Twin Joy

neha learns a new word

2010-07-02T22:46:00.003+05:30

Neha: appa, anusha was doing ship leader yesterday at school and asked me to wear the collar button
Me: She was doing what?
Neha: [gathers thoughts for a while and says] she was doing leadership appa, she was checking shoes, nails and uniform

Few Firsts

2010-06-21T21:43:00.007+05:30

Firstly, the kids are in first standard now :-)

Notice the label on this post, kids are into their seventh year now. You would have noticed the new clothes to this blog for that reason.

Kids now have longer school hours and so more grind. They have new uniforms - blue pinafore and white shirt for 4 days a week and all whites on Wednesday

Nidhi had her first tooth fall. She was mighty thrilled about this event. Couple of her friends at apartment and several at school had started shedding their milk teeth a while back so there was enough peer pressure built up for this.

Last Sunday was the first fathers' day that I got wished by daughters. They made cute greeting cards and kept them by my bed before I woke up. That was cute.

Neha & Nidhi have their first pets now. A full blown aquarium with 3 mighty gold fishes and several gourami fishes to tag along. Thanks a ton sham & geetha for giving this.

Nursery Ends

2010-04-03T16:09:00.003+05:30

Kids graduated to "standard" class yesterday when they got promoted to first std.
Photos of kids in their nursery uniform. First one taken on the last day of school .
Second one taken 3 years back.

Can I turn back the clock?

musings

2010-03-22T15:08:00.003+05:30

it feels odd to listen to a 6 year old singing "give me some sunshine, give me some rain, give me another chance to grow up once again". Especially when you are her parent.

I & my brother's 5 year old daughter usually tease each other like this, "me: neenu tomato" "she: neenu carrot" "me: neenu potato" "she: neenu kumbal kaayi"
On Ugadi day, she had prepared greeting cards for neha & nidhi but not for me. I asked her where my greeting is. She said "ai, ninge avathe anniversaryge kot idhe". I replied you could have done one more today and said "neenu conjuice", she retorted "neenu lemon juice!"

veena was resting on the swing and neha & nidhi started circling around. Veena said you shouldn't circle people around. kids wanted to know why. she said when people die, we need to circle them and not when they are alive.
nidhi : so why do we circle the chairs in musical chair game?
veena : chairs are not living things, so its okay.
neha : why do we circle god in temples, isn't god living thing then?

kids are studying for their exams and one of the questions they practice is "name any two animals that give milk" nidhi says goat & cow. We felt odd that she thought of goat first, for this question. Then she asks 'why cant I write giraffe or donkey as well'? Technically she is correct, the question should have been "name two animals that give milk that humans dare to drink".

Trin Trin - the cycles are here!

2009-11-30T13:04:00.009+05:30

The last 3 weeks have been exciting for us while the kids scaled a new peak in terms of how much they wait to get something. Every morning when they wake up, the first words they speak are"there are only x days remaining now to get the cycle". Both have been extra nice to me the last few weeks and I have been showered with above average number of hugs & kisses from them. Usually when there is a discussion in the house, the kids typically side Veena since I'm the only boy in the house. That has changed in the last 3 weeks as well.

While the diligent Neha waited by counting the pending days in a sheet & ticking them (and even signing against them :-)) for the last few days, the dreamer nidhi chose to put her vision on a piece of paper. Check out the snaps below.

After their long wait, they got their cycles last Saturday. Nidhi chose a pink one while Neha picked a red one. Over the weekend, they probably have clocked about 7 or 8 hours riding them. Nidhi, as promised, gave rides to her friends and even shared with them. Neha too shared the cycle with their best friend Kruthi. Kruthi was the proud owner of a small cycle all these days that neha & nidhi would beg her for a ride unsuccessfully. She swelled with sorrow on seeing that everyone has a cycle that is bigger than hers. She wept and convinced her parents to get her a new one next week. Now a similar story will unfold in the neighbors' house

Road to Cycle

2009-11-02T19:48:00.006+05:30

Two months back, after growing taller consistently for a while, kids got tired of their three wheel cycles. They were embarrassed as well to take it down and pedal in front of their friends. The desire for a regular cycle grew in them. The desire turned into a need when most of their friends in the apartment bought cycles. They started demanding for one each. They were very clear about not sharing a single cycle between them since the outset.

For a year now, I had been collecting coins in a mud "hundi" (bought in kadlekayi parshe). The idea was to help kids learn the value of saving. I had been putting coins in there mostly myself till this time. I thought this was a good time to teach them again, to save. I told that it'll cost about 6000 rupees for two cycles and so if both start putting coins into the hundi, it'll be full by their next birthday (April) and I'll buy them then. They argued and bargained on an earlier date and so December holidays was fixed as the time.

The last two months, they have been scrounging for coins everywhere. My bag pockets after I return home, dakshina given with kosambari in ganesha and dasara festivals... They would pocket the coins I leave as tips in a restaurant and tell me to put a note instead. They managed to fill the pot about 3/4ths till last Saturday. Then their patience ran out and they were pretty desperate to know how much has been collected so far. I was empathetic to their situation and we together broke the hundi and counted all the coins. It added upto 1700. I told kids that I'll put the remaining money and buy them the cycles in December. They bargained with me again and pulled in the date to 1st December. Now the count down has started 29 days, 28 days...

They have new found energy about the cycles now. Neha wants me to get the cycle over the night and surprise her on 1st when she wakes up. Nidhi, being the DVS Karna* that she is, is already promising free rides on her cycle to her friends.

* DVS Karna = Dhana Veera Shura Karna

gems

2009-10-23T16:07:00.008+05:30

I'll try to recollect some incidents in my life as a parent that have stood out for being hilarious or innocent or thought provoking. I'll build this post in the next few days as and when I remember the incidents:

incident #1

This happened about 3 years back. Veena loves the song from "amrutha varshini" and used to play this often:

"ತುಂತುರು ಅಲ್ಲಿ ನೀರ ಹಾಡು ಕಂಪನ ಇಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರೀತಿ ಹಾಡು

ಹಗಲಿರಲಿ ಇರುಳಿರಲಿ ನೀನರದೆ ಹೇಗಿರಲಿ

Couple of days of hearing and nidhi was humming the mukda well till the second line.

Cute gunda nidhi would say "ಹಗಲಿರಲಿ, ಈರುಳ್ಳಿ ಈರುಳ್ಳಿ..."

incident #2

we had to send something by post. Neha showed the letter box for our flat in the apartment and said why don't you put it here. The postman who comes to drop letters there can pick those as well. I wonder why that cant happen.

incident #3

This one is more for record keeping. This year in school, focus is on building the vocabulary. Teacher gives them a dictation test every Monday. Kids were doing pretty well till this week. They had their first failure scoring 1/8 and 2/8. I just found it cute that both did badly in the same week.

incident #4

This one happened yesterday. kids are learning tables at school. I'm not sure if they understand the concept of multiplication but are enthusiastically mugging up and know till "five one za".

neha observed the tables for 11 in the book and saw that it is an easy pattern to remember and mugged it up silently. She went to veena to showcase her learning. She recited the entire table correctly and closed it with "Eleven ten za Eleventy".

pic

2009-10-11T19:15:00.002+05:30

An artist's impression of neha & nidhi, on our visit to that amazing place - chitra kala parishat

anagram and word game

2009-10-03T16:45:00.004+05:30

When I came back from work last Tuesday, nidhi was super excited to tell me about the discovery she had made that afternoon. She shouted "appa" and then said "wait", ran to her room and got her hindi words book, showed the cover and said "look, there is a nidhi in hindi". Till that time, I or Veena hadn't thought of this anagram. After she showed, it seemed to be sitting there fairly obviously, always.

This left neha morose and needing attention. So we started looking for words that contain letters to make a neha. We stopped at elephant and were able to spin out the following words - neha, ant, pant, hat, at, an, plant, pet, net...

last few days kids are on a reading spree, looking at boards, newspapers, magazines, plastic covers, bags for words that would contain their names, either jumbled up or within.

conversation on death

2009-10-03T16:05:00.004+05:30

Two days back, we visited kids' doddajji at mysore. (great granny) She is recovering from a heart attack. we had told the kids that she had high fever and since she was weak, had been admitted to the hospital. When the nurse got doddajji out for her stroll on the wheel chair, nidhi burst out crying. She was shocked to see her condition - weak and on a wheel chair and wearing a hospital gown. She asked "appa, doddavarge jwara bandhre ee thara aagthara?" After granny was taken back to the ICU, kids had a conversation with me that was tough and hilarious at the end:

nidhi: appa, why hasn't her husband come to see her?

me: kandha, dodda thatha died 3 years back.

nidhi: why did he die?

me: cos he was 100 years old and weak and he died. everyone has to die when they are old

(he died when was around 80, 100 is the age that kids have in picture when they think of death. so I didn't want to change that image; there isn't much now use in changing either. the sense of time they have now is that they can make out what day after tomorrow is; not beyond that; weeks, months, years are terms they use without understanding much)

nidhi: what happened to him after dying? did he become a star?

me: yes, god takes his life from his body and converts that to a star

(effect of watching mythological movies that they think people become stars after dying)

nidhi: which star is he now? show me?

me: god doesn't tell us which star is who, so we cant make out.

neha: how does god pull out the life from body? he would be wearing a shirt right?

me: god has powers to do that kandha

They seemed satisfied and remained silent for a while. I was feeling relieved. After a couple of minutes, Neha tried to start some other conversation, "appa, when I'm in tenth standard.."

