Friday, June 8, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Friday, May 4, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
As a boyfriend-starved college student, I knew one thing for a fact: the dreary Sahara desert of my lovelife was made more wretched by the fact that I had been to all-girls’ school. Boys were like exotic, strange creatures to us. We only met them inside the pages of books. In college, where they appeared in human form, we had no idea what to say to them.
While the co-educated girls seemed to make male friends easily, our little gang of girls-schooled late-bloomers found ourselves in fairly splendid isolation. We weren’t sad about it, of course, but we did conclude eventually that all-girls’ and all-boys’ schools were the earthly representations of hell. It was weird, because unlike the co-ed girls, we were actually very uninhibited, we laughed loudly, talked a lot; were witty, uncensored and hilarious. What we were not able to do was have normal, relaxed friendships with boys. We swayed from being arch and flirtatious to completely stern and reproving.
My little girl goes to a mixed-sex or a co-ed school. One day, in Senior KG, she came home and told me that a boy had put his head on her lap and kissed her. Images flashed through my mind: Silsila. Rekha’s head on Amitabh’s lap. Mist. Flowers touching. Bees buzzing. Major coochie-cooing. I sat up with a start and asked my husband if I should go talk to the teacher about this Emraan-Hashmi-in-the-making. ‘No!’ replied the co-ed schooled man, ‘You’ll just traumatize the poor boy!’
Feeling traumatized myself I remembered my mother’s utter terror of co-eds and her dire warnings against sending her grand-daughter to one. Mom went to a convent school and then studied engineering while staying in a girls’ hostel run by nuns. The Mother Superior there often warned them with these wise – and rather poetic – words: ‘Whether a thorn falls on a grape, or a grape falls on a thorn, the grape is the one that gets hurt. So STAY AWAY from college boys.’ The story usually sent me into peals of laughter, but that day the thought of soft fruits and sharp objects terrified me.
Post that, there have been no romantic overtures so far and we have reached Class 2 without any major hysterics. But I’m slowly beginning to wonder if mixed-sex education is the solution to the world’s ills that I had imagined it to be.
Studies show that co-education makes children conform to gender stereotypes – in the UK, for instance, girls in same-sex schools did better in Maths and Science, just as boys in same-sex schools did better in Languages. I personally feel that same-sex schools allow you to grow up without being sexualized too early.
We live in fairly frenzied times. The films and adverts our kids see are full of highly sexualized images of picture-perfect girls and women. Even on children’s channels, ads talk about milky, age-defying skin and tangle-free hair. I fear that when you grow up in a co-ed, there’s going to be the added peer pressure of always appearing attractive to the opposite sex. Can you be yourself, gender-unstereotyped and perhaps un-cool?
In my kid’s class, the boys won’t play with girls, because they are girls. And some girls giggle about who ‘loves’ whom. Er, I thought co-eds made you rise above all that crap? Once when my daughter was cribbing about her boy classmate hitting her, I told her I went to a school with no boys in it. Her eyes widened. ‘Reallllly??’ she squealed, ‘But WHY?’ Umm. Just. Then I asked if she’d like to go to a school with only girls. Wouldn’t it be nice? No, she shook her head vehemently. ‘Boys are fun. Only girls would be boring.’
Interestingly, many studies show that overall children in co-eds are under a lot less stress than their counterparts in same-sex schools. That must count for the ‘fun’ bit. I know what I ‘m going to do though. I’m going to sit in a corner and hold my breath till kid finishes her ‘co-education’.
Wake me up when it’s all over, dude.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Rules for kids – and moms and dads too!
My mother is the undisputed queen of the no-rules style of parenting (which I mentioned in my last column). With her, it wasn’t so much a conscious parenting decision as an inherent personality thing. She has tremendous faith in human beings. And honestly feels that given a decent home, nice role models, and lots of love, kids will behave themselves and grow up into perfectly proper, successful adults. You never ever need to shout at them or discipline them. They just know what is right and will do all it takes to keep their parents happy. Needless to say, my mum’s sense of filial duty runs deep enough to reach the earth’s core. Mine barely reaches the floor below my bed.
Mum’s approach to parenting emerges from her personal beliefs. Be fair to employees, be super-generous and loving to your children, your relatives, and they’ll all be fair and kind back to you. I can now safely say that everyone in my mum’s life – from her employees and maids, to a few of her relatives and certainly both her kids – has worked hard to prove her entirely wrong.
So when it comes to parenting, I go with the lay-down-some-rules school of thought – for us and our kids. But like most parents today I find it hard to do actually lay down the rules. Unlike parents before us, we are – I suspect – a bit insecure about our love. We are richer, busier and more distracted by shopping, social networks and personal gadgets. That’s probably why we are constantly searching for ways to prove to our kids that we love them.
