to be a good teacher, be a good student first

Life comes full circle - quote by Tracey Gold

The circle in one particular instance seemed small & hence boomeranged back on me pretty soon.

To avoid nidhi & neha from getting confused about the way people should dress, we taught them that it is bad to dress skimpily and since then we discouraged them to watch photos in the magazines where models are dressed rather inappropriately in advertisements. They seemed to have watched a few photos and deciphered that if a girl is showing her umbilicus (that means navel button :-)), then that is bad and should not be seen.

This lesson we taught them hit me back hard when one day I came back home from work and was watching TV. I was surfing around when one channel was play dhoom-2 song "crazy kiya re...". I just got my fingers off the channel button on remote and was beginning to enjoy the song when nidhi barged into the living room, saw the TV and said - "ಥೂ! change ಮಾಡಪ್ಪ ಅವಳ ಹೊಕ್ಕಳು ಕಾಣುತಾ ಇದೆ.

("thu change madappa, avala hokkalu kaantha idhe")

Cricket is the safest thing to watch on TV, for me these days. The other one is the aastha channel. Thankfully I've not grown that old in life yet to dig into that.

Another joke around death

kannada films (even telugu & tamil ones AFAIK) seem to glorify death & scenes following one. I dont know who likes to watch the gory details when there is a death in hero's family. But film makers seem to use precious reel time showing each step in detail. They show everything from covering the dead body's face with the white cloth to hero getting a mundan!

This was the root cause for another joke on death by kids the other day. They obviously have seen a few such scenes on TV & have a fair understanding on what is death.
I happened to overhear one of the conversations they had in the balcony with kriti (their friend): "why do they put cotton in dead man's nose?"
I think it was nidhi who responded to that question - "so that he does not become alive again"

Cute Pic

I clicked this snap today morning when the kids were waiting for their van.

The camera on my cell phone works well only in outdoors, so I end up clicking snaps of my kids when we are waiting for their van. The van is supposed to come to the back gate of our apartment by 9:45 am but usually comes around 10:00 am. So everyday, kids either bring along a story book or magic pot or a toy down there to read/play till the van comes. We sit on the stairs of D block of our apartment complex & wait for the red maruti van to appear.


Today it was the turn of hanuman mask to be picked up. nidhi must have watched the baby hanuman dvd about 60 times now & neha about 40+ times. we've had that dvd for about an year now. Couple of months back, they were mightily thrilled when i bought them the hanuman mask that i found at landmark in forum. There was only one left in the shop when I wanted two. There were quite a few hanuman tails left though in the shop :-) the toy company seems to have had mixed success with their ploy of selling hanuman goodies. the tail was a buckle belt to tie around the waist & a long tail with black threads at the end (to simulate hairs). Even i did not like the tail as it was pretty bulky for kids to wear & run around. The mask though is cute & at 40 rupees or so, was a pretty good deal.

Since they got only one mask, we had asked them to share it & not fight over it. Of late we are buying them only one toy (& not a pair) deliberately so that they understand the concept of sharing things.

They were time sharing the mask since they got ready for school today morning. nidhi was wearing it at home when veena was dressing her up & putting her shoes while neha got to wear it down there.


it is kind of interesting that nidhi & neha (wearing a hanuman mask) were waiting for a maruti van that is driven by jairam uncle :-)

Neha's First Art Work

this is the first art work of neha that is in some recognisable form!

she & nidhi scribble around a lot on any given blank paper these days. they have picked this fascination to draw & color things since the last 5 months. the time kind of co-incides with the time they started going to school. i don't know if there is a serious connection between the two but it is quite intriguing to watch what they write on a piece of paper these days. On a happier parenting note, since they keep themselves busy with drawing & coloring, me & veena get some time to chat or watch TV or just do our own stuff.