Before she completed her query, Nidhi stopped her

"hey bide, appa aavaga star aagirthaare"

Uh, umm...

2009-07-27T13:13:00.005+05:30

That has been the expression on our locked up mouths of late. The kids have shocked us with their responses in conversations on varied topics. Here are some:

veena: neha, hogi toys yethidu, room clean maadu

neha: thumba rough aagi maatadhtheeyamma neenu

veena: uh, umm..

Kids insisted that veena feed them their lunch

veena: nimge istu vayasaithu neeve thinko beku

neha: ahaha neenu mathra thinniskolalva?

veena: naan yelli thinnuskotheene? yaara hathra?

neha: appa ninge maduveli thinnislilva?

veena: uh, umm..

One of the assignements given by their teacher was to paste a picture of the family in their books. Veena was searching around for two suitable snaps for each one of them. Neha commented

" yellaru iro photo idhre kodu, illadidre nannna hane baraha"

videos

2009-06-20T22:18:00.002+05:30

neha has learnt by heart, the colgate tooth paste ad beaming on TV - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp4sqmki9EA

nidhi learnt a rhyme at school recently and was super excited to record it in the handy cam - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vfvr2Ad5hI&feature=related

Comparisons

2009-05-11T13:25:00.007+05:30

During my early years, we as children were being compared among ourselves by the elders in the family. Words such as "Oh my! he's just like his brother " or " Why dont you learn some of your brother's good habits" would be commonly heard in the household. This , directly or not , sometimes even led to sibling rivalry.

We never understood the purpose of that exercise by elders. It would inadvertently lead to unpleasant situations, like say during our annual results time. Veena has seen a fair share of these things as well, in her growing years.

When we had twins, we realised that this is one of the main things that we will have to guard ourselves against doing. Actually there isn't anything the kids would have to do. They just have to be themselves and we should let them be that. These girls arent even six and we are already seeing many issues.

Raising two girls of the same age who are very different in nature has been a challenge in many ways but the biggest challenge has been to treat them differently but yet equally. Veena has taken this responsibility upon herself almost fully and that is fantastic. This particular aspect has given us many sleepless nights, has been the topic of humour, has forced tears down our cheeks..

It is humorous when

people talk about Neha being shorter than Nidhi and she sees this ad on TV and insists that her mom should buy her Complan. We were using Boost as the energy drink for kids. Now Neha actually drinks Complan and thinks she is growing faster. She goes grocery shopping with Veena, carries back home the Complan pack herself and proudly announces "appa, it has 23 vitamins!"

It is amusing to

watch Veena tell them their bedtime stories. She has to sleep between them, her hands spread like eagle wings to act as pillow for their heads and her own head has to face the ceiling. (equi distant from either of them). She turns it one side and the kid on the other side gets upset.

It hurts when

people chide nidhi for being more mischievous. She being very sensitive, equates that to her being a "bad girl" and comes and asks her mom "amma, why did you ask god for two papus?"

Faces

2009-05-06T10:55:00.005+05:30

You'd remember that Neha is the kalpana of our house. She is usually mild mannered but goes bonkers sometimes & in those moods, becomes a treat to watch.
The collage shows various expressions that her face wore, on a recent trip.

Gifts of Life

2009-04-15T21:01:00.007+05:30

One of the earliest photos I have of myself, is the class photo when I was in "preparatory" class. Then the nursery classes were called lkg, ukg & preparatory. So that was my 6th year of life. I remember my friends from that class, remember my teacher and had in fact met her later in my student life. So for me, anything before my 6th year is a blur and after that I remember several things. When I realise that my kids are now in their 6th year, three thoughts come to my mind - "you are getting old, but great memory, wow, kids are already there!"

The last comment is amazing to me because I still remember very vividly the moment they were born on Apr 2nd evening, 2004. That defintely has to be the moment of my life. I remember my brain jammed. There were so much excitement and so many thoughts going through it that I felt I was carrying a numb muscle in my head. I was trying to recollect what all I felt then or if somebody has written on a similar experience felt.

Recently I read up this rather interesting essay by Atul Chaturvedi called "Gift of Life" in "Chicken Soup for Indian Soul" and I felt he has described most of what I felt when I became a dad. I have reproduced a good portion of that essay here (thanks to Atul) :

"she leaned towards me and handed my daughter over to me. I felt her warmth. She was small, delicate, she was simply beautiful, wrapped in this soft white linen that still seemed too rough for her. Till that moment, I used to think she was mine... but now I realized it is just the opposite. I was hers. I held her close. The true motive of my life stared at me through those half-opened eyes. I was responsible for her now. I had to protect her, nurture her, love her; not because, she was mine but because I was her slave. I knew I wouldn't , even in my dreams, be able to repay her for what she had given me; happiness, contentment, courage.

My heart now beat within this little being.

I had never held a baby before in my life. I felt awkward. And then I remembered she had never been held by anyone in her life. And yet there was no fear in her. If she was not scared to live her first moment then why should I be fearful? She was teaching me things already!

She stopped crying, perhaps because she was in my arms. I thought "Will I be able to protect and comfort her always?" The answer was no. She wasnt going to be with me forever. I was taken aback by the thought. A tiny tear rolled down my cheek. I held onto her, promising myself that I wouldn't waste a moment of our time together. I would teach her everything she would want to know.I would prepare her to face the world. I would be there with her forever. I'm her father.

I'm scared - will I make a good father or a bad one? But I do know this - that I will do my best to make sure that she has a fulfilled life, a happy one. I will make sure that this tiny bundle in my arms will live a better life than I did"

And I felt like this twice in two minutes!

Two kids & Their Three Birthdays

2009-04-05T14:48:00.008+05:30

Last Saturday, all the three formats of the kids fifth year birthday got over. The birthday at school happened on Mar 20th (on the last day of the term) where they distributed "cadburys munch" chocolates to their friends and basked in the attention they got. Apr 2nd was the actual birthday which was a rather quiet day. A visit to the temple nearby and many of the relatives calling & wishing them happened through the day. By evening they got frustrated and were refusing to take the calls. The frustration was more about the party not being there that day rather than anything else. I or rather my work was the major culprit for moving the party to weekend & Apr 4th.

And it was a great party & the kids and their friends enjoyed thoroughly. There were about 25 kids who turned out. Many others were away on their summer breaks. Here are a few snippets of the day & events leading up to it:

# we took the kids to a toy store last week to buy them some gifts and told them that they can choose. I was ready for the pocket to get lighter by 2k or so. The kids went around the alleys of saphire toy store in Jayanagar, gleefully, knowing they had a free license to buy. After the initial excitement of "I want this, I want this too...", they settled down on two things. Nidhi picked a soft toy of her favorite character - tom (his friend is jerry :-) & a pack having barbie headband & magic wand. Neha picked up just the headband & wand and insisted that she doesn't want anything else. I was not satisfied for a while cos that costed much lesser than I thought. The soft toy was like 200 and the head band & wand set was 55 each. Better sense prevailed in my head after a few minutes saying cost doesn't matter, their happiness at getting the toys they wanted matters. As I write it now, it seems so very obvious but money (the less of it in this case) can malign your ability to determine the real worth of a material sometimes.

# Back home, Neha wore the head band and went around wishing for things by holding the wand in hand. She came back to me and asked " appa idharalli yaake magic agalla?" That moment was worth tons of gold for innocence shown. Again the dumb guy in me thought "aha that is why you didn't want anything expensive in the toy store; you thought you could get everything through this wand". I was wrong again. Though Neha appeared a trifle disappointed, she went around wishing with the wand with the same enthusiasm and now she knew there is no magic as well. I wanted to kill that guy in me who told me twice that day that money can buy happiness.

