New mom

I had given milk to Prachi to drink.
Prachi: Amma, milk is too hot. You give dad cold milk, but always give me hot milk. You don’t love me. You love only dad.
Me: Ohooo
Prachi: You don’t love me, I know; you love dad.
Me: ok
Prachi: That’s ok. I’ll choose some other mom.
Me: ok
Prachi: I will go to Aditya’s mom.
Me: But then the other day, you saw Aditya’s mom spanking him in the toilet, is that ok with you?
Prachi’s idea to choose new mom is shaken, becomes thoughtful for a while.
Prachi: I’ll go to Seema aunty, Devanshi’s mom.
Me: Seema aunty has Devanshi as her baby plus she has Devanshi’s sister in her belly and when Devanshi’s sister comes out, she’ll be small and she might pee on your lap. If that’s fine please go ahead.
Prachi now abandons any idea to go to someone else’s mom but is nevertheless adamant. She caresses her trousers and then kisses it on the knees.
Prachi: Here onwards this trouser is my mom!

Growing old

I was applying moisturizer to Prachi and accidentally my nails slightly brushed against her thigh and Prachi got angry.
Prachi: Amma, you’ve hurt me. It’s paining.
Me: Oh, come one, that’s ok, no big deal.
Prachi: What come one! Look it’s paining now. I can’t walk. I’ve grown old now and can’t walk any more. I am old lady now and it’s hurting and I can’t walk….You hurt me and I am old, I can’t walk(the cribbing continued for a while and I tried my best not to laugh aloud and upset her further)

Making a mark

This was the first drawing created by Prachi. It is a fan. She drew this on the doorwith a piece of chalk in May 2010(at 1.5 years). As an over enthusiastic mom I captured it and thought my daughter was a budding artist before the age of 2. But alas! This picture was only an amazing coincidence.

Guess what is this? This is the picture of Shoorpanakha of Ramayan. This was done byPrachi in April 2011(at 2.5 years). She imitated the drawing done by her dad as seen on the right.

What is this? This is Incy Wincy Spider drawn by Prachi on her own without help from any one. She drew this in July 2011.

Green with jealousy

Could there be any possibility that a certain doctor doing his PG somewhere in Mysore is hated by a toddler who he has not met or seen or hardly knows is existent? Yes, there is!
This Dr.S is hated by Prachi for the one and only one reason that he was a pal of Prachi’s aunt in his childhood. My sister, Maithri is one person Prachi loves the most. She used to tell from age one, “I am aunty’s baby, not Amma’s(Haanv pacchhi baabu, ammale nayi).” Hence, Prachi is jealous to know that Maithri had a friend with whom she played and had fun. So this S is the baddie in all the stories Prachi constructs and her words go on the lines of “I will eat and become strong and beat S. S will run away without turning back.”

Colourless

Gender equality is a subject that is been discussed everywhere. When compared to India, the west overcame this problem fairly earlier. Women were given equal opportunities for education, employment and men started taking more responsibility in domestic thresholds initially in the west followed by India. While I am shopping for Prachi in the UK, I get a feeling that the gender discrimination is much deep rooted here. Pink stuff for girls and blue stuff for boys, Pink bags, blue waterbottles, pink sandals, blue shoes. Prachi loves blue, but pink is girls’ colour. Where have the vibrant orange, green, yellow and red colours gone? I love the bright colourful Indian scenes where kids, irrespective of boy or girl go out with a multicoloured umbrella, a green pencil box, an orange school bag. I hope the Indian consumer market does not follow on this pink-blue monotony.

Shame

It has been a week since the London riots. As is any person, I was shocked as well. Being an Indian, riots are not new to me. We have had many riots of varying severities in India in the past. But the difference between those and the one that occurred in London was that every riot in the past had a cause; religion related, language related or region related. But this one had none what so ever. It was only a primitive instinct of the species taking over its long evolved civilization. Man looting man with an intention to acquire goods. This could be empathized if it was backed by necessity, but no it was sheer greed. The desire for materialistic stuff had overcome the virtues deep within, if there were any! So much for the consumerism and materialism. Shame.

Story Time

All time of the day is story time for us; a story for breakfast, a story for lunch, a story to drink milk, a story for everything. These are unofficial story times, the official one being at the bed time. The bedtime stories are always nice stories i.e. moral stories or stories from Hindu mythology. Rest of the time the stories could be created by me, or could be incidents from the past. The stories generally have a moral where the virtuous is the final victor and the villain gets punished for his deeds. I have exhausted my large repository of stories and these days make it point to pick up a new story for the night.
Last night I read a story from the Hitopadesha and told her. A blind old vulture takes care of all the little birds in a huge banyan tree when the older ones go in search of food. A vile cat hatches a plan, befriends the vulture and eats up the young ones one by one. After a while the cat goes away. The parent birds suspect the absence of their little ones and on finding the bones decide the vulture to be the culprit. They peck at him and hurt him and throw him away.
But Prachi was not happy with this ending. The vulture was good and the evil cat had to be punished. So, then I added up a little bit from my pocket where the vulture goes and finds the wicked cat and pecks at his eyes and beats him. The cat finally gets lost in the forest and gets eaten up by rhino (This little bit was from Prachi’s pocket).
Generally during the breakfast I repeat her the previous night’s story. Today as I repeated the story she said, “Amma, today whenever I see any bird in the sky, I will scream and tell it that the cat ate its baby and not vulture.”
So much innocence!

For parents who want to venture into story telling, there is a nice series of moral stories called SriRam ‘s Moral story book . The stories are very simple and lots of pictures, good for starters. Even I read these books when I was a kid. I searched for these books in Bangalore and finally ended up buying them for Prachi in Puttur at the same old shop where I was bought these books. Most of the stories in these books are from Aesop’s fables.