Phew! after 3.5 years of parenting, we get time to do things we were always doing before the kids were born :-)

Anyways, back to the drawing, I found this art work fascinating for the following aspects:

# as i said before, this is the first art work that I can recognise & enjoy. the kids make a lot of abstract art work and enjoy & derive meaning out of them. sadly i cannot connect with them many times.

kids brain are supposed to be the most complex & creative cos their brain is not ruled or maligned by the rules of this world yet. a good puzzle you can crack when you are a parent is to ask your kid what she drew & then try to decipher it yourself :-)

# she described the drawing as a "cute girl holding a balloon".

Let us dissect this sentence

"cute girl" - the girl looked more creepy to me than cute - huge eyes, nose starting from the top of her forehead, hair all round her face (like a primate). you might say I'm being cruel on this innocent art piece. my point is not to be critical. my point is neha finds a creepy looking thing cute. their definition of beauty is so unspoilt & that is what i like.

"holding a balloon" - on closer observation of the girl's hand (the hand itself is an interesting piece of work, more on that down), neha has written a balloon and then has shaded it hard & dark

# the girl's hands look more like in a posture of comfort where she is resting her head on her palms. the hands hence look like a cloth hanger round the shoulders & one of them is holding the balloon.

# observe the feet. neha has written a line & a circle. don't know how to decipher that but its very interesting.

# the biggest reason that i wanted to put this drawing on this blog is the girl's face resembles in a small manner to neha's face. I've attached neha's snap. the girl has a wide mouth so does neha. the girl has a squarish kind of face, so does neha. i find this amazing.

# FYI i sometimes call neha ಬೊಚ್ಚು ಬಾಯಿ ಸುಂದರಿ :-) *

* - bocchu baayi sundari (wide mouthed beauty)

Baby Names

We did the naming ceremony of neha & nidhi on June 7th 2004 (their 3rd month in this world)
Life was hectic as hell since they were born. a few hours of continuous sleep was a dream, kids waking up at every hour of the day & night, me balancing work & life on a tight rope, doctor visits to get the vaccine shots...
In midst of all this was arranging the logistics for the naming ceremony function & more importantly spending time to choose the names. I did spend considerable time on the web searching for names.

I've seen people people spending lot of time picking name for one kid. We had a little bigger problem than that. We had to shortlist names in pairs, & chose two names that we like, that seem linked in some manner & then decide whom to give which name :-)

Apart from web, i referred to maneka gandhi's book on Indian names (borrowed from agarwal)
We ended up with a bunch of names & name pairs that we considered for a while. Here are some of them:

aadhya, ananya
ananya, anagha
siya
shravanthi
shraddha
chaitra
siri, nidhi
neha, nidhi
snigdha
neethi, nidhi
neethi, niyathi

these are the ones that I remember now. I'll add more if they pop up in my mind later or veena remembers more names that we considered.

there were suggestions & influences from everyone in the family but I & veena were the deciding authority. it is a fun exercise to find names for kids.

aadhya, ananya was the closest competitor to the final winner - neha, nidhi
ananya was a favourite name with everyone but the name was already too common by then. We had heard of too many ananyas' by then. it fell off the list for that reason & the fact that it had 3 syllables in it. We were avoiding names with more than 2 syllables cos people invariably create a 2 syllable nick name for such a name. I liked aadhya for a while but others felt it was too new & so revolutionary.

siya was deepa's suggestion. i thought it was a cute name but veena did not like it much and also we could not find another name to go with it.

shravanti was my favourite though it was breaking the syllable rule. i found it mystic & cool. it was probably the name princesses used to have. the other reason i liked it was cos it was associated with my hunch that we'll have two girls. We got to know that we'll have twins in the second month of veena's pregnancy. I still remember the grin on veena's face coming out of the scanning room and she was fluttering her index & middle fingers to tell me from far that we'll have twins. I of course did not understand her sign till she came near me and exploded "we'll have twins". Since that day i had a hunch that it'll be two girls. the hunch was more a hope also as I could not fathom dealing with twin boys. That was based on the assumption that as kids, girls are more manageable than boys. nidhi has of course disproved that assumption convincingly now. anyway that is a different story.

