The D with legs

So, we have been practising our alphabets for a while. About two months, or something close to that..

After the last parents meeting, after which we( i) resolved to be a complete hands on mom on education, we have made miles of progress. Reading out alphabets where ever he feels fancy is one...asking me for the word is another favourite exercise.

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V reading out random alphabets from anywhere....

V: Mama what is " f.u.n"
Me: That is " fun", as in "masti"

V: "s.a.m.s.u.n.g"...whats that?
Me: Oh..that is " samsung"- it is the name of our fridge.
V: What is the name of the fridge at ammamma's place?
Me: * racks brains- hollow sound*" Hmmm..i think we'll ask her when we call next?"

V: * reading paper over my shoulder* "a.t.t.a.c.k"
Me: "Aahhh...here's your Noddy book. Which story you want me to read?"

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We also write and draw...


That's A, B, H , E and D- which V decided looks better with legs and eyes and ultimately turned into a "bug"

And that is Papa, Mama, himself , and jellyfish( please don't ask why the jellyfish)

I love the picture....see how slender mama is looking , exactly like in real life...

No? errr..okay.

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Tomorrow is next parents meeting...updates after that.

Nursery admission saga

First the news….

V has got admission into Junior KG!!! By Mumbai standards, it is bigger than making it into a professional college, or so I was told.

For what it is worth, Mumbai just does not have enough schools, and not just reputed schools, just any school. I could say that again and again. I meet people who refuse to move to Mumbai, because getting admissions is Mumbai is a pain in the a**. I had colleagues who were still fighting for an admission in February last year and had resigned myself to the same fate, mentally. It has been a year of angst.

Thankfully we stay in that part of Mumbai which has more schools that the rest of the city. I have been calling up schools, picking up forms, filling them out like we are applying for a PG abroad, and wondering why am I doing so much for the admission of a 4 year old????????

TB and I have studied state board till tenth, and personally I think both of us have done decently in life. It was a little difficult to absorb the obsession about school/ brand / status etc. I still don’t get it. Schools here prefer children with non working mothers, so that they have a family support system. So what is my education worth? Peanuts? I could be a post PhD and a doctor, but………….
“Sorry maam, the school policy prefers to have one stay in parent”. That was the exact line said to my senior colleague, who is a Harvard Business school alumnus, by a “reputed” south Mumbai school. The next time around, she was wiser, she got through, by “lying through my teeth, because that is what they wanted to hear”.

I did not want to lie; I did not want to play down my status and achievements in life. Neither did I want to compromise on his education. The biggest gift that our parents have given us was our education, and we want V to have the best, always. This school was one among the two that I secretly hoped V should get into. It was closest to our house, and the bus comes into our complex, and the review is quite good. And above all, it has a mix of kids from all walks of life. I firmly believe that what we learn in early years form our personality and social foundation, and i definitely do not want him to feel like a very " priviledged" child. He should be able to distunguish between his 'needs' and 'wants'....and i wanted a school where he will learn to appreciate what he has in life and not take it for granted.

Before we walked in, TB said” I am nervous”, and I replied “So am I, but let’s just go and be ourselves. And leave the rest to almighty”. Thankfully, this interview was much better that I expected. Of course they asked everything about me and TB except our horoscopes (which even we have no clue about), and both of us were equivocal.

TB was asked what he had heard about the school and why we chose to apply there. I could almost hear him say “because my wife says this is a decent school and because you called us for the interview”. But the man rose to the occasion and fed them some bull shit about how he has heard from some of our neighbors’, who send their children here about all the good feedback some crap like that. I can vouch for the fact that he does not even know one of those “so called neighbors” he has quoted. But anyhow, they seemed to have bought the story.

The star of the day, however, was the boy himself, who has been showing all the signs of a stand off minutes before we entered the interview room.

He sat where he was asked to, answered all the questions, shied away from singing a rhyme and looked down (!). The clincher was when the principal (I am assuming so) asking him

P: " Why do you want to come to this school?" (Tell me, how does a 4 year old boy respond to that question. I can’t imagine!!!!I was quite sure he would say something in lines of I don’t want to come here)
But surprise, he says” This is a big school”. So what does “princi the porcupine” do? Stop there? No. she goes on….

P: Which school do you study now?
V: “xyz” (current school name)

P: Is that not a big school? Why you want to come here? (I could have strangled her; she was asking all this to a 4 year old!!!)
V: “No, that is a small school, this is a biiiiiig school”*complete with actions*

Then P the Porcupine called him around and gave him a chocolate. He took that, and asked for more, for” papa and mama”. They laughed as they told us that he was admitted! Considering they told most of parents to come back and check the list for admission later on, I re checked again, to make sure I had heard properly. We had made it…..yippee

Phew! That was close. I had thought we had lost out on the rhyme part. It could not have been so simple? We walked out grinning like fools, and very very relieved. We still have to fork out a huge amount as fees, but for now, we have a seat to send him to next June, and better still, at a place we wanted.

