYTs were dressed to what they clearly thought was their hippest best but I was disappointed to see that quite a few amongst them had overlooked a sense of safety and decorum to being fashionable or looking trendy. Case in point the young lady who get her date or at least the guy she was dancing with grab her ass on the dance floor in front of everyone and basically grope her very frequently in front of other guys who clearly were enjoying the show.
Or the other young lady who was in an outfit a few sizes too short and small for her and was sporting a very visible and large camel toe.We have all been there, wanting the freedom to go out and have fun, have a few drinks before we’re legally old enough to, or just barely old enough to imbibe, not wanting to think much about anything and just having F-U-N but with the kind of sticky situations going on all around us, isn’t it better to just dance your heart out, drink till you get a wee buzz and make sure the person you came with has more sense than acting like a wannabe pimp on the dance floor?
But this is age talking. Not callow youth who has some way to go before the fairly complicated life they lead about who likes whom, where do they hang out each weekend and discussing what’s the latest trendy thingamajig et al. I want them to have their fun and not feel pressured to grow up too quickly and sober down into 14 hour work days and mortgages all over the place. But still don’t leave your brains at home either. You’ll need it to let you know if you’re doing the right thing for yourself or not. Having fun intersecting with being irresponsible doesn’t always end well.
But back to the aged ones…we danced, we drank, we ate and we laughed. And I think for that was the funnest thing we could have done there. And we will be repeated it but I for one will not be doing it with a drink called Bunny&Clyde! Gimme a rum&cola any day!
Witnessed two separate instances of candid and unadulterated (excuse the pun) kiddy behavior yesterday. Enjoy reading about them. I enjoyed experiencing them:
Scenario 1:
Last evening at the play area MLM and another little friend of his got into a tiff which seemed to be escalating to epic proportions. Well epic differs from people to people and for 5 year olds, it normally means yelling threats of ‘never seeing the other people again”. EVER!
It all started with silly stuff; the way it does for most kids. It was a matter where one felt the other should apologize and the other didn’t share the sentiments. The person demanding the apology turned into a mini stalker and followed the other potential apologizer around till they gave in. When that tactic fell flat they got right in each others’ faces and shouted they never wanted to see each other again.
After a lot of posturing they each went and plonked their little butts on the SAME merry-go-round, scant inches away from each other and tried very hard to stay miffed and NOT look at each other to see what the other was doing.
A bigger little kid came by and helpfully gave the merry-go-round a spin thinking to see them rise up in joy and go WHEEEE. The exact opposite happened. The warring kids turned on him as one and he was curtly informed that they did not need his help at all and were perfectly capable of spinning around on their own. The story after that is one that needs no spoiler…they made up. Went dizzy on the merry-go-round and even teamed up against the innocuous big kid and laughed at their heads off. They even walked home together and promises were made of playing together again VERY SOON.
Go figure.
Scenario 2:
MLM was doing his homework and taking breaks in between to tell me how much he wanted to go and play with his little foe turned friend. Another friend’s (mine this time) son came over to run an errand for his mother. Seeing MLM doing his homework he asked exactly the kind of work that had been assigned.When I told him he expressed concern and dismay that a child MLM’s age was laden with the task of cursive writing and horrors…Hindi homework too!
The bigger little boy told me he was introduced to cursive writing in grade school and very seriously wanted to know the name of the school that puts so much pressure on a child smaller than him.
He seemed a bit surprised and slightly down with what he’d seen.
Children, up to a particular age, even with their exposure to adult subterfuge and whatnots are largely very blunt and very expressive. What they see , feel and think the world around them gets to know.
Their approaches to problem solving are ridiculously simple and extremely effective.
Maybe, just maybe…we should take a leaf out of their book when we get frazzled with the vagaries of the world around us.
Just saying.
We’re shopping for a new school for MLM. He’s going to 1st grade in 2015 and we’re a bit worried. Correction- Red is a bit worried. Am anxious. Anxious because when I was going to school at his age and even at an age older to what he is now, there was usually one or the other choice. And now there are choices galore! Ergo more and more chances to screw up his proper introduction to academia.