# Last year, the kids would rush to the door to welcome their friends and snatch the gifts from them. They did that this year too. And they did something better. They went to one of their friends house, snatched the gifts from her at her doorstep and got her to the party.

# I was playing the "2007 bollywood hits" CD on the music system and was enjoying humming "in dino, dil mera ..." when one of the kids came and said "uncle can you play something new?". That was shocking. Wow. 2007 is old to you I thought. To me 1970s or 80s songs are old. Then I realised that if you are 5 or 6 years old, 2007 songs were hot & happening when you were almost half your age compared to now. So that must be a while back. So I switched to slumdog songs without putting up much of an argument.

# The birthday cake had tom & jerry on it. The favorite characters on TV for neha & nidhi and in many ways, characters they ape. These two girls cannot stop fighting when together and cannot live in peace when away.

# Note the label on this post. Their sixth year has started.

Heights!

2009-03-06T13:20:00.002+05:30

remember the post about two birthdays approaching fast (school birthday this month & actual birthday next month)? I mentioned how the kids are eager and preparing for these events.
Yesterday Neha bettered herself and probably hit the heights of birthday preparation.
She was practicing how to give the chocolates to her friends on the D-day!
she was holding a pen holder as the chocolate box and telling me and veena "take one more"

More on the plus sign on a doctor shop

2009-03-04T20:24:00.003+05:30

Thanks to my cousin Shylu, I was able to find the answer to neha's question :-)

The plus sign on the doctor shop or a "red cross" is in fact one of the emblems of the Red Cross Society. Their other symbols are - a red crescent and a red crystal. According to the Geneva conventions, any of these emblems can be used by the following:

facilities for the care of injured and sick armed forces members;
armed forces medical personnel and equipment;
military chaplains;
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and the 185 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies.

In India, the red cross emblem is misused by doctor shops and pharmacists on their name boards. (you'll even see it on a first aid box or on a doctor's car) There is a recent movement to do away with misusing the emblem and you may notice that many doctor shops now don't carry a red cross. Some doctors have created their own emblems cleverly using the red cross in some form. I saw one dentist in our neighborhood using red cross in the background and the staff with two snakes in the foreground as his unique symbol.

The pharmacists in India are switching over to using a green cross. This is the symbol of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain and they allow usage on a pharma shop. Notice the green cross on a Lifeken shop when you visit it next time.

A blue cross is used to indicate an endeavor in animal care. So you might see that on a vet shop.

Phew, feel learned and relieved now!

Plus Sign on a doctor shop

2009-03-02T10:34:00.004+05:30

Neha played with bare feet in the sand pit in kids' play area and had a cut underneath the middle digit of her right leg. Not wanting to take a chance around contamination of the wound with tetanus bacteria, I took her to a doctor nearby and he gave her an anti-tetanus injection. I could see a glimpse of my grown-up & shy neha there. This was the first time we went to this doctor and so neha was shy to cry when he gave the injection. She tried her best to hold back the tears and remained silent when he asked did it hurt her too much. This is the same neha who acted like kalpana for a previous injection! I felt sad in a way cos she is already choosing dignity over her kiddish behavior. Maybe its a transition that I should get used to. My T-shirt slogan would not be "18 till I die" but "35 till I die cos then my daughters stay at 4"

On the way back, she was her inquisitive self and asked me - why do doctor shops have a symbol of "one standing line & one sleeping line". That took me off guard and I had never wondered what the plus sign on a doctor shop meant. I googled around for a while to look for meaning of the usual medical symbols. And found out about two of them:

Rx
The symbol "Rx" has two representations. It is meant to signify the eye of Horus (Egyptian god for light, sky & goodness) or it just means prescription (take this). So its either a god's symbol to wish good luck or a direction to take something to get well.

The symbol of staff with two snakes coiled to it:
It is the staff of Aesculapius (also called Asklepios), the ancient mythical god of medicine. His Greek name was Asklepios and his Roman name was Aesculapius. In reality, Asklepios may have once lived and been renowned for his gentle, humane remedies and his humane treatment of the mentally ill. His followers established temples called asclepions, temples of Asklepios, temples of healing. According to mythology, Asculapius had a number of children including Hygieia, the goddess of health (from whose name comes the word "hygiene") and Panaceia, the goddess of healing (from whose name comes por word "panacea" for a universal remedy). Today, the staff of Aesculapius is a commonly used symbol of medicine. It is the symbol of the American Medical Association (AMA) and many other medical societies.

+ sign
I could not find the meaning of the "plus" sign. I'm expecting it to be something very basic but cant find it. Do you know?

Just Cant Wait

2009-02-18T10:19:00.006+05:30

The kids' birthday is approaching (in April) and they just cant wait. They have been pretty restless about this almost since after their last birthday! They are conjuring up such excitement & planning ; the kind that elders typically exhibit when there is a wedding in the house.

I turn the page on the "bangalore press" calendar in the kitchen and neha pops in and says "eevaga February, amele March, amele April and nanna birthdayyy"

Nidhi finishes the last page on her gulmohar home work book, closes the book gleefully and says "ee book aagi hoyithu, next nanna birthday, amele UKG"

Last friday night, after their bedtime story from veena, they reminded themselves " naale raja, amele sunday, amele one week, two week, march - school alli birthday, amele april - birthdayyyy". Since schools close by last week of March, they want to celebrate one precursor in the school.

They have mentioned the guest list for the birthday to veena probably thirty times now. The number is around a whopping 40+ kids. The choice of cake has changed between Barbie, Cinderella, Rapunzel, tom & jerry and colors options are white, pink, green..
They are thinking about what return gifts to give their friends for the school & home birthdays.

Regardless of what the menu for the party is, all kids in our block exhibit the same kind of enthusiasm and excitement. They join together, play all kinds of games sing along the birthday song..and then the cake is cut and the snacks distributed..
The moment return gifts are given, they all scurry away to hide their booty in their respective homes!!!!!
It's such fun to watch these kids immersed in their own world full of innocence and unbiased thoughts..It's almost impossible not to evade the infectious laughter that comes gliding onto you...They almost end up teaching us a thing or two , in the whole process...
A child is indeed , the father of the man!!

Collages

2009-02-17T14:46:00.008+05:30

it occurred to me that it'll be fun to try collage of kids photos. i downloaded a trial version of a collage maker and the results are good. It looks a creative way of capturing kids' snaps & deeds. and my mind is teeming. Since I used a trial version of the software, it puts up an ugly banner in the middle of the collage. I'm attaching the few examples created . I'll update the blog once I cook up better ones and once I find a free software to use. It is very unlikely that I'll pay $30 for a collage maker now!

And more artwork

2009-01-29T22:37:00.004+05:30

I dont know if Nidhi has hit a purple patch in creativity or I'm just a biased foolish parent who glorifies every small deed. Either way, I'm happy and so here are two more drawings that Nidhi did recently. The first one is a pic of krishna while the second is a pair of sisters (i guess) - one grumpy and one happy (has the face of calvin i thought). I guess the calvin faced person is a girl since she seems to be wearing a girlish dress. I need to check with Nidhi.

artwork

2009-01-12T21:43:00.006+05:30

Nidhi built a human figure with a plastic container, pencils, crayons, hair clips & ribbons. Maybe it was a child's ingenuity

Or maybe thinking out "off" the box, helped her

smart bites

2008-11-27T20:46:00.004+05:30

nidhi: where does sushma atthe stay?
veena: london, with viky mama.
nidhi: why?
veena: cos they are married and stay together. Like I'm married to your dad and stay with him.
nidhi: i'll marry michael (our 7 year old neighbour) and stay with him
veena: you grow up, study, get a job and later, we'll find some person for you to marry & stay with.
nidhi: okay (seeming convinced; i hope she was convinced :-))

------------
neha wet the bed yesterday night. She had grown over that almost 2 years back. So yesterday was an odd event. I asked her - why did you do it? she said "neenu kelali antha" (so that you can ask me that). tharle gunda!

------------
veena and Nidhi are watching TV. There is an ad on conserving water. A school boy sees a running tap. He tries to close it, its doesn't stop; he thrusts the head of the tap down, its doesn't stop. Finally he removes his school tie and binds the tap to stem the flow and walks away happily. Veena is pleased that nidhi saw such a noble message on TV. She turns to Nidhi waiting for an ack on the lesson learnt. Nidhi comments " hey, avange aa tie bedva?"

the way you see it

2008-11-18T12:12:00.002+05:30

skipping rope + two rupee coin + ingenuity of a child (nidhi in this case) = POLAR BEAR

kalpana

2008-11-10T20:36:00.005+05:30

Kalpana was a famed Kannada actress of yesteryear.
I don't know why she was a hit though. She looked horrible and overacted in every scene. Every emotion was stretched by her like a rubber till you nauseate.

