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The Pet Kittens

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Once there was a cat. She had four new born kittens. They had made a house near a house where a little girl used to live; the girl was only 6 years old.
Once the mamma cat was going around with the kittens, and the girl in the house nearby was out in the garden. A car came in full speed, the girl was just looking at the kittens when she jumped to her feet and ran towards the kittens. She was just in time when she picked up all five of them, the mamma and the kittens. She went back in and put the kittens in the garden, then she asked her parents “can I please keep these 5 cats?” Her parents agreed they said “on one condition, you will have to take care of them”, “sure, why not” replied the little girl.
She made a beautiful home for the cats, and as she cared lots about animals so she did not make a cage or a very small place. As her brother had just gone to college, the cats could have a whole room to themselves and it would be good because it was a big room, and there was absolutely no furniture in the room so they could roll around lots. The girl had properly set up the place, one side there were 5 separate playing areas so that they don’t fight amongst each other, then on another corner there were 5 beds one for each cat, then there were five separate feeding bowels, etc.
Days passed by, the girl was 12 years the kittens which were now cats were 6 years old but even though the girl was 12 she still loved her pets and animals. Then the kittens grew and lived happily ever after!

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The Glowing Birds??

There were once two birds, the two lived with their whole family. They lived on a tree for about 10 to 15 years and their family had grown very large, so they had made a huge house in this tree house. Every night people would come walking to the tree and look up at the birds. One day their cousin came to visit them. In the evening he asked them “Why are you all glowing?” The birds did not know what he was talking about. So he took a picture and showed them. The birds were shocked. So the next day they went to the bird doctor and the told their doctor about what happened and that we don’t know why but we are glowing. The doctor did some tests but could not figure out the problem so he told them “take me with you for a week and show me what you do, what you eat, where you live etc.”. The birds said “Ok”. So the doctor did his packing and went on his way with the birds to their home.

He stayed at their house for a week, ate what they ate, did what they did. And then at the end of the week, when he too had started glowing in the dark like the rest of them, he said that it is something in your food. We should try shifting to a different place to see if this problem goes away. So they went to another tree for a week. The people stopped coming to watch them in the evening so  then they thought that it was now safe to go back to their former home. So they went back to the yellow tree but then they again started glowing a few days later. It was so strange.

For a day or two they looked around to see what was wrong and they found out that in the house that was near the tree there lived a boy, and he wanted his house walls to glow in the dark. Every day he would go to the hardware store, get glow in the dark paint, put it on his walls then turned on all of the lights and look at it. But glow in the dark paint would glow only when it was dark not with all the lights switched on. The boy thought it was not working and throw all the remaining paint down in the mud and the glow in the dark paint would mix with the birds food and they would eat that food. That was how they started glowing in the dark.

So the birds called their  woodpecker friend and told him what all happened  and then asked him for a little help, the woodpecker replied “I will do anything”. So the two birds told him “could you please break all of the lights in this house over there?”. The woodpecker went and broke all of the light bulbs in the house. That day the boy had put more glow in the dark paint on the walls. At night when the boy tried to turn the lights on they were not turning on so he looked at the walls and they were glowing. He started dancing with joy.

As for the birds they finally turned normal again and lived happily ever after! (Though if you think about it the glow in the dark idea for birds does sound magical)

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A Cake For A Break???

There was once a boy who lived with his parents and sister. He loved to bake cakes and pastries and make chocolates. Now, his mother would go to office before he was up and come back after he was asleep. He did not like this, and longed to talk and play with his mother, especially at bedtime. So once he got older, old enough to buy his own shop, he started a business – a bakery in which he made cakes, pastries, chocolates and much more! People would like them sooo much that he started to earn a ton of money. Soon he earned twice as much as his mother would earn. So he told his mother “I will pay you as much as you earn at work if you stay home more often and at other times help me at the bakery. That way we can spend so much time together.” So his mother started staying home and helping out at the bakery, and they spent their days together. As time went by, they upgraded to a larger bakery and theirs were the best treats in the whole city. And then they lived happily ever after!

