Sunday, September 14, 2008

Moral Lessons ke side effects

we teach the kids to be honest and speak truth always
Two weeks back one of my PUC friends visited me and I met him after long time. In fact veena and kids met him the first time. He had come along with his wife and sister & her family to check out an apartment to buy in our complex. Since birth, he has squint in one of his eyes & the eye ball is a little green. I guess it is called noonan syndrome but am not sure (I'm as smart as google search algorithm :-)). I and he were very close friends at one point of time but I had never asked him anything about this defect, thinking it is embarrassing to do so. Nidhi saw him and the first set of questions she asks him are : "ninge kannu kaanalva? kanna mele yaake sticker haakondu idheeya?" Thankfully he took it sportingly and brushed it aside as manufacturing defect.

This one happened a few years back but i still find it hilarious and is probably one of the most embarrassing moments I've been in:
i & veena had taken shreya (my brother's elder daughter) to a fruit stall near home. She was around 2.5 years then. While we were shopping, shreya noticed a very fat man standing next to us and buying fruits. she asked me " chikkappa, avanige dumma andhre baithaana?"
What am I supposed to respond back? if i say "yes, he'll scold you" that negates the moral lesson we teach the kids of speaking truth. If i say no, she would have told him that on the face. Either way that guys would be cheesed off. He already was but didn't know how to respond to the situation. Even i didn't know. I just carried her away from that stall as soon as I could without glancing at that person.

we teach kids to have ambitions in life
yesterday I gave neha examples of people in different professions (like teacher, engineer, doctor, bus driver, athlete...) and asked her what she'd like to be when she grows up. She responded "I'll become a mother". Now I was happy but thought it is a pretty modest goal to have in life (mind you it is the most challenging job once you get it but modest to aim for, i think). But then again, I was happy cos the job a mother does is what appealed to neha the most over others. This is recognition of some of the hard choices veena took after kids were born (to quit a good software career and become a home maker)

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