So i had a strong feeling that it is two girls and hence used to talk to them & refer to them as "ananya & shravanti". i used to call nidhi as ananya & neha as shravanti. As we had rejected ananya & i did not find a nice pair for shravanti & veena did not like that name as much as I did, we dropped shravanti.

shraddha is a nice name and the biggest problem with that is it sounds very similar to a bad or depressing word in Kannada (& probably Sanskrit) "shraaddha" which means death ceremony.
I don't know why languages can be so cruel.

chaitra did not gather enough momentum & did not get a pair to be a serious contender.

siri was amma's choice. I liked it cos it obeyed the syllable rule. I did not like to pair siri & nidhi though cos both mean the same thing (treasure) & the names somehow did not sound similar or connected (apart from meaning). By this time nidhi was a clear favourite & we were looking at names to pair with nidhi.

snigdha sounded cool one day & seemed like a tongue twister from second day onwards.

neethi was the pair proposed by veena for nidhi but i did not like it much. no apparent reason but just didn't like.

niyathi was a nice name & was dropped cos neethi did not make it to the shortlist.

we finally zeroed in upon neha & nidhi. neha means love & nidhi means treasure. these two names passed all our criteria.
# they passed the syllable rule,
# they have nice meanings,
# the kids were born on a Friday & my mom wanted some linkage to Lakshmi's name - nidhi met that criteria,
# they go well together,
# neha was veena's choice & nidhi was mine so each of us were feeling good about the names

And how did we decide to give the names to the two kids - good old alphabetical rule.
first kid got neha & second one got nidhi.

Parents Wish List

Before you become a parent, you usually make up your mind thinking I'll not impose my wishes on my kid and not expect them to achieve what i didn't. Once you become a parent, you usually change that thinking and start building expectations around your kids.

I've been lucky so far cos I have not weaved any major goals for my kids. they are still 3 years old :-)

One thing i plan to teach my kids though is swimming. When i say teach, i mean through some trainer obviously and not myself. There isn't that possibility cos I've learnt very little swimming. I did not swim till i was 32 years old and then I went to learn. I can float a while & do a few strokes before i get tired or I'm conscious of moving towards deep end and stop. that's about all i do in the pool. The difference between me & a non-swimmer is that if both of us are thrown off a boat, I'll die probably 10 seconds after the non-swimmer dies.

Anyways, the bubble of my kids learning swimming almost burst the other day (in nidhi's case) when I splashed a little water on her face while giving her a bath and she screamed frantically ಅಯ್ಯೋ ಅಪ್ಪ... ನಾನು ಮುಳಗಿ ಹೋಗ್ತಾ ಇದ್ಹೀನಿ

Deepavali this year

I was pleasently surprised by the courage neha & nidhi showed this deepavali to burst crackers (with help from me or kumara or vatsa). I remember last year they were petrified by the sounds of crackers and didn't enjoy even the harmless "sussur batthis". The fact that we were living in hanumanthanagar and those narrow roads (& hence more echo) probably was a reason.

this year i bought mostly the fancy crackers & none of the noise making ones. Neha was again the more adventurous one and started bursting crackers first. nidhi was again all hyper, running as close to the cracker once and running as far away the next second. peer pressure took her over a little later as she saw shreya, saurav, megha & more importantly neha bursting crackers. she joined the gang too. only shravya was left watching from a distance. maybe only this year. she should be up there with others next year.

they were still scared of the "sussur bhatthis". the stars that emanate burn their skins :-)

Pronunciations

Some of the pronunciations the kids had as they learnt talking:

neha would use "tha" for "ka". That was the root cause of a lot of fun during her second year I would make her say karnataka, karkala, current and she would go tharnathatha, thaarthala, tharrent

hickory dickory dock, mouse ran up the clock
hithory dithory doth, mouth enath tha naath

even today, I ask nidhi to say the address of our house and she goes uttarahalli main door (instead of road)

when the kids were about two years old or so, we took them to wonder la, the water park near bidadi (its really good). It was us + seena's family + vatsa's family that went there. nidhi got scared and did not try most of the rides. she created enough tantrums to ensure that I didnt get enough rides either. neha sat next to vinitha in one of the rides that looked like a ant hill & a train going through it. She was pretty excited about that particular ride (cos she sat in that without any adult next to her & we praised her for that) and whenever somebody would ask her about wonderla, she would say "initha attha pattha thoothondu iddhe" (vinitha akka pakka koothkond iddhe)