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the short walk

Abeer had not left his house for four months now because of the disease outside. Finally today he was going out for a walk with his parents because they said it was now OK to go out for a walk. Stepping out after four months the first thing that he noticed was that the sun was brighter. Mumma explained that because all the cars, trains and factories had not been running for so long the air was cleaner and because of that the sun looked brighter. Papa said it was brighter also because Abeer was out in the open after a very long time and his eyes needed to adjust to the brightness again.

They got onto the walking track in front of home and walked till the bakery. To Abeer it felt as if the bakery had moved far away. Papa said it was still exactly where it had been four months back but appeared far because he was walking so much after a long time. Abeer was pretty sure that the road had grown longer and the bakery had moved farther away. At the bakery there was a socially distanced queue which they joined. Abeer got a donut for his good behavior and for walking happily.

When they got back home Abeer washed his hands and feet properly and then they all sat down to enjoy the donuts. It was nice to be able to go out again everything looked like it was all new and beautiful. The birds and squirrels had also seemed very friendly. Hopefully the virus was going to go away for good and school too would reopen soon.

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…Ira the muse

Many a times I’ve felt that Ira inspires me to write quite often with what she says while we’re talking. Earlier today we went for a walk after dropping off Ria at school.

and she walked quite a bit for her age…

This was the start of final exams for Ria, Ira starts on Monday. While walking we spotted a number of exotic birds. Ira though spotted the best find of the day a big plump beautiful kingfisher. We just stood across the tip of the lake and watched for a few minutes… and then Ira said it “it’s like a rainbow on a tree“…. I was very amused such depth of observation coming from a 7year old who we kind of don’t expect much from because Ria is the overbearingly “smart” power house… Kid’s alright she just might make the intellectuals club in the house after all.

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the leave application

Last night Ira asked me to write a leave application for her.

We were all up till late the previous night since the grandparents were coming into town. The kids had been very excited all evening. Initially, the consensus was that only I would go to pick them up at the airport because it was a school night. However, soon as I got ready to leave the girls also got into gear and insisted they too wanted to come to pick them up. So around 10 PM, which incidentally is way past their bedtime, we got out of the house to meet the flight. I sent a message ahead to my dad saying “The never-getting-hailed taxi coming your way” (a reference to a joke about how four guys start a taxi-hailing service but don’t get any customers because two of the men were always sitting up front and two in the back). Somehow we managed to fit the luggage in the boot and get home by 1:30 AM, kids awake and excited chatting 19 to a dozen with dadi and dadu all the time. Even at home, it was a bit of a struggle to get them all, kids and parents, tucked in and signed off for the night before 3:30 AM as they were too excited to listen to reason. As expected neither of the kids woke up at school time ergo the need to write an application.

Here’s what I wrote:

Respected madam,
My daughter Ira was unable to attend school yesterday, 24 September 2019, because she woke up late. She woke up late because she was up until 3 AM. She was up until 3 AM because she was excited about her grandparents’ visit. Usually, we try to avoid late outs on school nights however it does happen once in a while. I assure you this would be an exception and not the norm. Hoping you would agree and grant her leave for the one day that she skipped school.

I handed her the application, she read it and then facepalmed. After a second resurfaced and said, “you can’t write this the principal will get very angry…. ughhh see dadu what he has written”! So dadu took the application from her and read it. He came back with a “yes it is the truth and he has written it correctly. What would you rather prefer? That he make some untruthful excuse? He is stating the fact as it was and giving you a lesson in truthfulness. If anything the principal should be happy about a parent who says what really happened rather than make a false excuse.”…. then he went on to tell us of a similar incident from his life as a Railway officer before retirement.

