Unwritten Rule: Return Gifts!

I couldn't afford to take it easy - at least not like the other tasks I fervently undertake - making dhabba lists or making my daughter's scrapbook or even doing finger painting with her every Sunday. This was huge and a big deal and the real acid test for being 'the perfect mommy'. My daughter was going to be 4 and unlike other birthdays, I had a distinct intuition that I just couldn't run with the usual cake-cutting and dinner-out-with family routine. My daughter's individuality and earliest opinions of her life was carved when imagining how her birthday should be celebrated. She had utilized every birthday party opportunity to make her own opinions of the 'hows' and 'whats' of birthday parties. She had seen and learnt enough to know that these 'things' should not be left to parents alone - she needs to spell out her requirements 'loud and clear' - else the 'kaamchors' that they are, her parents will take the easy way out.

Thus began our plan and the first of the many shopping trips to find the 'perfect' everything - cake, refreshments, invites, entertainment, games etc. I thought I could at least decide who I could call for my toddler's b'day party. But my daughter reinstated at every available opportunity that it was HER b'day and it was either 'Her way or Her Way'. So my list went from 15 children to about 32 children, because she reasoned out that she couldn't ignore children she played with maybe once a year or saw in the corridor once in a while while running up and down the stairs and not to forget children she never knew, but whose parents usually gave wonderful gifts. Fair enough. Long story short, we did finally manage to meet her expectations - 2 cakes instead of 1, colour coordinated decorations and invites, party games, refreshments with high junk quotient.  But we never knew the best was saved for the last.

By then our budget had spiraled somewhat out of control, but what the hell! it is our only daughter's special day. Then my daughter matter-of-factly asked me, 'Ma what about return gifts'? I was mentally and physically not prepared. I tried to reason with my daughter that nobody would mind because the food, music, cake and games were all lavish and brilliant. She wouldn't hear any of it - she told me wisely that none of the other things mattered if there were no return gifts. I thought she was being dramatic. But she was adamant and in hindsight, I thank her for drilling sense into my out-of-date, laid back mind. I finally had to give in - does any parent have an alternate choice especially when it is a birthday in question?

I reminisced about the no-frills, but meaningful birthdays my parents gave me. 'Ma let's go now' - she shook me from my useless reverie. The hunt for the return gifts turned out to be the mother of all birthday party efforts - 32 meaningful gifts - alike but customized to the sex and age of every child and wrapped and packed likewise. It meant finding the one shop that had the number of gifts I needed, in the budget I needed and the way I wanted. I was tearing my hair in agony wondering, who invented this concept of return gifts? Sheer torture for 'far from ideal' parents like me!

Come D-Day and my daughter is in the best of spirits. We have a gala party, play games and there is a boisterous debate on who gets the Barbie's head, crown, face, shoes and everything in between. After a frantic, helpless intervention and what seems like an amicable agreement, the cake is cut and I manage to calm the kids with a platter of cake and food. I mentally made a note that anything that is remotely home-made or healthy gets passed or wasted. Then the children get restless and I know its time for them to go home, so I am ready to bid them goodbye when they remind me that I am forgetting something. I realize my grave error and rush to get the gifts and ruefully moan that I have not named or packed them according to sex or age. So I let them open the gifts and exchange it themselves and lo! the most fierce childish battlefield unleashes in the very confines of the place that had dancing feet and smiling faces, just awhile ago. Wrapping paper flew all over the place - 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle' be damned! There were children crying, screaming, sulking and I had to finally call parents to drag wailing kids away from my house. Despite my best efforts, I felt tired, shaken and extremely sad to have invited children over to my place, only to return home crying. The only saving grace were some wonderful kids who came up to me and said 'Aunty, thank you for the beautiful party'.

There are a lot of things you realize about yourself, your child and children in general at a kids' birthday party. Most of them wonderful, but some of them are unsettling - like how we feel it is alright that children are conditioned to expect something in return for something they give or how we unwittingly let children imagine they are entitled to everything they want. It is unsettling how our sense of right and wrong flies out the window when it is our children in question - how children bring the best, but also the 'worst' in us. Family feuds over property is most definitely because we want it for our children, most of us become materialistic after we have children. We cease to believe in good manners once we have children - we think its okay to let our children misuse apartment premises, run amok in restaurants, throw tantrums in public and lastly that its okay for them to sulk and be disappointed or bored at their age. Why cant we reserve the fairy tales for bedtime alone and acquaint them with real people and the real world? What is so wrong with saying 'No' or saying 'I cant do it' or 'I cant afford it' or 'You don't need it'? What is so wrong about expecting them to be polite, kind and simple?

Like everything to do with children, it is a battle between reason and affection. But I do not believe in overdoing things for children and so its always best to stick to the truth. Talk to them, sell them your simple problems and grandiose ideals. Be creative - give them new and meaningful ways to do something, encourage them to be different and stand for what they think is right.

I have still not come to terms with the return gifts, hence birthday parties have flown out the window since my daughter turned 6. Its not been easy - but I am glad I have shown my daughter other ways to celebrate her birthday. It is up to us to teach children that life doesn't end when a door is closed, but that it gives you room for other possibilities. So what if they don't get a return gift or get the wrong one, nothing should wreck their endless party.

Speak Easy!

It finally comes off as a breath of fresh air when people can talk your language, quite literally. Especially after the much publicized, ultimately dud of a TV interview people were served up with some weeks ago. So its quite possible to speak exactly to the point, without being ambiguous and pretentious, grandiose even. It was a great read... RBI governor Raghuram Rajan's talk with Mumbai school children couple of weeks back was a brilliant piece for a number of reasons and not just because he said that 'ours' will be one of the greatest economies of the future. Leave alone, 'walking the talk and talking the walk', even 'talking the talk' is a generally tall ask.