Anyway, the take away from her to this post is that Neha has been overacting for the last two days. Watch the video below and you'd think she is recovering from a knee cap surgery. All she had was an injection of DPT Polio vaccine on her left thigh.

New Skills

2008-11-04T21:59:00.005+05:30

Last one month has been hectic learning period for kids.

First was an attempt to learn swimming. The pool finally opened in our apartment complex and kids were over the moon when they learnt that there'll be a trainer to help them learn. the curve was usual. kids were excited the first couple of days and happy beating their legs in the water holding onto the railing. Third day, the fear set in when the trainer took them to the deeper end and later asked them to jump into the water and he'd hold them. Kids started crying and begged for freedom from this torture. Neha & Nidhi weren't unique cos kids of all ages were in similar mode then. I could re-visit my own fears when learning swimming at 32. The fear doesn't change, the expression of it does. Neha & Nidhi got fed up with us coaxing them to learn and they not able to deal with the fear of deep end of the pool. I had promised them to buy "island princess barbie" dolls if they learnt swimming. They decided it is easier to forgo that desire.

The second more successful venture is drawing. There is a very good artiste who is our neighbour. She is a pleasing lady who loves teaching kids and had been an art teacher earlier. Check her oil paintings exhibited last year. kids have started off well and seem to like drawing and the teacher.

The third exercise was picked up pretty fast. It was to use touch pad on the laptop and learn to color a picture. It is their new hobby to go and color at this link.

The fourth skill is brewing in school. They have enrolled for a group dance for their school day celebrations. A teacher with an unusual name - Harret is their dance teacher. Kids are shy to show me what they have learnt so far. I'll have to wait for the school day which is 2 weeks away.

Switching topics, I've been living in the comfy zone since August and been in the trap of nice food and no exercise. I was a regular to the gym in the first half of the year and the practice snapped around the time the festivals started in August. I needed a kick on the backside to start again and Nidhi provided me exactly that. She saw my growing paunch and asked "appa, ninna hotte yaake doddadhaagtha idhe, magu beli tha idhiya?"

Trip to the Forests

2008-10-06T18:55:00.015+05:30

October is the time for the annual 'cousins club trip' as we call it. It has been an annual routine for the last 15 years now for my brothers, cousins to gang up with families and travel. We prefer some destination within Karnataka (there is so much to see) and a remote one at that. So forests are usually our destination. This time, we visited nagarahole & bandipur forests for 4 days and the crowd was 9 adults and 7 kids. Here is an account of the trip:

A few 'firsts' for kids:

Kids did their first trekking in life - we trekked for about 4 kms in bandipur forest to view a beautiful lake. kids walked about half that distance. Our shoulders ached for two days because of carrying them for the remaining distance. We trekked in a thick forest with a local tribal man as a guide. Forget being armed for a risky trek like this, we were carrying kids and at nature's mercy for an hour or so. As I commented later, the only thing we could have done on sighting a leopard or tiger was to sing the popular Kannada folk song to the beast - "chanda vyaagrane, neenu idellava undu santhasadhindhiru". We watched a splendid sunset at the fag end of our trek. Kids felt very proud on doing the trek and posed.

Kids had the first taste of a waterfall and a beautiful one at that - irruppu falls. The kids screamed in frenzy for 40 mins in the van on the way to irruppu falls in excitement. They trekked up the path in zeal as well. The imposing waterfall and freezing water almost killed all the enthusiasm in them. They did enjoy the dip in the water for a while and their jaws rattled for 10 mins after getting out of water.

Kids played cards! It helps to start early :-) Kids were feeling bored one late evening on the trip, men wanted to play cards and women folk wanted a break from taking care of kids. The genius stroke from me was to give kids a pack of old playing cards and that kept them busy for more than two hours. The eldest kid in the gang came up with a game and rules were conveniently designed by him on the fly so that he wins all those games. Anyway that kept the kids engaged & happy and served our needs.

Other notes:

Nidhi touched the tusk of a tamed elephant and was super thrilled

Neha & Nidhi saw enough of forest that they could distinguish dung of four animals - goat, cow, gaur & elephant (no snaps for this :-))

Kids loved the van safari ride in nagarhole and we could sight peacock, deer, elephants, gaur, wild boar, malabar squirrel & monkeys. First snap is that of kids wearing monkey caps and gazing at the forest. Second snap is that of the marks scraped on the bark of a tree by a tiger to mark its territory

We visited a rather cute govt primary school in murkal forest where the tribal kids are taught. Some interesting snaps from this school. Notice how small the benches are and how big the stick is! One true believer of 'spare the rod & spoil the child'.

Pics Time

2008-09-22T11:38:00.011+05:30

First Pasta that kids tried out (at pizza hut, banashankari 2nd stage). nidhi didn't like it (and drank my ice tea instead & sucked out the remaining juice from the lemon piece). neha, as evident, loved it.

kids, tender coconut, mama, osi scoprio, mysore

both posing as goddess lakshmi - you have to imagine coins spilling off the plastic bowl in nidhi's case and in neha's case, you have to imagine the plastic bowl as well. neha is sitting on the plastic container we keep monthly provisions in.

how to describe khara

Nidhi & Ajji

2008-09-15T11:45:00.004+05:30

In the last few days, there have been two instances involving nidhi and my mom that are worth noting.

Neha & Nidhi usually talk in Kannada between themselves except when it comes to playing with their army of barbies. They have watched a few barbie movies & tend to imitate the way she speaks in them and hence English makes it in as their communication tool. The other day, both were playing with their barbies and my mom entered the room. neha told my mom not to come in and nidhi wanted to say "mucchu baayi, namm ajji avaru".
she said "stop mouth, she is my grand ma"

yesterday, we had been to our parents house in the evening. Nidhi assumed that my mom will come to our house with us. When she didn't join us in the car, nidhi started crying inconsolably. My mom tried to cook up reasons as to why she cant come with us. She said I've not had my dinner yet and will eat and come later. between the 100 decibels of wailing, nidhi blabbered "namm manege ba, amma seege kaayi huli maadidhaare, alle thinnu".
seege kaayi huli? soap nut sambar? yuck.

Moral Lessons ke side effects

2008-09-14T09:32:00.008+05:30

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)

My Trip to Sunnyvale

2008-07-11T23:59:00.006+05:30

"appa neenu beku anstha idhe, nange alu barakke aagtha idhe"
(appa, i want you here and i feel like crying)

those were the words that shook me out of my slumber today morning. i woke up when veena called me and kids spoke to me. These cute, incorrectly formed, emotive sentences were spoken by nidhi and that surprised me. Nidhi normally doesn't express her feelings and tries to wriggle out such situations by masking them with humor or mischief. she has my genes there. I like to keep a clean cool GUI myself in spite of what runs in my brain.
she was playing with other kids in the sand pit in apartment when veena asked her to talk to me. she went far from others, spoke these words in a very soft tone, and headed back to her friends with her usual glee and playful mood. I wonder how she does that. the way she can change her expressions, mask her true feelings makes me think she can be a wonderful actor if she pursues that field. It is very evident that the kids are missing me badly by the 6th day of my trip to US. And there are 13 more days to go. I hope they keep themselves busy enough and don't miss me badly. I hope i don't start missing them badly either. I sheepishly admit that I've enjoyed my trip so far and have enjoyed the solitude. I have been able to work better and have had a few busy days here.

The last time i did a business trip to US was about 18 months back. That time they were smaller and my trip was shorter. probably 9 days. This time I started preparing them for this break a week before i started.

I told them I'll be gone for 3 weeks - they don't understand what a week means.

i told them I'll be gone for 20 days - school has taught them counting till 10. for them 10 is the biggest number they know and 10 means infinite.

i told them I'll be gone for 10 days - they understood it like I'm gone forever (10 = infinity). Nidhi didn't tell me not to go for 10 days. but she wetted the bed the next 3 days (which she had stopped more than a year back) to indicate that something is not going right within her.

i realised what i had caused and I told them I'll be gone for 4 days - that is a lie and i felt bad telling that. but they could understand somehow.

And if you thought my kids really know numbers upto 10 very well, in the morning, neha asked me , "innu 4 days agillva?" (aren't those 4 days over?). Innocence is such a wonderful thing. I hope my kids age freezes now and they remain like this forever.