The more schools there are, the more parents turn up; kids in tow. The more parents turn up, the more schools pop up. It’s the strongest symbiotic relationship I’ve seen in a long, long while.
Each school promises to nurture your child while not over burdening or even mildly burdening them with any academics and letting them grow in a manner befitting their innate personality and the visions the founders of the schools have held true while establishing the school. HORSESHIT!
A school is a business. A business can be started on noble principles but nobility isn’t going to pay dividends long-term so you get with the program and start adding academic gloss via whatever seems to be trending. And while what might seem cynical the fact of the matter is that the methodologies we studied in weren’t bad at all. The people who implemented them might have been sub-standard but the syllabus wasn’t and we just need to take a look at our own achievements and where we are in life to be cognizant of the fact.
We end up obsessing about teacher-student ratios, ventilated-classrooms, AC in school buses, travelling time to school et al and all of these are valid points to ponder upon. But I don’t consider any of them a make or break thing barring the school distance in the case of a small child.
Here’s what I want for my kid-
No school will be able to influence or enhance a person’s native intellect. It is what it is. But if they make a child happy, especially a small child, the kind of commitment towards learning they will get is nothing short of phenomenal!
Fingers crossed this particular bit of shopping around doesn’t entail any returns.
Lordy…tough times ahead.
I can squeeze every last drop of therapy from retail therapy. Especially the online kind. Here’s why it’s fairly harmless and here are its benefits (and this is a prime example of Freud’s rationalization) :
This was a L-A-M-E attempt to explain why I give my credit card such a lot of workout for the silliest things like a table runner :) but on the other hand am probably putting some retailer’s kid through school and college so it’s all good.
Gather around…this will not be repeated for the fear of an epidemic of husbands dumping more work on frazzled wives and especially the SAHMs.
I’m going to share the secrets of the sisterhood with you but hush now and come closer and read quickly because this post will self-destruct in 1 minute!
We like doing laundry. Especially when we add in that luscious, thick, summery liquid fabric softener that makes the clothes smell “soft”.
We like polishing our tables too. Why do you think Lemon-scented Pledge is all you see in the supermarkets. We love to polish till the gloss of the table starts reflecting the giant mountains of unfolded clothes lying on the couch.
And I shouldn’t tell you this but we like folding clothes too! Yesssssssssss….the way folded clothes makes the room seem larger suddenly and allows the light rays to bounce off from chair to chair like a natural pin ball makes us feel a warm, buttery glow that usually accompanies good brandy or an exceptional single malt.
The stack of ironed clothes, ironed till the sweat from our brow springs forth, makes us feel a glory that has little to do with clothes per se but has more to do with seeing shirt after shirt, crisply folded and looking new.
A clean kitchen counter is bliss! Wiping off the last bit of grease from the stove tops feels like having run through an obstacle course and not having tripped over a single hurdle.
The gleaming tiles, the newly made beds..oh…bliss! bliss! bliss!
That is the secret life of housewives no one knows about. Shhhh
P.S: the author takes no responsibility for the material above seeing how it was written in a state of caffeine deficit and her immense joy at taking a break from house work and travelling for a few days.
Cheers All…may the bleach be with you.
Woke up this morning to a truly saddening news- Robin Williams was no more. Had been a while since I’d seen anything he’d starred in but he was an actor who had a fantastic range of expressions but was largely categorized as a comic actor due to the large number of comedies he starred in. But you only have to see movies like What Dreams May Come to know the gamut of emotions he was capable of portraying.
He was the centerpiece of Dead Poet’s Society along with Sean Robert Leonard, the perfect foil to De Niro in Awakenings, a perfect delight in Patch Adams through all the sadness and Mrs.Doubtfire was classic Williams through out.
I remember watching him in HBO’s Comic Relief where he indulged in more of his adult themes in comedy along with Whoppi Goldberg and Billy Crytal but his ability to stay passive faced while his words caused cascades of laughter in others was his forte.
What is truly ironic is that the ‘funny man’ allegedly died by his own hands and due to depression. What does it to take to make the world laugh while you battle the very thing that prevents you from feeling joy or comfortable in your own skin?
