Tag Archives: raising a child

Movie Review: Luck

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TO has been choosing the movies he wants to watch for a couple of years now and thankfully the ones I’ve been watching with him have had something as a take away barring the entertainment factor. We watched Luck on Apple TV+ last night and except for a few parts which were a bit hokey IMO, it’s a decent watch for families.

Movie plot: Sam, a 18-year old orphan is aging out of the last orphanage she lived in; having spent her life going from one home to another without ever having found her “forever family” aka get adopted.

This doesn’t make her too down in the dumps however and she appoints herself as a big sister for the other girls in the home, most of all Hazel. Sam, unfortunately, suffers from chronic bad luck and something or the other always goes wrong for her till the day her luck changes and she accidentally finds a lucky penny dropped by a bad luck omen- a BLACK CAT!

The rest of the movie follows her adventures in the Land of Luck as she tries to reclaim good luck for Hazel and make sure she gets her forever family which she learns important lessons in life, love and about herself.

Featuring the voices of Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, John Ratzenberger among others, Luck is an original Apple film which explains, in a very patient manner, that having only good luck isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. A balance of good and the bad is what makes life the journey it is. Bad luck isn’t all that bad at the end of the day and is just a path towards reclaiming the good luck that gives one a sense of confidence and joy to go further.

Similar to the movie Inside Out, Luck explains the slightly metaphysical concept of good being not all good and bad being not entirely bad to the younger lot and does it in a wholesome manner. Sure, some parts do seem a bit goody-goody, but with all the less than sanitary stuff that’s assaulting the kids from all around, a feel-good movie and slightly goody-two-shoes character isn’t a bad thing at all!

How My Days Begin

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I’m severely myopic so once I open my eyes in the morning everything is in blob-form till my grope for my glasses under the bed and put them on. Slowly the world starts coming into focus and I start taking stock of the world around me.

At times however, I feel I’m hallucinating like this morning when the glasses revealed a snowy owl staring right at me from my couch. Draped on the owl was a komodo dragon no less. Realization strikes…ah yes, TO and his little menagerie.

All’s right with the world. Haven’t gone into a rabbit hole…yet.

The Lard Bloglet

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It’s one of those days when your kid snuggles up to you saying, “No Marshmallow, don’t go…I want to sleep for some more time”. You love this kid but if he calls you Marshmallow one more time…#%$&!£!#*

Discussions on life and beyond

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TO’s ideas about life and death are shaped quite a bit by the things he sees online. And since he sees more grown- up content these days vis-a-vis Mickey Mouse Club House, Noddy et al, death is portrayed more in the Occidental way than it is the Oriental or Indian way. He’s seen characters who visit graves of their loved ones and thinks that’s the way we roll too. Of course, till now he’s been lucky to not lose anyone he really loves.

Last evening the topic of me and Red not being there came up. Dunno how exactly but it might have arisen out of the talk about TO growing up and doing things more by himself without our help or our supervision. And when he gets going about the future he paints a very elaborate picture. It’s seldom a few things mentioned offhand; it’s always a well-etched scenario.

So yesterday TO started off by saying, “When you and P die I’ll have to do things on my own. But I’ll visit your graves and let you know how I’m doing.” Instead of going “awww” I told him a bit tersely (I was in the middle of a challenging puzzle) that “we wouldn’t be buried because we’d be cremated as per our religion. To that the answer came, “I wouldn’t burn you!! (horrified tone). I’ll bury you so you’ll always be there and I’ll put flowers on your grave and if you become ghosts you’ll have a place to go back to after you come see how I’m doing.”

This kind of long-term logistical planning really needs a pat on the back.

Kids With Gadgets- A Closer Look

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While TO waits for the laptop to power up, his class links to get posted and before he graces his teachers and classmates with his beatific countenance, he does this:

Fathers Day

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The Sleep Groove

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I like to sleep. I like to lie down and read or listen to music but it’s not like sleep and I are enemies.

But co-sleeping is something I’ve had to deal with on and off throughout my parenting journey. And boy! it’s not one of the things which are bring a smile to my face.

In the course of one night, TO can keep moving enough for a queen-size bed to feel like a packed can of sardines.

I’m seriously considering setting him up in a garden somewhere…he’d be amazing as a sundial!

Retroblogging#23

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Another one that caught my eye from the days of yore…

Right from the time my son was born, I was struck by how delicate he was. I knew babies are vulnerable and helpless but this one seemed to embody those qualities and more. He was a thin baby, weighing just on this side of an acceptable birth weight but he never lacked spunk.

That ‘scrawny’ baby’s learnt to run now and also balance himself on his toes to reach heights hitherto out of his reach.

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One thing that’s absolute about children is that you NEVER know what they’ll do next. If you think there’s a line they haven’t crossed yet, they always manage to cross it and then some! So if you threaten your kid with that ‘last straw that breaks the camel’s back’, you’d better be prepared to have a whole herd of camels waiting out there because your offspring will find plenty more straws and with it plenty of camels’ backs too.

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I used to think of little children (infant to toddler stage) as being fragile but it’s us as parents who’re the fragile ones. The kids are resilient and how! They fall, they bleed, they sprout bumps here, there and everywhere and they still keep going even after the tears have left tracks on their face.