We tend to overcompensate, over-stimulate, over-school the child, while indulging their every whim, and refusing to give them reality checks. I know of parents who work 12-hour-days and return to sleeping kids, only to rush them to malls on weekends and go mad buying clothes and toys. Going to the park and tossing a ball seem so uncool somehow.
In another form of over-compensation, helicoptering mums rush their kids from class to class, trying to channel their own ambitions into their offspring. This parental greed often needs a little bribery. My daughter’s friend has figured out that every time he is selected for an extra-curricular activity, his delighted mum will hand him stuff ranging from money for a treat to an iPad. And then her anxiety starts: ‘What if he is dropped because he doesn’t practice?’ He’s six, and willful, and refuses to practice at home. Crisis! More prizes, gifts and punishments are dangled over his head because – interested or not – succeed he must. After all, it’s mom-vs-mom, and the kids are canon fodder. Sadly, by giving him these ‘rewards’, she’s actually depriving her kid of the joy of taking part simply for the love of it.
Last week, a mum asked me my favourite question (and if you’ve been following this column, you’ll get the joke): ‘My child doesn’t read; what to do?’ I replied carefully, in words of two syllables each, explaining the hows and whys of reading and developing an interest in it in children. At the end of half an hour, with me telling the lady all about literacy techniques and the need to patiently read to children, her eyes had glazed over.
I stopped speaking for a bit and waited. I knew what would follow. ‘So… Do you take classes for this?’ No, I said, I don’t, because it’s important that parents read to their kids. She smiles suddenly – inspiration has struck, no doubt. ‘Do you know of anyone – say a college student – who could come home and read to my kid?’ Since I didn’t, the conversation winds up with smiles and pointless thanks.
Being a parent is hard work. Being a half-way decent parent – someone who gives their child a grounded upbringing, doesn’t pressure them, and is kind and yet firm with them – is harder still.
Here’s hoping most of us make the cut!
Friday, September 30, 2011
Forgive us our sins!
As a parent, there’s just one thing I’m totally certain of: no matter what you do, you’re wrong. You’re either too strict, or too lenient, or too nice or too nasty, too loving or too emotionally reserved. There’s more good news: you’ll only realize the complete error of your ways about 15 years from now, when you look back with hindsight, and see all the things you did that you shouldn’t have. Don’t ask me to prove this – I just know it the way a flower knows when to bloom, or the way we know that every year, come monsoon, Mumbai’s roads will feel like the surface of the moon.
You always start off with the hope of becoming your ideal of the best-ever parent – the best-pal parent, the pushiest parent, the most-free-spirited parent, etc. I aspired to be a combination of the parents I had plus the sort of parents I wished I had. After seven years of trying, I can freely admit to absolute, humbling failure. I had a wonderful role model in my mother, but turns out I’ve all her few faults and none of her virtues.
One of the things I know I’d love to give my child is the sense of freedom that my mum instinctively gave me. The feeling of total acceptance was the best thing about growing up in my family. I don’t remember mum ever laying down the rules or yelling at us (though her mother – my grandmum – more than made up for that).
But growing up with very few rules unfortunately leaves you unequipped for the harsher realities of life and work. So my totally inspired and unique plan was to raise my child with all the love and freedom my mum gave, plus a sense of discipline.
It didn’t quite work out. Turns out that I have my grandmother’s hissy tongue and temper, and her need for discipline, plus my own inherent laziness and indiscipline. And while I refuse to push my kid hard to succeed, I don’t have my mum’s true sense of laissez-faire either. I do however have her high levels of maternal anxiety. As Himmesh Reshammiya once said: It’s Complicated.
As parents are we very different from our own? I think we spoil our kids more – we are wealthier, busier, and it’s easier to buy toys than to give kids time. In 15 or 20 years this will come back and bite us on our butts for sure. Our parents were also a lot more secure about their feelings for us. Whether they were beating us up or spoiling us silly, they did it with the firm conviction that they knew what was right. Or maybe it just seems that way now. Perhaps each generation of parents has to re-learn the skills of passing on the rules of living.
Sometimes parents succeed and raise happy, well-adjusted people, and sometimes, they fail. I remember reading Philip Larkin’s (1922-1985) poem This Be the Verse, and going saucer-eyed at the eff word in it. I didn’t really get it then. Now, with a little more perspective on what it is like to be both a parent and a child, I do.
In three very tight stanzas, Larkin spells out his bitterness:
They **** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
The poem becomes kinder towards parents in the second stanza – after all, he writes, they were screwed up by their parents too. The solution? Stop having kids and deepening the ‘coastal shelf’ of misery. It doesn’t work, of course, because nature’s urge to multiply is stronger than good poetry!