My cousin's wife landed from US for her vacation and we went to meet her a week before my trip. she gave them M&Ms and they loved it. They love "cadbury gems" and eat them very often. These new gems (in new colors) were interesting to them. I told I'll get them from US. Neha has been telling everyone since then that her dad is going to US to get gems. I wish i could add that in the invite letter of my business trip :-)

promptly, she asked me that as well in the morning conversation. she was very objective in this discussion:

neha - "appa, innu 4 days agillva?"
me - "innu 4 days beku kandha, kelsa idhe"
neha - "gems thogondya?"
me - "yes"
neha - "ammange phone kodthini"

Pun Fun

2008-05-29T18:41:00.005+05:30

Phew, it has been quite a while since putting a post here. it is the lull after storm feeling at home.
last one month was brewing with excitement & activity around my brother-in-law's wedding. Shopping, inviting people, more shopping, then the wonderful wedding itself. All this occupied us till yesterday. Now the four of us back at home again trying to re-arrange our lives and run it at normal pace.

The school has started 4 days back and kids had no clue of it till today morning. They'll attend the school from next Monday. Neha sheepishly remembered that her teacher might ask her why she did not attend the first week and checked with me whether I've informed the teacher or not. Nidhi feels no guilt in this space and was too happy that her vacation got extended by a few more days.

An unique dish for breakfast in the morning threw up a bunch of PJs. The kids were not part of it but then I never wrote in blood that this blog will not have anything else other than about kids.

Veena prepared uppittu with aralu (i know it is not puffed rice and I dont know what the hell it is called. the one that you use to make sandige (now if that rings a bell)). there were some grains with the husk. she had not dehusked them cleanly before preparing it. dehusking is called kheru (sounds like care) in Kannada.

So here is the pun fun:

I: (on seeing some husk in my plate), veena you did not care enough

veena: I was in a hurry and could not care more. watch when you are eating

I: you could have cared more. you are careless. no one cares for me.

then my mind goes wild with this pun:

what does car care mean?
or even scarier, what does customer care mean - dehusk a customer?

what do you call a bunch of villagers dehusking paddy/wheat?
Intensive Care Unit?

birthday

2008-04-07T14:13:00.008+05:30

Note the label on this post. Neha & Nidhi are in their fifth year now!

They celebrated their 4th year birthday last week and as expected the event threw up a few things that I can blog about. The kids have been talking and planning about their birthday since last Nov or so. They have not only bugged parents about their birthday but even their teachers. When Veena went to school last Monday to pick books for next year, the teachers asked her "isn't their birthday tomorrow? every time some kid celebrates birthday in school, these two shout out saying ours is on Apr 2". It is a pity that their birthday falls in the summer vacation. They would have had so much more fun celebrating at school as well.

Since Apr 2 was a working day and given my telecon schedules on weekdays, we decided to celebrate the birthday on Apr 5 (Saturday). They had been wanting to have one complete barbie doll set each as their birthday gift for sometime now. My mother gifted them that. Within minutes, nidhi's barbie doll looked like the most handicapped person in the world - no legs, no arms. She meddled with barbie's hair and made her look even uglier. the accessories in the doll set were scattered. But she kept playing with that barbie and she likes it. Neha's barbie ain't much better. We wished them on Apr 2 and they were puzzled and asked "so will we have the party today? will the cake be there today? will my friends gift me today?"

On Apr 5, they got into party mood only late in the afternoon after I brought home the cake. It was a vanilla flavored cake in the form of a duck pond. By 6:30 their friends in the apartment complex started pouring in. Nidhi was watching the door and as soon as somebody enters the house, she would go towards the person, extend her arms (to receive the gift) and welcome her. She did this with most of the guests. After a while she became even more shameless & effective with her method. Till then she would receive the gift (or snatch is a better word) and go & put in the cupboard. Later, one boy entered the house and she directed him to go put the gift in the cupboard himself. The boy was perplexed. So she held his hand, took him to the cupboard & asked him to put it there. Afterwards she commented to her friend "avanige put alli andre gothe agolla" (if i tell him to put it in the cupboard, he doesn't understand at all)

the kids circled the cake as soon as it was kept on the table. I & Veena had to make sure nobody touches it or falls over it. After blowing off the candle & singing, the kids cut the cake & ate a piece each. me & veena were hoping they would feed us as well but they were relishing the cake and the other kids seemed ready for the cake like hounds. We took the cake inside & served it with other snacks. All the kids left within 2 minutes of receiving the return gifts.

some things that I pondered over, after the party:

# In their last birthday, it was only a couple of months since we had moved to the apartment and hence did not know many people. There were only a couple of kids that we had called. This time, it was about 30 kids. Veena had a couple of friends last year and she knows about 15 or 20 ladies in the complex now. I had only one friend in the complex last year, I have only one friend this year. And he has been my friend for 17 years now. speaks so much about my networking skills! In spite of knowing very little english, neha & nidhi have made friends with kids who speak other languages at home with ease. they even talk quite a bit with an old day who is our neighbour & who knows only oriya & little hindi. why do we grow up? what is our problem?

# after showing so much enthu to receive the gifts & rather shamelessly at that, nidhi spent about only two or three minutes to look at all of them. the only thing that interested her & neha is the small tent house that I bought them. that has been their home inside home for the last 3 days. It now houses them, their favourite dolls, the severely handicapped barbie, their kitchen set... All that they needed & enjoyed that day was the small token of attention they received from their friends and us. For this they waited for months. The gifts aren't a great deal & they don't bother who gifted them what. do we adults look at gifts & gifting this way always? why do we grow up? what is our problem?

Big Cats

2008-03-28T15:00:00.005+05:30

Mar 21 2008
Holiday on account of good Friday. Long weekend ahead. Think of escaping from Bangalore. Couple of hot product escalations pin me down to Bangalore as I had to check mails periodically and step in if necessary

8:00 am
Weather is gloomy. Thick clouds threatening to burst. And this is summer time we think. Me & veena decide we'll take kids to bannerghatta national park if weather holds good. Plan not to tell kids about it since they'll get disappointed if they know and it starts pouring & we cant make it.

10:00 am
It starts raining. We finish breakfast and the customary weekend tea. We decide to get ready for the trip anyway hoping rain'll subside by the time we leave.

11:30 am
all of us are ready and veena has packed a picnic bag with lunch & munchies. As we hoped rain stops but weather stays gloomy

12:15 pm
we reach bannerghatta. it is hard to imagine that there is a national park & a thick forest behind it only 19 kms from home. the thought of staying so close to natural habitat is exciting.

12:25 pm
we enter the animal park and realize the queue to safari is nearly zero. thanks to the gloomy weather & festivals of hindus, muslims & christians falling on the same day (holi, id, good friday)

12:45 - 1:45 pm
we enter the van that'll take us on the grand safari (covering herbivore, bear, lion & tiger safaris) . ticket cost is 125 bucks for adults. kids under 5 ride free provided they sit on the adults' laps. van driver & helper hint us to take the two seats in the front. we accept their graciousness to get a broad view of the safari thru the windshield. realise, it is a ploy of them to ask for bigger tips at the end. we play along with them as we get the best view in the van

the herbivore park has a few spotted deer, sambar, black bucks, bisons. wild pigs. only the wild pigs interest kids thanks to 'gaalipata' movie where anant nag loses & regains life in his legs due to a wild pig and his hunting attempts

we move to the bear safari. just a few ordinary bears there lazing under rocks. kids are disappointed that they are not moving around and lively.

I'm cajoling nidhi to befriend the van driver & helper so that she can sit with the helper and get the best view of animals. that would give me some space to move my legs as well. driver asks me if neha & nidhi are twins. I say yes. He responds ' namdu twins idhe'. I ask him really, you also have twins? he says not me but there are twin tiger cubs in the safari. I fell stupid and veena grins loud and says 'blog this'

we enter the lion safari. expectedly the male lions are sleeping. the female lions are more active but inside the cage & we do not get a good view of them. nidhi gets disappointed & does not want to look at the lions. reason - lion is shown in orange & brown in cartoons, books... here the lions are pale brown & with dirty brown hair. she tells me why they're not orange like in books. I tell her the lions aren't exactly orange in color and these ones are a little dirty as well. she tells me & the driver to get the lions bathed and then show them to her. alright queen, we'll do that!

the tigers were the most impressive and majestic. kids love them. so do we.

we pay 30 rupees tips to the driver. he is not happy. i think 'cant do much'.

2:00 pm
back in the park or zoo, we start our lunch. kids are eating kurkure & want to feed the crows. we finish lunch. kids survive on kurkure & icecream. we want to show them leopard & zebra. they are more interested in playing swing & see-saw in the play area. we tell them you play it everyday in the apartment complex & better see the animals. they win the argument & we end up getting some peaceful time on the stone benches while kids play & sway.