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And speaking of tracks, while you may not need therapy to get over the minor cuts and nicks on your child; it definitely takes some doing to see your child hurt and you not being able to prevent it. And some things do stay with you. Whether it makes you a better parent or a hovering one is anyone’s guess.

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And by the time you’re over the initial trauma and your monkey is again gallivanting off for newer places to fall down from; you tell them what’s sure to become your motto in life- “Don’t cry! You wanna cry? I’ll give you something to cry about if you dare do something like this (fill in blank with your pet peeves about your kid) ever again!!!”

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And you go on. Both of you…sometimes with one chipped tooth, a brief black and blue mark and you with a near-paranoid obsession for stuff your child could hurt yourself on again. But you do go on.

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And before you know it, they’re onto newer things, more things they could make hurtful for themselves and with you still trying to be their life-long safety net and catch them before they fall. But that’s not to be…what is to be their ever-growing curiosity, activity and ability to bounce back each time.

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Amen to that! The rest will keep I suppose 🙂

P.S: At the time of this blog being posted MLM’s graduated to TO and has had 3 surgical interventions (nothing critical) which includes one broken hand being reset. And we’re still chugging along! Phew…

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Selectively Linguistic

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My native language is Bangla. Am not entirely proficient in it. I can speak it but the “purists” can usually gauge that I’m not one of them. Apparently it reeks of being an “outsider” aka from outside the hallowed boundaries of West Bengal.

I can manage to read and write it but it’d be better if I didn’t. I can manage better with Gujarati and can more than scrape by in Hindi. Not counting English here since it’s the global ‘must-have’ language we were brought up to regard and revere.

Red’s native tongue is Telugu. He’s proficient in speaking, reading and writing. The less said about his spoken Hindi the better. I’ve written a few blog posts trolling it and he hasn’t been a happy camper.

The Offspring (TO) has chosen English as the language he’s most comfortable with and is sticking to it with the tenacity of barnacles on a sunken ship. See…all those years of cramming figures of speech in my head finally did some good.

Anyhoo, back to TO. He has been spoken to, yelled at, cajoled at, cooed at in both the languages Red and I speak in but somehow it was the whole water&duck’s back scenario.

But every now and then, he slips up and answers, verbally or non-verbally, in response to a question asked in Bangla. And it makes me annoyed and smug at the same time. Would it hurt his otherwise perpetually busy mouth to speak a few words in other languages? Especially if they’re a part of his cultural make-up? But noooo…one cannot hope to prevail upon children of today over these sentimental issues. They (the kids) are pretty pragmatic and don’t see much value to doing the ‘little things’ which make their folks giddy with happiness.

This morning over breakfast at a resort we’re staying in, I asked him if he wanted a repeat of his soupy noodles. I asked him in Bangla and he shook his head no. I asked him again just to be sure and he said “No”. When Red asked him a bit later, he still said no. So no was the way to go.

But am onto his little tricks. He pretends he doesn’t get what I’m saying when I speak in a different language but I know better. No kid can spend 7 years being scolded in a language and not pick up bits and pieces. No sirree!

Although, and am just playing devil’s advocate here, given his Bong genes that are predispositioned towards food and gluttony, he could just have memorized every tense of the phrase containing the words ‘eat’ and ‘more’. Going by my luck with this boy, it’s far more likely that’s what he did.

There go dreams of my conversing with him and teaching him the mix of Banglish (Bangla+English)+Hinglish (Hindi+English) I usually speak.

I is sad. I is annoyed. These kids! #smh but since every parent’s goal is to get their kids to do things without telling them 20,000xs or throwing stuff at them; as long as he answers back in ONE language I guess that’ll have to be enough.

Siiiiigh.

The Magic Of Coffee

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Caffeine is defined as ‘an alkaloid compound which is found especially in tea and coffee plants and is a stimulant of the central nervous system.’
I, on the other hand, would call it the life-giving and life-sustaining elixir which enables me to tolerate my fellow man, open my eyes in the morning without wishing a piano fell on people around me; basically not putting a hit out on people who keep me from my coffee.


Take this morning’s scenario- TO has trouble getting up in the mornings. So do I but I have been given the divine duty of getting my kid off to school ergo sleep can be sacrificed for the joy of knowing he’s boarding the yellow bus. Anyhoo, after what seems like eons in getting him to get out of bed and the zombie-walk to the loo where he can brush, he decided that *now* was the best time to lie down flat on a skateboard and S-L-O-W-L-Y roll his way to the dining table that was maybe 5 feet away.

Why, one might be tempted to ask. Well apparently the flesh and blood wanted to have his morning milk ‘on the go’ as it were.

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In such moments, coffee is the most glorious of gifts. It prevents you from turning into a banshee, dumping said cup of milk onto otherwise lovable offspring’s head and as the caffeine enters your system, you feel calm and barely-there tolerance pervade the space around you.

I do agree, I might have a wee addiction towards the bean. It has been my constant support for more than 26 years now. It has got me through many a thing. Kept me from throwing things at odious people and throwing odious people off other places.

A few weeks ago I was asked to cut back on milk and caffeine as a part of a “diet”. That it didn’t work out is a given. I took to lingering in the kitchen gazing at the cupboard where the coffee is kept. I sniffed the coffee powder a few times a day and wished I could mainline it. Yup…total junkie.

But all jokes aside, we all have our crutches in life. Some worse than others. Of all the things I could be doing, coffee seems to be the most benign.

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