In his words:

“Sometime in 1981 we bought the scooter. I was posted at Jodhpur at the time. Every day after coming back from office I would load the four of you onto the scooter and then we would all ride down to Umaid Bhawan Palace. People used to ask us why do you go there every day. Well, we just enjoyed the ride on those superlatively smooth roads, sat in the gardens at the palace for 15-20 minutes and then came back. However, a little later I received a transfer to Bikaner. Now Bikaner had pathetic roads. It was totally unusable in comparison to Jodhpur.

After just a few months at Bikaner, I sent a letter to my boss stating in clear language that Bikaner has no good roads and I am not able to take my family out for a ride every evening. You can please consider this as a formal request for transferring me to any part of the country outside of Bikaner. I am even willing to go the North East, which was considered a punishment posting by Railway officers at the time, just move me out of this Godforsaken place. While it is wrong to fret about a posting or refuse one, it is perfectly legitimate to inform your superiors about your exact situation. Who knows they might have a solution. The boss called me in and discussed all the issues I had raised including the bad roads-scooter part. After a discussion, he immediately called up his senior who at that time happened to be the Director Electrical at the Railway Board in New Delhi, Mr Buch. “I usually do not recommend this but there is this officer sitting in front of me who is perfect for RDSO (the Research, Design and Standards Organization, essentially the core of the Indian Railways, the place where all innovation in the Railways comes from) and the surprising thing is that this boy is asking for it (again RDSO meant a lifetime of research something that usually did not sit well with other officers as it did not afford them the fast growth path that the open line did). Mr Buch came back with a single liner “I will interview the bloke send him in”. I agreed to go meet him for his evaluation, not like I had a choice!

On the day, I arrived on time and went in to meet Mr Buch. He grilled me for two full hours emphasising upon the fact that only the best technical minds were ever admitted into the RDSO. Since I had been a thorough scholar throughout my educational life, having come top of the class in any exam that I ever took including the IRSEE, I had zero doubts about my technical abilities. Finally, after satisfying himself in all respects he said “OK I will come back to you in a weeks time”. Promptly at the end of a week, I called him directly “Sir, I am waiting for my orders, you had said it would take a weeks time”. Mr Buch was furious, I came to know that from my boss later. He was shaking with white-hot anger, “How dare a newly minted officer with barely 7 years of experience under his belt (newly minted by Railway standards) call me up directly to ask for a transfer order and that too for the frivolous reason of not liking the roads of Bikaner. Anyway, the orders came two days later.

Now there was another hurdle. The officer who was supposed to take over from me at Bikaner was posted at Delhi. Now officers posted in Delhi are rarely if ever willing to move out of Delhi. He was delaying his move to Bikaner and because of that, I could not relinquish charge at Bikaner to move to RDSO Lucknow. So I travelled to Delhi, knocked on his door and had a word with him. I explained to him about the long and circuitous route I had had to take to get this posting at RDSO and how I was in a fix now because of his delaying act and that he should most certainly come to Bikaner to honour the transfer order and settle in at the place. He agreed somehow and accompanied us (the kids and wife had also come with me to Delhi) in the official saloon to take over at Bikaner (this was a time when even Assistant officers traveled in style with a full retinue of supervisors and cook and helpers in their own saloon which was attached to the train going to wherever they needed to go, a time when the Twitterverse would not go up in flames over the family of a railway officer travelling with him in a saloon while he was on official duty…. a time before Twitterverse existed). On the way, I explained and answered each and every question that this gentleman had about Bikaner. He was very inquisitive and asked a lot of questions, it appeared as if he was convinced that he had Bikaner properly figured out by the time we reached.

So this was how we got out of Bikaner and reached RDSO Lucknow, on the 4th of September 1982, where we spent the next thirteen years of our lives. I learnt an important lesson in life from this experience. The direct and truthful approach is often times the most correct approach rather than beating around the bush and propping up half-truths, making excuses. Ask what you want and then give your all in justifying your choices.

Somehow listening to this story convinced Ira that the leave application I had written was actually OK and if the teacher or Principal had any problem with the application then I and if need be even my dad would go and have a word with them to explain the logic. Essentially, mischief managed!.