Sometimes I think the greatest lesson we can teach our children is how to be kind – so that when they grow up, they can look back at our mistakes with a large measure of forgiveness!
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
The Big Fat Indian Birthday
In the six-odd years that I have been chaperoning my kid to birthday parties, I’ve figured that party-wise, there are broadly two kinds of city parents: those who work on their kids’ birthday parties with the same determination that soldier-ants take to gathering food, and those who, like the grasshopper in the folktale, simply outsource the stress.
The soldier-ant-type of parent (mostly the mother) frets, plans and slogs for the birthday party, tearing out her hair and getting irritable bowel syndrome on the evening before. Fathers are usually assistant-sloggers, perfect for random running around and sacrificing their pollution-weakened lungs to blow clusters of balloons.
The grasshopper-type parent, meanwhile, hands it all over to a new breed of professional – the event manager. Mum and dad make a few phone calls, sign a few cheques, and go for a film or a pedicure. The event manager will take care of everything from food and ‘games’ to ‘décor’ and return gifts.
It’s weird, but both grasshoppers and soldier-ants take distinct pride in their ‘different’ parties. Stoically, the soldiers flaunt their small, home-made (everything from invites to the food and entertainment), parent-driven parties. The grasshoppers meanwhile take pride in the fact that their kids’ birthdays are large-scale, ‘exciting’ and more importantly, managed by the hired help. I’d like to state here that I’m a soldier-ant-mum, and I have my husband’s fatigued lungs to prove it.
Growing up in the ’70s, for us a birthday party meant paper plates, chips, a sandwich and a piece of lurid Mongini’s cake (unless your mum could bake). It meant money in an envelope which was pressed into the birthday kid’s hand, and went straight to his mum or dad. And it meant some noise, some Rasna, and ok-tata-bye-bye. It was held once every two or three years, when your folks felt they could afford a small do, and that you deserved a treat.
Welcome to the Noughties, to post-globalized India, where if it doesn’t hurt the wallet, it’s not just worth it. These days, even toddlers’ birthday parties are event managed, catered affairs, where excess is everything. Mummies making kids pass the parcel are actually a dying breed now – though the soldier-ants among us do try to hold on to this tradition desperately.
I’m quite an old birthday-party hand now, thanks to the kid. Five parties out of the ten we attend have one or more of the following:
- a bouncy castle which teeters close to the sky and looks downright scary
- glittery, eco-unfriendly, thermocol ‘princess’ banners featuring sundry Disney Princess/Spiderman/Ben 10 which are supposed to define the party’s theme
- a young college-student-type who speaks with a weird accent straight out of an Andheri East call centre as the Master of Ceremonies – my daughter calls this person ‘the manager’
- rehearsed performances by the birthday kid’s older sisters/cousins, featuring highly-sexualized Bollywood numbers – you cringe, but since the parents look at you like their child just ended world hunger, you nod and say, ‘Verrrry nice…’
- a magic show (with frightened animals) + a tattoo artist + a caricaturist + a hair braider-and-colourer (sprays horrible chemical colours on your child’s head, but never mind)
Overall, it’s meant to feel like a carnival, a mindless motion of money and ‘enjoyment’ so that the birthday kid, her friends and their parents know exactly how much the hosts can spend. After the kids have run through the counters, it’s time for the ‘games’, sundry toe-curl-inducing competitions. Like ‘pick the dad with the biggest paunch’ or asking the father of the birthday kid to choose the best dancer among the assembled mummies. Sometimes the ‘manager’ makes the kids dance competitively, handing out prizes to 13-year-olds who shake it like Sheila.
At the party of a 4-year-old boy I attended, after professional clowns had romped on the stage and left, we were in for a hitherto unknown treat (the ‘clown item’ was new, but what followed made it seem common-place). The MC invited the headmaster of the child’s playschool to come up and ‘say a few words about the birthday boy’. Huh? The guests’ jaws dropped in unison. Listening to a speech in praise of someone who has just about stepped out of diapers was a mildly surreal experience.
Return gifts are serious business these days and can make or break a mum’s street cred. The event-managed do’s have piles of Disney bags, folders, water-bottles, tiffin-boxes and melamine-laced plates-and-spoon-sets. It comes as no surprise that every party has the same caboodle of plastic crap, made, no doubt, in the dark by-lanes of Shenzhen, China. And brought to you via Crawford Market.
In a perfect world, a birthday party would mean experiencing something new and life-changing. Learning about fish or butterflies, a trip to a farm, a nature walk or a fun session at the museum, or a craft activity at home. So that everyone, adults and kids alike, could celebrate the milestone in a memorable way. Till that happens, let’s at least work towards less wasteful, more conscious and aware birthday parties. It’s a dirty job, but some-mum’s got to do it!