what the future brings ...

I went to a birthday party today - a friend of my son's whose family has lived in this state for a couple of generations. The party rang with the childrens' laughter at the antics of their cousins, squeals of delight at seeing a favorite aunt, exclamations of "Look how much he has grown in just a week!" and it all left me aching with want. To have the kind of family and roots in the place I live in. To see my children visit with their aunts and uncles every other week, to go to a "thottil" of my cousin's daughter or an "upanayanam" of my nephew. On the heels of those pangs settled in the realization that that was a lifestyle for the previous generation in India, atleast in my family. All the get-togethers and dos that were celebrated for anniversaries and birthdays, births celebrated by visiting each other - all of these were for that generation, that priviledged one with many siblings, all of them that worked and lived in the same city. For us, we have the better education, the supposedly better life, but one sibling or none. We are the ones that have moved away, away to a land, scattered around the world, where we make do with friends in place of family. We meet our parents once a year or once in two years, birthday parties are no longer small family gatherings, but big to dos in some party place, the children know their aunts and uncles from pictures and phone calls and video cameras. I have this - the memories of those gatherings, grew up rooted in that system with the aunts and the uncles and the grand parents and great uncles and the great aunts. Will my children miss these when they are adults or will the adage "they cannot miss what they did not know" apply to them?

Dream for your daughter?

I am living the feminist dream - I am married to an utterly wonderful, non-chauvinistic man, who is not even aware while he is making them that his choices speak of equal rights for women. This post is not about my husband, but he is my excuse for why I have not had a single feminist rant on my blog so far. I read about issues women face and feel far removed from it all in my day to day life. Sometimes though, I read or come across something that shakes me out of my stupor and make me rethink my whole "I don't have a single reason to rant" lifestyle - what affects one woman affects all women as a collective and advocacy for women's rights cannot be dependant upon our individual life experiences - in that you can start advocating for a cause because of a negative experience you may have had, but you cannot stop because of one positive or continuing positive personal experiences. So here goes ...

I recently was speaking to a group of working mothers, most of us had cajoled, bribed and pushed our children into getting ready for a swim class and were exhausted and one mom started talking about how hard it was working and taking care of home and children and how going to part time hurt her career so she had to switch back to full time. What she said next made me sit up and take notice. She said " What do I tell my daughter about careers? I am personally at a point where I feel tired and exhausted and that I have completely wasted a good portion of my life following a dream that I am even debating that I needed in the first place. I could have just stayed at home, never had a career and hence never had a conflict of interest. Do I tell my daughter that she would have a better life if she decided to stay at home ?".
This stayed with me the whole day - how much our mothers influence our choice of life styles, career choices and life goals. I have sons and have never given much thought to their career choices or whether they will even have one. I hope I haven't been sexist in assuming my children would of course work outside. My own mother dreamt for my sister and me and she dreamt big. My grandfather used to joke that she had determined that I was going to get a Ph.D. at 2. Anyway, I wonder whether my life would have been different if my mother had decided to work outside, if she had become disillusioned with the inequities that exist in the pay structure based on sex, if she had tired of the constant battle to manage home and her job outside, would she still have pushed us as she did?

While you hear more and more about the stay at home dad, Woman is still largely the parent that quits her once loved job to look after her children. Woman is still the parent that has her career stunted because of a choice to cut back on responsibility or go part time. Woman is the parent that will hang herself out on a limb for missing bedtime because of a deadline. Woman is crying on the inside for giving up the opportunity to work in another country for two months while the mother in her thanks her for sparing them the separation. Woman is the parent that in many jobs earns lesser than Man for the same load of work - apparently, as a society we still are under the impression that women produce lesser throughput than men. Woman is the parent that has to learn to not act like a girl to be taken serioulsy - apparently, men will promote only if a woman is man like in nature. Woman is the parent whose choice is constantly reviled - her choice of working outside makes her seem uncaring and unloving to some and her choice to stay at home makes her seem antiquated and unambitious to another. Woman is the parent whose right to choose is constantly threatened - she must have her baby even if it means she will not survive the pregnancy to raise it. Woman is the parent who is under constant pressure to live the image of the "perfect mom" touted on any which magazine she reads. Woman is the parent who constantly has to maintain the perfectly spotless home, cook perfectly nutritious meals, coach perfect little soccer games, make the perfect presentation at work and have the perfect bedtime story. Woman is the parent that must be super-mom.
Little wonder then that my friend was confused about whether she wanted this life style for her daughter. I wonder what I would have told my daughter.

Do you have a daughter? What would you tell her?

Out of the mouth of babes ...