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mangoes for breakfast

The cockerel crowed loudly but Raisa and Raina were already up and ready for their morning raid. Outside the house in the courtyard was a huge mango tree loaded with ripe golden yellow mangoes. The girls both ran to the tree with an empty cloth bag. Raina climed up the tree and waited for Raisa to point out the mangoes that looked ripest. “There, to your left” called out Raisa. They worked together to pluck a dozen then walked back home, hand in hand, with their stash.

Back home Raina headed to the bathroom to get ready for school while Raisa headed to the kitchen. Raisa quickly took out the fresh mangoes and after washing them under the tap put them to rest in a large bucket of cold water. She put the coffee in the coffee machine like she had seen mamma do so many times. Then she went to get ready for school as Raina was done. Raina came ot the kitchen and quickly peeled four mangoes and diced them into neat little pieces. Coffee was now ready, black for papa and with just a couple of teaspoons of milk for mamma. Next she peeled two more mangoes and sliced them into slimmer pieces. These went into buttered slices of multigrain bread. By the time Raina returned with the greeting card, that the girls had secretly prepared last night, breakfast was ready and the kitchen looked like it hadn’t even been used, it was spotless. They arranged the breakfast on a tray and went and sat on the dining table enjoying a glass of cold milk with the mango sandwiches that Raisa had prepared.

Mamma and papa finally woke up. As they opened the door of the bedroom they saw the girls sitting peacefully and eating their mango sandwiches. The girls looked up and gave them a disapproving look “how much you guys sleep?! And that too on you wedding anniversary”. Mamma rushed over to hug them both and then papa was also there. “Good morning, I smell coffee and some mischeivious elves” he said before pouncing on all three girls and tickling them all at once. It was a good day and yes mamma and papa were right, waking up early did feel happier.

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the construction of a tale

a midsummer nights dream

Summer vacations began today. The picture above is Ira kicking off her vacation. It’s quite an interesting story actually.

two clouds came out of the blue and crashed into each other one day and made a lot of noise followed by rain. The sun was shining brightly going on his way when he saw these fellows thundering around like loud old uncles. As the sunlight fell on the raindrops a rainbow started to take shape. Ira was walking over to water the trees with a bucket of water in her hand. That's when it started to rain heavily. So she opened up a colorful umbrella. A mynah was perched on the tree and guess what the myanaah too had a smaal wee little umbrella. As she was walking to the tree with the bucket of water a yellow bird flew in from the other side with two snails in her beak. And that's when Ira realized she didn't have to water the plants anymore it was raining already and she started laughing at the silliness. The myna and the yellow bird laughed back.

This narration was completely unassisted, something that came entirely from the kid. Today morning we had been out for a walk with her in a wooded area (you could say a jungle). On the way we saw a mynah (her first interaction at close quarters), we also came across a few dogs. One of the dogs was a bit inquisitive. It picked up a discarded shoe from somewhere and started coming after us (my guess is that’s what got converted to the yellow bird. This walking area is near a park where we often go to and where we have seen a lot of snails during the rainy season. These snails she wanted to see today as well but we explained that the snails are in hibernation. Last year on the first day of rains we had seen a rainbow and explained to the kids how rainbows come about….

essentially kid is observing, processing and then being creative.

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Ira is graduating…

Ira is growing up, moving on from pre-primary to primary today. It was exactly 6 years (and 7 days) back that Ira was born I still remember being more concerned about keeping Ria (the elder one) occupied than anything else, it involved hoisting Ria onto my shoulders and taking her on a trip to the Mad over Donuts in Powai Hiranandani every afternoon and evening while mamma and Ira slept peacefully at the hospital. Ira didn’t mind back then also, she has been an extremely low maintenance, self entertained child from the get go. Much in contrast to Ria who upon being born decided post haste that she needed to now attach herself to her dad and that at all times her dad had to keep walking…. yeah the first couple of nights I had to walk a lot, with her in my arms, good thing that I was an athlete back then and did not feel at all tired even after three nights at the hospital. Ira on the contrary liked being left alone, she has an adventurous explorer streak to her which is very exciting, one would really love to tail her and find out where she goes.