4:30 pm
we head back. there is a butterfly park to see but legs are aching & kids are tired. we skip it & head back home. i get stupidly adventurous & try an off track road to connect to kanakapura road. end up driving 10 kms more & reach home by 5:30

Some recent lovely moments

2008-03-10T15:48:00.014+05:30

A collection of fun moments in our lives recently:

snaps 1 & 2 - neha & nidhi using clothes line as a swing. this is in spite of us having a big swing inside the house

snaps 3 & 4 - neha caught in some funny poses. first one was when she was searching for a marble behind the table & second, when she was sleeping

snap 5 - i call this height of optimism. neha & nidhi trying basket ball. nidhi was using a small light weight plastic ball (on the ground) while neha was using a tennis ball (mid air if you observe closely)

snap 6 & 7 - neha & nidhi flying kite. it was one of my dreams in the last few months to buy a kite and show kids how they fly. we managed to do this about 3 weeks back. you have to search for the kite in snap 7. fyi - the kite flew much farther than shown in this snap :-)

snaps 8 & 9 - kids on top a tree branch on NH48. When we were on our way from hassan and stopped at a dhaba for tea

snaps 10, 11 & 12 - it snowed in our house! veena had brought some thermocol sheets to exercise her artistic talent. kids scraped the sheets to bits before veena could show her skills.

Trip to Shravanabelagola

2008-03-03T16:09:00.007+05:30

A job change has meant lesser time at home (or office :-)) to update the blog.

We visited shravanabelagola (SBG) last saturday on our way to hassan to attend a wedding. The journey was usual with breakfast packed for kids to be eaten during journey, kids' favourite movie songs playing on the car stereo (they also listened to 'gaalipata' songs {new kannada movie} and fell in love with them instantly), breakfast, snacks messing up the leather seats & flooring of the car and kids changing seats & moving between passenger & back seats about 7 or 8 times. First stop was kunigal to visit the stud farm at around 10:30. Thanks to my cousin Teju, we feel pretty privileged to have seen this farm a few times and it is a wonderfully maintained 200+ acres farm with some majestic breeds and their promising kids. teju showed us around the farm and kids saw a few animals - horses, dog, cat, monkeys, cows, rabbits. So many on that farm that nidhi mistook it to be a zoo and asked teju, where are the deer?

After breakfast for us and probably the best tea i've had in my life, we moved on and reached SBG at around 12:45 or so. I had visited SBG when I was a little older than what neha & nidhi are now and that is 25+ years back. I still had a vivid memory of seeing the monolith but had forgotten how hard it is to climb up & see that. or maybe my mom or one of my uncles would have carried me for a while. There are 590 stone steps to reach the top discounting the really small 30 odd steps on the rock slope near the summit. It was scorching hot summer afternoon and we felt it'll be a hard challenge to climb up with the kids. we were hoping that neha & nidhi would climb atleast 30% of the steps themselves and that would help us manage our energies well. what happened was pretty amazing. neha & nidhi started racing on the steps and we were following them closely behind to make sure they dont slip. after about 100 steps, we were panting and started taking stops to catch breath but not these two girls. they climbed up all the way themselves and took their only stop at around 400th step. that was the only time they felt they were tired. we forced them to stop once more cos we were exhausted by the 500th step or so and took longer to climb. Also the first 50 steps or so are pretty hot & cos burns on the feet. Cool breeze calms the heat on the steps higher in the array.

Once we reached the top and entered the temple premise, it was telepathy at work. I & veena did not plan or discuss it but we both moved away from the kids (about 20 ft away) and temporarily disowned them. and the reason for that was the anticipated embarassing situation. neha & nidhi saw the 59 feet monolith in awe for 2 or 3 seconds and then in chorus blurted out "shame shame poppy shame, all the monkeys know your name, maami" (maami is god in kids language). They got the queer look & smiles from the 20 odd people there who had braved the sun & climbed in mata mata madhyaana. We gave the same look as well (remember we did not know them temporarily)

SBG is a great place and you can feel the tranquility of the place and calmness in the temple. A nice place to meditate, great view of the flat fertlie lands around the hill and a nice exercise to climb up.
It was a day well spent.

kholo kholo

2008-01-31T19:06:00.001+05:30

the TZP hangover has still not died down in our home. I bought the audio cd of the movie recently and all four of us listen to the songs frequently. The kids listen intently to most of the songs of that movie except bum bum bole. They dance to that one with vigor and seem to remember the dance steps well. I find kholo kholo song very inspiring and nidhi loves it too. She generally picks the tune of a song very quickly (mostly by the 2nd time she hears a song). She has got my genes there. I used to be good at that (am still good) and would pick tune and lyrics of movie songs very quickly. I could even sing more than 20 tamil songs for which rahman composed music. I'm a huge AR fan and even though i dont know tamil, repetitive listening made me pick the tune and sounds (cant call them lyrics cos they made no sense to me). For languages i understand (kannada & hindi), i think i have used (or wasted) about 60% of my memory cells on songs. I can claim to know the lyrics of atleast 100 each of kishore, rafi, mukesh, spb & raj kumar songs. then there are duets of these singers that i remember as well!

hindi songs' lyrics are probably nice sounds for nidhi at this time. so it is fun to hear her sing kholo kholo now. she goes like:

kholo kholo & slience (she doesnt know the remainder of the mukda)

thu dhoop hain, cham serikhe

thu ye nadhi, thu ye gabbar

beh chal kahin, ud chal kahin, dil khush jaha

there is a manzil hain vahii....

the lyrics are:

thu dhoop hain, cham se bikhar

thu hain nadhi, oh bekhabar
beh chal kahin, ud chal kahin, dil khush jaha
teri to manzil hain vahii...

nidhi converts the last line to a hinglish sentence. the good thing is her line is semantically very close to the original lyrics. but she sings this song with amazing passion and very close to tune. I'll be posting the video of her singing this one here soon.

Chitra Santhe

2008-01-10T17:34:00.000+05:30

Dec 30 2007 was 'Chitra Santhe' day at Chitra Kala Parishath, Kumara Krupa Road. I've tried to attend the santhe unsuccessfully the last two times now. This time, we missed it as we had to attend a function (homa where kids sang makhan chor) on 30th. I wanted to see whats on show there and then show such work to my kids and see how they react to it. To kind of make up for that loss, I decided to spend time that evening at home and recognise and celebrate all the art work that neha & nidhi have done over the last few months.

We have got them a bundle of paper (DMP printer ones). Every day they pull out a couple of sheets from the bundle, express their imaginations on them and leave it on the floor. I have collected all those sheets for the last few months. 30th evening I checked all of them and asked the kids to explain what they've drawn. I've scanned a few such paintings below and have put some text along with them to explain. Please open the drawing on a separate window to see the text.

Innocence can kill too

2008-01-10T11:54:00.000+05:30

Innocence can be a powerful weapon. How else can you embarass an elderly well respected person. Not that you want to but here is what happened yesterday. Nidhi was feasting on her lunch on a plantain leaf sitting next to neha & veena at a family gathering. An elderly man who is very well respected, admired by all kind of personality, was sitting opposite her. Here is the conversation he tried to have with nidhi:

elderly person: shall i also come to your school?

nidhi: but you dont have uniform

elderly person: then i'll wear your uniform and come

nidhi: then your underwear will show and my madam will say 'shame shame poppy shame, all the monkeys know your name, thatha'

elderly person: probably wanted to dig a hole and bury himself there

Kids & Devotional Songs

2008-01-02T14:13:00.000+05:30

it is not often that somebody sings the title track of a cartoon TV serial at the end of "satya narayana pooja". But with kids anything is possible or to quote Adidas tag line impossible is nothing
The day was last Sunday and venue was a family gathering to view & attend & feast at a party hall where some relative performed gana homa, ayush homa & a couple of other homas & finally satyanarayana pooja. After the pooja and final mangala arati, one girl sung a devotional song on vishnu. The next scene was neha & nidhi jumping around near the place of worship and shouting we'll also sing, we'll also sing. I was only a spectator for all this as I was standing behind rows of people while neha & nidhi squeezed between people's legs and reached the front where the priests, family conducting the pooja & the gods had assembled. I did not want to stop neha & nidhi from singing but they had gone to the front with their slippers on! I was hoping that nobody observes that and censures them for that innocent act. After they got the nod from someone to sing, both looked at each other, whispered & decided which song to sing and went ahead in chorus "chor chor maakhan chor, chaliya maakhan chor" That is the track on TV when krishna cartoon serial is played at 7:30 pm every evening. And that is one of the regular shows that neha & nidhi watch. They also sang the music that comes in between the song. After they finished singing, expectedly somebody asked them why are you singing a TV serial song and nidhi shot back "ಇದು ದೇವರ ಹಾಡೇ, ಕೃಷ್ನಂದು" (idhu devara haade, krishnandu - this is also a song on god, on kirshna) and the wise elder person just shut his mouth afterwards.