Right now, I am feeling like V has made it to Harvard, or Leeds or Princeton…trust me, the paperwork is as much, and so is the relief.

And therein begins our..trials and anxiety

Tomorrow we are officially collecting the first of the application forms from a local school for V. And therein....stepping gingerly into the trials and tribulations of education sytem in India.

Whatever Mumbai has in abundance, it does not have enought schools. I could shout out that from any rooftop you want me to, totally.

I am given to understand from his friends mother that if i go in with all the required documents and fill up an submit the form tomorrow itself, they will let me know the interview dates immediately.

Wait a minute..she said " interview"

---- interview, who? . Turns out me and TB have to be there, and we get interviewed.

Okay, we knew this was coming. So i promptly call up TB and tell him so, verbatim. There is a full minute of silence before he says ..

" Should we carry any files???''

Anxiety is taking over. PERIOD!

Presenting--- Mr Ladybug

We did our first craft project last week, and how!


V had a school fancy dress wher he had to go as an insect of a flower. We had got the information about this long ago, but in my usual procrastinationg mode, i just let it be.

Having done this last year, i decided to chicken out and take the same route- hire a costume. In mumbai, you can get anything, for a price. So there i was, ready to face this event, all mentally prepared.


What i did not anticipate though, was a healthy overdone of parental guilt!. The weekend before last, i started getting guilt pangs about my non participativeness. I had a horrible feeling that i was turning into one of those moms who have all the money and material pleasures , but no time for their children. Aaaarrrgh!!
So i went to office, and took advice from my colleagues at office of what i could do. And man, i did get tons of advice. Experienced, practical advise.


Armed with all that, i asked V what he wanted to be "flower" or "insect"? Of Course..he wanted to be an insect. Good- what if i had turned him into a flower and he disowns me 15 years later because of what i did?
Then we took his insect book and looked at all the pictures...and decided on Ladybug. So ladybug it is..Errr..is there a Mr. ladybug? Never mind.


I spent two evenings after work collecting the things i needed for the costume. I decided to make him wear black from top to bottom and make a wing( bump??) on his back ,coloured red with black dots on it. The plan sounded perfect to me.


The show was on Saturday and friday evening, back from work, i started on the costume. For the wing, i made the frame with thin wire and made the antennae with a metal hair band and red balls , that was available everywhere for christmas decorations.Just when i hit a mental block on how to cover the frame with paper, TB walked in. Wonderful!


He covered the entire frame with paper and covered the top with red felt paper. By the time we were done , it was much past midnight. We crashed after leaving it out to dry. The highlight of the night being V slicing off a part of my finger along with the cellotape, and wailing because he hurt me:-)


In the morning, i added the spots on it with black felt circles, attached strings to tie the wings around his shoulder and did the finishing touches. And we were ready to roll.
The fancy dress was nothing spectacular..
-Parents sauntering in at their wish, holding up the event.
- Most kids refusing to pose and clinging onto their parents.
- The principal asking the parents to stop talking to each other so all of us could hear what the kids had to say..
- As usual, chaos.




V went in second, enjoyed every moment of the attention and said his lines. He went around telling his teacher that his mama and papa made the costume * heart swells with pride*.
So we have figured out that we are not so bad at this fancy dress thingie after all. I have been asked to safekeep the costume by all my colleagues, so they can use it sometime.
Recognition!makes you feel good and want to do stuff all over again. Maybe not! my finger is still sore and painful. I'll give it a while.


Attaching some pictures of V in his costumes. The honey bee was the last years costume, the hired one-*smiles sheepishly*. The other one , behold - is the in house creation.

Now again....He does look a little impoverished, doesn't he?...Impoverished ladybug!!

I take the first step...

It was parents meeting at V's school today. I have to mention here that there were more mothers than fathers present, even if both parents are working...says something?

- Mothers job not important??she can afford to take off from work and spend two hours in school! Fathers are running the world?

- Fathers do not want to be the one's representing the child? They chicken out on responsibility? Just to note, there were no "fathers only" who had come in.....

I have my own views on this..and it is a dicussion for another day, a very serious one.

Back to the meeting, it went quite well. I dread these meetings. With new age schools, i keep getting worried, never know what feedback they have about our kid. When we put him in last year, he had difficulty getting used to two new languages, english, and hindi. This year, he's been speaking in both, plus his mother tongue, so that's sorted out.

Then came his teacher last year who commented that he needs to improve his fine motor skills( read- holding pencils and writing/ drawing). Scared the shit out of me at first. If our walls are any testimony to go by....he has mastered the art this year.