Ira started playgroup at GCH on 19 June 2014. It was a natural choice considering we had had an excellent experience with Ria. Incidentally one of the teachers in play-group had also been Rias teacher earlier. Teachers and support staff couldn’t help but remark on the similarities between the sisters. Well these two are twins born 4 years apart is what I say…. the same amount of pulling out my hair is what I am doing all over again…. not much considering I have a pretty decent head of hair left. Naa they’re angels both of them and as parents we’re blessed. If anything we are the ones learning everyday how to be more generous and patient.

So Ira progressed through pre-primary almost without any incident. It was deja-vu for teachers and staff at GCH. But there are differences as well. The fact that Ira has been more of a fiercely independent person from the get go has meant that we barely noticed when she started teething, got out of diapers, started climbing the stairs of a slider in the playground unassisted, started riding a bicycle without trainer wheels (that was at 3 years of age and we were gob-smacked as were parents of kids twice her age then. She has grown up to be an extremely observant kid who notices the finer details. The school, teachers and the guidance she recieved here has served in a huge way to bring out qualities which to a large extent are missing in her parents, social interacctions. I rarely if ever talk to anyone, have difficulties making and staying friends for more than a little while and rarely if ever join in in social events. Sonali is equally shy and distant from social contact. One of the most remarkable thing that has happened to the kids of such social caterpillars is that the kids have figured out going into the field, making friends, helping other children, sharing oh yes that’s a big one sharing, and in general not being socially awkward. The teachers all along were the most important factor in this metamorphosis. Starting with Dhara, Tejal, Tejasvini maam in playgroup to Shraddha,Anita maam in Nursery to Shalini and Falak maam in Jr KG and finally Soumya and Juliena maam in Sr. KG., each and every one of you wonderful wonderful ladies has left an impact on the personality of Ira. She has grown beautifully thanks to your efforts. There are jobs and then there is teaching, that you all chose to do this and do it with your hearts in the right place is a boon for society in general and for us parents in particular. So yeah take a bow ladies you are wonderful.

Ira loves dancing! Oh the irony. Her dad was born with two left feet, her mom with two more, all four became filled with cement over the years and here we have a child who loves to dance. So much so that she’s actually convinced us to put her in a dance class (the search is on for a technically sound dance class). The encouragement from teachers, and in this respect I would specially mention Julina maam, has been the only reason responsible for this aberration (even Ria is not so much into dancing). An inflexion point in any event is when some drastic change occurs, you could relate to it as an abrupt U-turn while driving but this inflexion point was not as bizarre and disturbing. Julie maam has been the best thing to have happened to Ira so far, I am sure a lot of other children. She gets children and understands who needs what amount of impetus and in which area. I guess much later when Ira is an old lady she would still meet Demira and Lekha and Avika and Royan and Vedansh and everyone else and in variably the conversation would go to “Julie maaaaaaam!!!!”. She’s an iconic lady and I thank her from the bottom of my heart for having given so much to this job. Some people love what they do and Julie maam clearly is having a hell of a lot of fun, I, we are truly appreciative and wish Ira and Ria continue to get such dedicated faculty all along. Going by experience with Ria and Ira I for one am pretty sure they will get the best teachers all along and have the most amazing journey.

Yes there have been instances where I have acted impulsively and shot off mails to the management about some perceived irregularity or laxity however more often than not I have seen the logic after having a discussion with the Principal and teachers about the topic. I guess after 8 years of having seen me and my longish mails the management has also understood that I mean well and in the long run a symbiotic relationship is what really is desirable between parents and school. Let each one do their job the end result is a well rounded personality of the child.

So yes today Ira is graduating and as a proud parent all I can think, like Dory from Finding Nemo, “kid, just keep swimming, you’ve got the best at school you just focus on swimming along ahead”…..