They say it takes a village to raise a child. I think I will need a whole village and maybe the next ten to raise both of mine. Or atleast to answer questions I cannot answer and do not ever remember asking my parents. I don't ever remember asking my parents what marriage was - for the longest possible time (and this stymies even me how I was that ignorant for that long), I just thought my parents were siblings like my sister and I are, and that my grandparents were siblings too, this somehow reinforced in my mind because both my grandfathers had a "murthy" in their name - Ramamurthy and Krishnamurthy. Like I thought Rajnikant and Vijaykant were brothers (I know - I must have been a really lame kid) And then one morning, I woke up and I just knew what the whole deal was about. I just never asked my folks questions about stuff that I somehow knew would earn me a mild rebuke or at the very least some form of a dismissive answer. I stumbled into my own answers through incorrect assumptions and convoluted conclusions. Kids nowadays are different. And let's face it - we as parents are too. I would not dream of brushing off questions about marriage and babies and death as being too much too soon(or atleast I thought so). Hence the quandary - How much do you tell them? How much is too much? ANd on greater questions like religion and being a vegetarian, how do you teach them to accept that they are one while others around them are another? I obviously did not do a good job with the whole vegetarian shebang because one hiking trip, Vinay turns to the two other sole hikers - both white, strappy males in their 40s and says loudly, in English "Hunters! Bad hunters! Amma, do they eat the animals?" Needless to say, we cut our trip short.

Sample (on the subject of marriage):
Vinay: Amma, are you married?
Me: Uh huh. Yes baby I am
Vinay: To whom?
Me: Why, to your appa!
Vinay: Oh. Can you get married again?
Me: Oh no, I don't think so. And who would I get married to anyway?
Vinay: You could get married to Varun (this softly) or how about me?
Me: Oh baby, you will get married to someone else .
Vinay: Why?????

Sample on death:
Me(in a scream): Varun! if keep jumping off the bunk bed you are going to fall and break your neck!
Vinay: So then he will die?
Me: Er....no.
Vinay: He could die, right?
Me: Er ...we would have to take him to the hospital and the doctor would have to give him shots
(Now the "shot" word used to be enough to silence them both for a looooong time, sadly no more) So again....
Vinay: But could he die??
Me: Hey! WHo wants candy??!!!!

There are many times I simply bow to greater experience and influence and I let his teachers know. And they have been absolutely wonderful, guiding me through some particularly tricky ones and handling some at school in ways that I would never have dreamed of but which have worked out beautifully. Like the other day in the car, on our way back from school
"Amma, do you know some people have babies. And then some don't"
"Uh huh"
"And that's okay" "And then some people don't want babies -for a loong time. And that's okay too"
I sat there in stunned silence while my heart was just overflowing with gratitude to his teachers for patiently answering my inquisitive child his incessant questions while injecting a learning of acceptance in him.
So they say it takes a village.
I'll bow deep to that.

Sweating the small stuff

I had an epiphany today - I never truly appreciated before my two little brats just how many decisions a mother makes. And I am not talking about the life changing, incredibly big decisions like "I am going to raise my children to be vegetarian" or the "I am going to send my children to a public/private/charter school" or even the "I will let my son wear pink and show the world that there is no shame there" kind of decisions. No. I am talking about the small(er?) ones which still consume and ultimately subsume us. The decisions like "Has Vinay outgrown this shirt so that his entire tummy shows or can I still get away with calling it a midriff showing t-shirt? Do I need to put this pant away now? " or "Do they need to eat vegetables twice a day ?" or even "Does Varun's cold look bad enough to warrant a day off from schhol and me a day off from work". Somewhere around the 4 month mark after my first was born, in the interest of "making decisions jointly where our children are concerned", I asked Patta "Do you think his pillowcase is disgusting enough to wash today or can it wait another day or a week or so?". He looked at me like I had grown two heads in addition to the 20 (ahem) pounds from the baby and and like it was totally obvious said "Just turn the pillow over ". Huh. So much for making decisions together. Since then I have been plodding through these decisions alone, deciding what color vegetables and fruits they eat today, what color socks go best with their shirts(the red or the white?), whether to let them nap or whether not to...You get the picture. And all I can say is, vive la madre! while debating to myself whether the kids get to go to the park or the pool this evening.

What's in a title?

Jan22, 2008
Today I became a periamma. My sister has a beatiful 9lb11oz. bundle of joy and I am ecstatic about becoming an aunt. But I am not ecstatic about becoming a "periamma". What's in a title? you may ask. But think about it - the cool aunt is the "chitthi", the fun aunt is her, the playful one, the one with whom you can get into vambu and veshamam, the one who gets scolded by Paati along with you. THe one who can throw tantrums just like you and have thatha or Paati still call her "kutti" (even though you are the real kutti of the house). She will run around the house with you and generally goad you into more mischief. She will beg with you for treats from Paati and amma. And she will play with you more than any other person in the house. Periamma - sigh, a periamma is an authoritarian, she is the one who doles out the treats you and your chithi asked for with identical puppy-dog expressions. She is the one that tells you to be more responsible, why, she even tells your amma to be more responsible. She is the one you can complain to about your amma and watch your amma getting told off . While that brought me great glee when I was little, do I necessarily want my niece to see me in that role? Not that I would mind telling my sister off occasionally. (she is our "kutti" you see and I CAN tell her off :)). I could ask her to call me "aunty" but i have never been a fan of unifying all our wonderful, numerous, relationship-specifying titles into one bland all-encompassing black umbrella of "Uncle" or "Aunty". Can you imagine not calling your father's sister "athai" or your mum's brother "mama" or your aunt "manni" or "chithi" or "perimma"? Exactly. So my niece WILL call me "perimma". And I will just smile everytime she does and learn to like it because I know that chithi or perimma, my love for her will always be the same (and maybe I will manage to throw in some chitthi style looti with her one day).