The other time they sung a song that was not 100% appropriate was when somebody in the apartment complex had invited veena & kids during dasara. they had sung the song from manjunatha movie where the atheist hero chides shiva as kalla, sulla,....

But the credit of best joke I've heard about kids & songs goes to my cousin's son - karthik. On his first day at pre-school, the teacher made all the kids sit quiet and asked them, "ಯಾರಿಗಾದರು ದೇವರ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಹಾಡು ಬರುತ್ತಾ?" (yaarigaadru devara bagge haadu barotha) , karthik raised his hand. teacher asked him to sing and he went on " ದೇವರು ವರವನು ಕೊಟ್ರೆ ನಾ ನಿನ್ನೆ ಕೋರುವೆ ಚಲುವೆ..." (devaru vara vanu kotre naa ninne koruve cheluve)

Writing Alphabets & Numbers

2007-12-26T15:47:00.000+05:30

It is interesting to understand how the school taught neha & nidhi to write numbers and alphabets. They can now write from A - R and from 1 - 10. I don't remember how I learnt to write them nor do my parents. And that is the reason for this post. I remember having sharpened (or should I say rounded :-)) my handwriting quite a bit on the good old "four line" books when I was about 10 years or so. So much so that my written text would look like an array of jilebis from far.

In the first two months at school, the kids were taught to recognise and draw basic geometric shapes like point, line (standing line, slanting line & sleeping line), circle, semi-circle, square, diamond. They were asked to trace the dotted line of pictures on their home work books.
After two months, it was assembly time:
1 = one standing line + one sleeping line
2 = one semi-circle + one sleeping line
3 = two semi-circles
4 = one standing line + one sleeping line + one slanting line
5 = sleeping line + small standing line + semi-circle
6 = semi-circle + go in
6 is interesting. So is the alphabet that resembles it - G
G = semi-circle + go in + come out

I guess they'll teach kids the upper case letters this year, lower case in LKG and cursive style in UKG.

My kids (like most other I've seen) write C inverted (like this - ) ). I tried to google out as to why kids do this but couldn't find. If somebody knows the answer, please post a reply. Here is my theory of why they do it :-)
C is one of the only two numbers or upper case letters that can be constructed using only one of the basic shapes - just a semi-circle. The other alphabet is O and you wouldn't know if your kid wrote a O or inverted O. Zero is similar to O and hence I discount it from this count. When kids have to assemble at least two shapes, they do it well; they become careless & overconfident when it is just one shape.

Taare Zameen Par

2007-12-24T11:30:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, we went & watched Taare Zameen Par. It is not often that we watch a movie on its 3rd day. Veena visits movie theatres about 2 or 3 times a year and I fare much better at about 10 per year. (remaining 8 or 7 with my HP friends). So it was out of the ordinary that we both watched this movie this early and not just that, we took neha & nidhi along as well.

Their first movie in a theatre was "Ekalavya" at PVR. They hardly enjoyed it. They watched the big screen in awe for about 15 mins, then walked & played in the open area in front of the screen (we had deliberately taken the first row) for about 30 mins, enjoyed pop corn for 10 mins and cribbed that they are bored for the rest of the movie.

That was about 10 months back. TZP was their second movie. We thought they might enjoy TZP more cos its the story of a kid, they can recognise some settings in the movie (school, class, drawing...). They did watch it intently for most part. They got bored only when little Ishaan was not on the screen.

My opinion of the movie - very well made, its like a work/well prepared book. you can see & appreciate the work aamir khan has put on the subject & movie. It touches all the parental chords in your body (hey, i just realised paternal is an anagram of parental, hmm, interesting what does that mean, if you jumble up parental feelings you get paternal feelings? :-))

To me, aamir is the best actor in the last 20 years and stands alongside amitabh on my list of favourite actors. In many ways he is similar to kamal hassan in that he tries diffrent things. While Kamal mostly experiments with his looks/acting style, Aamir apart from those also tries different subjects, is trying direction in this movie and is surely more thorough in research & effort. The outcome is a great movie and I'd recommend it to every parent, teacher and anyone who cares for kids. If that list leaves someone, I'd recommend a silly entertainer called OSO to them. In short the story is about a dyslexic child facing the challenges of the world & getting beaten into a shell before a teacher helps him overcome his problem.

I asked neha & nidhi what they thought the story of the movie was and what they liked & disliked in the movie today morning. The story according to them is - ishank (& not ishaan) is a good boy whose parents, teachers scold him for no reason and then an uncle comes and helps him by singing to him, help him paint. Ishank & Uncle are the good boys while all others are bad boys & girls. Ishank's mom is a bad girl too.

The scenes that impacted them are

(i) when ishank is sitting with 2 stray dogs and one of them is sleeping on his lap

(ii) when he fights with his neighbourhood kid & the 2 dogs circle them

(iii) ishank is standing on the parapet wall in his school overlooking the valley - they thought he was stupid as he could fall down & die

(iv) ishank's dad scolding & slapping him - this hurt them quite a bit.

Aamir khan plays the teacher. He looks a little unconventional to be a teacher even in our eyes cos of his dressing and is so cool. Neha & Nidhi could not recognise him as a teacher at all. They could recognise every other character who plays a teacher role as that. They refer to him as ishank's uncle. I asked them why they thought he is not a teacher. They said cos he sings to the kids and sits with them on their bench and plays with them.

Hmmm that is a grave stmt and has me in a thinking loop for a while now. Why is it so hard to do those things with kids. For Teachers & Parents. TZP surely is a thought provoking movie and I'm learning. Thanks Aamir.

Fit for cows

2007-12-14T11:59:00.000+05:30

Yesterday Neha returned from school and frowned at veena "ಏನಮ್ಮ ಮಕ್ಕಳು ಬಾಳೆ ಹಣ್ಣು ಹಾಕು ಅಂದ್ರೆ ಹಸು ಬಾಳೆ ಹಣ್ಣು ಹಾಕಿದೀಯಾ?" (amma, instead of putting banana that kids eat, you've put banana that cows eat, in the lunch bag). I know the expression that neha wears when she talks like that. I captured that expression today morning when we were waiting for the school van. It would have been something like shown in the snap.

Veena was taken aback by the comment and wondered what it meant. She had to jog her memory about an year back to understand neha's comment. When we were staying in h'nagar, there used to be stray cows on the street. They weren't stray actually, an insensitive man had a cow shed and also used to sell firewood. After extracting milk to sell, he would let the cows on the street to find some food & clear their bowels. They were a big nuisance and numerous efforts to drill civic sense into that stupid guy's head had failed. Kids love banana and we used to buy them regularly. If the bananas were not consumed in time, they would ripen to death and turn black. We used to let kids feed such bananas to these stray cows.

So it turned out that the bananas veena packed in their lunch bag yesterday were a little more ripe than usual (not black or close to black as neha exaggerated). The expression in the snap is not exactly what she wears in these situations. That is artifically created and hence little exaggerated as well. Suits her. She will probably fight with me about this snap 5 or 6 years from now. I'm ready :-)

I'm also attaching a snap of nidhi that I took today morning. She bought her elephant today to play for those 5 to 10 mins before the van arrives. When they see this blog, they search for how many photos I've put of them. This post should have just carried neha's snap but I'm putting nidhi's as well to make her feel good. I have to be conscious of their sensitiveness when I fill up the real estate on this blog.

Perspectives

2007-12-06T15:10:00.000+05:30

This is the view of one property adjacent to our office. You can see a swelled up well (its a huge well like the ones you see in villages plus rain water collected next to it in a man made ditch; you cant make out where the ditch ends and the well begins) and open space where they have even cultivated some paddy(not shown in the pic). The surprising part is my office is not situated on the outskirts but is in the heart of bangalore - bannerghatta road. The adjacent vacant land and well belongs to Christ College who probably don't know what to do with that huge land (more than 2 acres acc to my visual estimate) that is lying idle.

The above para was a digression from this post's topic. Look at the AC fans that line up the inside of our office campus and next to the compound. The office building is 13 floors and hence they have these huge fans lined up on the periphery to cool the interiors. These fans make the parking lots noisy and hot. I hate them for that.

About a few months back, our office had a arranged a "get your kids to work" day on a friday. I could get nidhi along with me. neha was down with viral fever and hence could not make it. They had arranged some actitivies for kids that day - talent show, tattoos, caricature sketching... When Nidhi saw this line of noisy fans, she got very excited. She exclaimed "appa there is a train in your office and you never told me that" She thought people come to office in this train. Before that, I could never see them as bogies of a train. I find them cuter these days.