All has been fine this year, and his teachers have been kind enough to tell us that he is a pleasure to have in class( initially i thought it was a general comment they make to all parents- till i overheard some of the grilling other parents were being subject to. I mentally thanked my stars, thanked V , and quickly exited).

She left me with one comment- V is not very proficient in identifying alphabets, while he answers most of the other questions first, when it comes to identifying alphabets, he takes a while,and someone would have answered before him. She told me that he feels a little let down if his friend identifies alphabets before him, and i need to work with him on that. She also mentioned that by the end of the year he would have definitely picked up most of them, but maybe i should start now, so he can feel better about it.

Frankly, i have not worked on his alphabet reading. While i read out to him, we spend time of general knowledge,paint/ draw etc, i have not really started 'teaching ' him. Maybe we should. I feel i have not invested time on this, and i am going to correct it.

So we are embarking on a "know your alphabet" mission , starting this weekend. Hoping to make it as creative and enjoyable for him...

And for me..this is going to be the first proper teaching activity. Wish me luck, and i hope to be at least half as capable as my mother.

I am very shallow...

I force my son to dress up as a cow herd and make him work cattle!



Hell No! The only manual labour he is doing playing that hideous flute(!) and wreaking havoc on our poor
ear drums!
It was hidden under the sofa so we could get some much needed sleep, by his scheming mother...

And he is not going cow herding. He's off to celebrate janmashtami( lord krishna's birthday) at playschool.

He went to school with a bus full of boys dressed like him and girls dressed as radha. They looked soooo cute!!

Foot note: TB took one look at the costume and asked me.....

"we'll be doing this every year???..for how long?'.

Rest assured TB, not very long. Either his shallow mother will grow wiser or the son will, protesting to do this anymore. Then we stop. For now, go ahead and enjoy that smile.

Who says familiarity breeds contempt?I disagree! At least not in all cases..definitely not in 3 1/2 year olds.

V came back last thursday with a CD that has most of the rhymes they learn at school....must admit i was equally curious to hear and see some of the unintelligable rhymes he keeps singing. Very cute, 40 min CD with his school logo prominently displayed. Everytime the logo was on display, V went into raptures. I should have known then....He ended up watching the CD thrice that day.

Well, today it is 5 days since the CD made its appearance at home, and i am ready to jump out of the window if i hear it anymore!.On the contrary , V and valiamma can sit through it, twice in a sitting, everyday( beats me!..maybe this is some indication of why they get along so well)...

Its monday again...and i am back after a very brief gap. Lots of not very important things happened in these few days. The only one's worth mentioning are...

1. We are finally buying that house( one part of me will refuse to believe it till i actually see the papers..this is the more optimistic part of me writing). Hopefully in another ten days will will be able to register the same and be proud owners of a home. In a conventional sense i am still trying to figure out what have i bought
(1)...a home?considering i am not going to be staying there at least for a while, it is not home yet. (2)....a house? Yep, maybe but will be lived in by some stranger(s) who will pay us for using the place. So whose house is it anyway?
(3)....my own piece of the world??aah, here it gets a little tricky. What world? I only have 1600 sft of space in air. See, i actually don't own the land it stands on. So do not even have a piece of the world to call my own.
So what do i own ? my guess is as good as anyone else's. Let me know if there is a more sane explanation.
When i have a piece of land to myself, then i will be more confident and say that i own a piece of this world..till then, i have my castle in the air( literally!)

2. V got a new cycle:-)- this was an all weekend event. Ever since he managed to break his second cycle in 2 years( as in break into two halves- handle bar seperate/ seat and back tyres seperate), he has been diverting that energy into running behind cycles at the park- not very safe at all.
So after a brief poll at home ( 3-0) we decided to get him a new cycle( bi- cycle as V calls it) now, and not wait till rains get over. So he was told that we will buy the cycle on sunday when TB is off. The buildup started from friday evening and by the time it was sunday, he had a very clear idea of what he wanted- bigger red bicycle with trriiiing bell to ride with buntu( his playmate). So that is what he got..Bigger red cycle with bell and a rear view mirror. Some pics of it should follow later. He refused to park the cycle outside in the common area. So we lived through a sunday with a cycle being rode in and out of bedrooms/kitchen/ bathrooms annd incessant ringing of the triiiing bell!!! But he is thrilled, and the kiss we got said it all. I can live with a cycle on my bed for its worth:-)

3. Rhymes session for parents at V's school: Must admit i was feeling very stupid when it started, but by the end of it I was dancing and doing all those kiddie actions. I had a ball....though i got some very quizzical looks from the more conservative parents and a very admiring dancing partner in V. This one was deadly!..i came away feeling very much like a kid, and loved it.