I guess the answer dies with him and everyone else who decides that their life isn’t worth living anymore.
Be as it may, his gift will linger and I for one am going to do a Robin Williams marathon very soon.
Adieu Captain O My Captain.
MLM by and large is a fairly manageable child. He’s NOT docile neither does he stop and listen every single time but he’s not been sneaky or sly very often.
He celebrated his 5th birthday over the weekend and I found some of the toys brought out during the party had suspicious chunks taken out of them. There being no end to the kind of sticky situations kids can find themselves in, I asked him if he was the one who had done it. He calmly replied “no”. When I later found irrefutable proof that it was indeed he who had spoiled the toys I have to admit I got pretty angry. Not because of the toys but because he’d lied outright.
Now as parents, we lie to our kids without blinking an eye. We lie about Santa, where their old toys have gone, where people go to after they die or even how we tackle the question of death itself. It’s done out of two main factors:
1) Children, at a particular age, lack the life experience to understand everything life throws at them.
2) We lack the adequate ability to explain things to them about certain things because they actually require near-adult understanding.
But what I am concerned about is- where do I draw the line about lying? Don’t lie? Non-negotiable and no questions asked or depending on the situation and its gravity take a call?
No matter what stance Red and I take, life will teach him to tell fibs. To get out of dealing with tiresome people, to avoid doing something he’d prefer not to et al, to save himself from something uncomfortable…who knows! We do it so often.
With children in the formative stage it becomes so essential to watch our steps, words, everything around them!
So if I have to explain to him that telling a lying isn’t the best way to go, I guess I should start with telling him that the hugely expensive (and unnecessarily expensive also) dragon toy he wants isn’t really out of stock; I just don’t want to spend that kind of money on something that isn’t a bloody life-sized dragon!
Hard being a parent. Really. Truly. Absolutely!
The previous blogs have boiled down to this one- what to play on a sitar. Rather what is usually played. If it so pleases people I suppose they could play Pink Floyd as well but the compositions which have been around for centuries are usually based on something called Swar (the notes Sa Re Ga et al).
The Swars combine to make Thaats which in turn become bases for the ragas or the more detailed, elaborate music compositions.
Let’s break it down further. Say hello to the swars-
Sa– Shadaj, Re– Rishabh, Ga– Gandhar, Ma– Madhyam, Pa– Pancham, Dh-Dhaivad, Ni– Nishaad. The thaats use sharps and flats to arrange a pattern of notes on which the ragas are formed. Each thaat is named after the most popular raga generated in it.
These are the thaats and this is an easier way to understand some of them for those who read music- 
Some of the raags that I really enjoy are Maalkauns, Bhimpalaasi, Hansadhwani and Jaunpuri. The Hindustani raags are ideally set to be played during a particular time of day or time when it has the maximum effect, due to its tonal quality and supposedly when it causes the optimum amount of enjoyment to those listening and playing it as well.
Each raag has these elements- aaroh (the ascending scale), avroh (aka the descending scale), pakad (the particular arrangement of music that allows for a raag’s identification) and they start out with an aalap i.e introduction. The introduction is usually played without any other accompaniments barring a tanpura drone. The aalap is followed by the playing the raag in different lays aka speed. With vilambit meaning slow and dhrut meaning a fast tempo.
Bringing an end to a raag on a sitar is done by playing a jhaala that integrates a tihaai.
Each raag can be played on different types of beats or taal (click to listen) in Hindustani classical lingo. Some of the most frequently played taals are: Teen taal, Keherva, Rupak, Ektaal, Chautal, Dadra, Tilwada et al.
This has been an attempt to encapsulate centuries of invaluable knowledge on music into a blog series. But the pursuit of music is a life long endeavor. I write pursuit because each time it feels like you’ve finally got your quarry in hand and begun to understand it, it suddenly shows a new dimension that has to be understood, learnt and mastered.
Be as that may, a foray into music of any sort, especially one where the learning starts from the foundation up; is a step in the right direction of enrichment, self- discovery and being liberated from the humdrum of life.