Neha did not let me sleep in peace till I took her to office. I got both of them to office on a weekend. They were amused by the cubicle walls all round the office and instantly figured out a game to play using them - hide & seek. Since I'm 6' 2'' and can see above cube walls of most offices this again was a surpise to me. I never thought you could play hide & seek in the aisles of an office. There are many times, you want to hide yourself from people in office. If only cube walls are over 7 feet!

Some Silly Snaps

2007-12-05T13:23:00.001+05:30

I was browsing all the snaps I had taken on my cell phone. These snaps are the more spontaneous ones unlike the regular camera snaps where kids are dressed up and are posing. I saw some really stupid poses and silly photos. Here is the collection that neha & nidhi will be embarrassed about when they grow up :-)

# Snap 1 - Taken in home town mall last Saturday. They posed in front of a huge ad hoarding. Nidhi wanted a snap of her touching the girl in the ad.

# Snap 2 - This ain't silly but cute. They used to love the play home that they were going during their 3rd year - tender lily play home at gavipuram. They would usually get ready before time and sit on the steps in front of the house (the rented house at h'nagar where we stayed for a couple of years) waiting for veena to get ready and sharada (care taker) to come and drop them to the play home

# Snap 3 - Wearing juttus! check the art on the wall that they have created with crayons and pencil. It costed me 8k to get that rented house repainted when we left.

# Snap 4 - Nidhi sitting in a basket on the street in front of the house. I don't remember the exact reason but i know it was a mark of protest for something we didn't buy her.

# Snap 5 - kids wearing my shirts

# Snap 6 - As you could see in snap 4, the street was very close to the house (or there was minimal area in the compound). So we had got this half door done to disallow kids from rushing to the street. This half door was around 3 feet tall. Neha & Nidhi used to watch the kids playing on the street by standing near the half door. Nidhi would stand on her toes and was tall enough to see beyond the door. Neha devised a method to view the street. She would balance on the skirting and lean against the door. She used to do it pretty well. Just one day she forgot to wear her something on her bottom and I clicked :-)

# Snap 7 - A more recent snap. Nidhi applied a little more makeup.

# Snap 8 - Few months back, we went to puma store to buy veena jogging shoes. Kids hid themselves in the racks and were playing hide & seek with me while veena was picking her shoes.

Odds

2007-12-03T10:07:00.000+05:30

There are about 7 million people in Bangalore and 2001 census said 47.5% of the population is women. Assuming the same sex ratio exists in 2007 as well, that means 3.3 million of the population is women. Now what is the portion of this size that has kids under 5?

If you divide the 3.3 mn roughly into three pieces - single, young mothers & older women, we are talking about a million young mothers (sounds huge but let us go with that assumption).

Now stats say that chances of fraternal twins is 12 out of 1000 births. Since fraternal twins are dizygotic, the kids can be of any of the three combinations with equal chance (boy-boy, boy-girl & girl-girl). Not related to this discussion but FYI - identical twins are rarer than fraternal twins - 4 out of 1000.

So the chances of two girl fraternal twins is 4 out of 1000. And Bangalore should have about 4000 female fraternal twin siblings.

Now what are the chances that two such pairs sit on adjacent tables in a SLV restaurant on a Saturday evening?

Very Low odds I suppose cos this had never happened in the last 3.5 years. Also there were about 8 other empty tables in the restaurant at that time to consider if you really want to pin those chances very low.

While enjoying rava idlis & chaat at SLV, JP Nagar (if you are a food freak like me you should visit that place :-)) We were rather refreshed to meet a family similar to ours. Husband, Wife & Twin girls. The girls are in their 4th year too and about a couple of months elder to neha & nidhi. We stared at their kids and vice versa followed by little nods with partners to confirm and then we started talking - "are they twins, how old, names, how tough is it to manage..."

That pair is named ananya & amulya and looked very similar initially. A second look and closer observation of their features indicated that they are very different in fact (as different looks wise as neha & nidhi). Even in that pair, the second one seemed more dominant physically. Amulya was donning nidhi's role in that family.

to be a good teacher, be a good student first

2007-11-26T13:47:00.000+05:30

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

2007-11-24T21:08:00.000+05:30

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

2007-11-22T11:50:00.000+05:30

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

2007-11-19T12:11:00.001+05:30

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

2007-11-16T10:59:00.000+05:30

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

2007-11-14T13:44:00.000+05:30

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

2007-11-12T21:21:00.000+05:30

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

2007-11-02T19:01:00.000+05:30

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)

2007-10-24T11:45:00.000+05:30

02 April 2004 @ 8:30 or so in the evening, K R Hospital, Hanumanthanagar
Pediatrician Dr. Santosh (who later became kids' doctor) peeped out of the OT room and asked "who is srikanth?" to a crowd of about 20+ people that had assembled in the lobby. I pushed & shoved people to stand in front of him as fast as I could. He said "you're blessed with twin daughters". It was one of rare moments in life that the grin does not go away and the mind is blank. i guess emotions & plain happiness fills your brain so much that thoughts drown in them.

I asked the cliched question that husbands ask "how is my wife doing". He said she is doing great and was in fact chatting with us through most of the operation! I felt a little cheated. Cos for more than an hour, I was tense like hell, cried a couple of times, tried to calm my mother, then cried with her. Life was teaching me the exact meaning of word "helplessness" during that difficult hour. I was thinking there must be something that I can do to help veena through those moments. And she was chatting with the doctors!

I had told my mother and others that I should be the first one to hold my daughters. So nobody dared to come near the OT door where I was waiting for my daughters. The nurse handed out neha first. Tiny weeny, she looked like a small photocopy of myself. very similar lips, forehead, face structure. bundled in a shawl, she was all of 2 kgs at birth! I carried her all the way to the room at put her in the cradle or handed her over to my mother (i don't remember). And then I rushed to the OT room entrance again waiting for nidhi. Nurse let me inside the outer room of OT to have a peek. They were giving nidhi a bath and then wrapped her and gave to me. She was plumper & had huge cheeks. they were falling down to the side as she had tilted her head a little. I thought she was heavier than 2.75 kgs that she was at birth.

Neha was born at 8:23 pm while Nidhi was born at 8:24 pm. It is funny cos one of the most common questions that people have asked me is "by how many minutes is neha elder to nidhi?"
the background of their question is probably when mothers used to deliver twins through normal birth. Since it was a c-section operation, I reply back " they are separated by a minute & that is the time the doctor took to pull out the second one :-)"

I've attached the first snaps of neha & nidhi (taken on 03 April), their second day.

ಕುಕ್ಕರ್ ಥರ

2007-10-23T16:59:00.000+05:30

this incident happened about 6 months back. veena was busy in kitchen while neha & nidhi were playing in the living room. they were creating a lot of noise and toys were thrown around. veena came to the living room, saw the mess & started shouting at them. neha watched her for a while with her usual sharp stare and cut veena's lecture by saying "ಏನಮ್ಮ, ಒಳ್ಳೆ ಕುಕ್ಕರ್ ಥರ ಕೂಗ್ತಾ ಇದ್ಧೀಯ?"*

* - yenamma olle cooker thara koogtha idheeya

ಸತ್ತು ಹೋಗ್ತ್ಹಿಯಾ?

2007-10-23T16:52:00.000+05:30

when nidhi was around 2 years & was adding new words to her vocabulary rapidly, I realized she had heard about "sattu hogu" (die) and somehow seemed to know what that means.

One day I was back home from office early and down with my migraine headache. As always I popped in a pill, slept in the room with lights off. Nidhi came inside the room, patted on my chest & asked
"ಏನು ಆಯಿತು ಅಪ್ಪ?" *
I said "ತಲೆ ನೋವು ಚಿನ್ನಿ" *
she enquired "ಸತ್ತು ಹೋಗ್ತ್ಹಿಯಾ?"*

* - yenu aithu appa
- thale novu chinni
- sattu hogtheeyaa?

Finally!

2007-10-23T16:47:00.000+05:30

my first blog!!
And it is not about me but a blogspot for my daughters!

I have trouble expressing myself well through speech so forget blogging. But I want to capture the great moments during their growing years.

This blog is a bank of memories for me & others who know Neha & Nidhi.

I find it exciting even now when my parents or aunt or somebody talk about the pranks i was doing when I was a kid. I remember quite a few things I've done say after my 10th year but not before that. I think it'll be fun to record such stuff for my kids. I'm sure these snippets would be worth crores as I age & my memory starts fading. I can always look back & smile at these.