The RBI governor's address comes as a bright gleam in a starless, mysterious backdrop that even the deepest and most complex things in the universe can be explained with clarity and ingenuity. He proved that 'simplicity is profound'. Because what indeed could be more demystifying and complex than explaining things like how banking interest rates work, how home loans get paid off, how inflation and insurance works. I have have always wondered why things meant to work 'for the people' are never really understood by them. You can never really explain interest rates except without a calculator or a spreadsheet. Or understand, don't worry. You never dare ask what is the work of a banker, economist or a policy maker involve. Those are deeply guarded secrets shrouded in secrecy and complexity by a very capable and successful cloak of jargons and financial rhetoric.

Simplicity and innocence are fast dwindling reserves and no one is aware or bothered even. The prime KRA of many of the top bosses in esteemed organizations and committees is to keep things off-limits to the common man, not by openly putting a 'No Entry' sign, but by complicating and encrypting it with names, numbers and policies that are not supposed to make sense to an ordinary man, so that RTI (Right to Information) cannot touch them. Don't worry, schools and hospitals are extremely competitive ( a proof of our thriving economy) and not ones to be left behind. Recently I heard a playschool claiming horrendous things like "path breaking and comprehensive solutions for quality learning and teaching" - please note you could interchange path breaking, comprehensive, quality and still make the same sense or nonsense. Where the hell is the child in the above corporate tag line? The hope in all this is that if we can chew and digest these, rocket science is not out of reach.

Anyone who knows his stuff well or is an expert ought to take his wares to the common man - be it arts, economics, politics and even finance - maybe that's what Rahul Gandhi secretly meant when he spoke of "empowerment". At least let's hope so! I wish people were as simple and entitled as that portrayed in the Maruti advertisement where after a long, scientific explanation, they can just ask, "Toh kitna deti hai", quite literally. So who will shout out about the "Emperor's new clothes" and ask naively, "But where are the clothes"?

The Mad, Mad Rush...

It's that time of the year when the nation is not only caught up in elections and seats, but where its citizens are scrambling for seats of another kind - school admissions for their kids. If you are a newly married couple or someone who has nothing to do with school-ready kids, you may ask - so what is the big deal? Well ask your dear friends who have or who are trying to gain admission for their precious cherubs - their decision awkwardly balancing between their idea of fine schooling and the devil in this case, affordability. Yes, newbies, marching your child off to the "perfect" school is a milestone and ordeal by itself. One wrong turn and you end up failing the society, your all knowing parents, parenting and lastly maybe your child even. Or so it seems.

Image from cheekywipes.com

So this piece is dedicated to the majority of the parents who feel lost, confused and burdened by a such a mammoth rite of passage. What should you consider while deciding your child's school? Is there room for error? A fair amount of reading up, asking around and visiting around certainly helps. At the very least, we should strive to understand a school's heart and soul by asking the right questions and picking up the right signals, whilst we choose, evaluate and finally zero-in on the right school.

Meeting with the different members of the school is like meeting with your future in-laws. It is meant to be hunky dory on the outside, but a lot of awkward questions and doubts lurk inside. Don't be fooled by the flash and flutter of honeyed words, pompous attitude and astronomical numbers. Just like a good match is made by understanding each other completely, no matter how awkward the questions, it is better to get it out of the way first.  So here's what you should know about your child's school:

Going the Distance: Some people really feel their child must 'go the distance' for the best schooling experience. If you ask me, no! Choose schools not beyond a 4 - 5 km radius,lesser if possible. Initially this may not matter, but in the long run, it will save you a lot of worry and energy. And trust me, with sick people out in the world, it is stomach churning, till your child gets home safe and sound especially if travelling by school, public or private transport. Travelling miles back and forth at such a tender age is not going to win them any extra points. Life is tough - don't give them a taste of it already!

Play, Plays and Place: Though there is a paradigm shift in parents' expectation of what a school should offer - some schools are still stuck in the previous generation. And mind you, that includes some so-called top schools too. That doesn't matter - we needn't follow the crowd, if at the end of the day, we are hoping for balanced, well rounded kids who have the freedom to explore and choose. That is where a school environment becomes pertinent - otherwise I know of many capable parents who can really home-school their kids. So if a school doesn't offer play, enough place to play, enough opportunities to play and be part of events, plays, programs and meets, don't even think about it.

Middle class approach: Yes class is preferable, middle-class is mandatory. Suffice to say, its always better to choose a school that understands parents being anxious about their kids, that is quite frugal when it comes to demanding money, that believes in courtesy, heritage, patriotism and lastly treats children as children - neither as demigods nor as guinea pigs. Schools that begin and end their conversations with their pass percentage, what they have achieved in the 'past', strict admission procedure or about how many branches they have across the city, country and the world will fail miserably here.

Communication & Platforms: Many people omit to evaluate these aspects. Remember the first few years, you will never know how your child is faring or even what is s/he doing at school. And they are also too small to tell you what happens at school. In such a scenario, a school needs to provide enough open house sessions, events and parent teacher platforms to help you understand what is happening at school. Also no school is big enough to NOT listen to a student or a parent. So no matter how small or grown up your child is, you just should not have a problem meeting the right people. A good school understands that its most important foundation is its students and parents.

Approach to Outliers: You can never hope to educate your child in a place which does not believe in equality. And that means, a school that does not differentiate between abilities, background, potential and nature of children. Do understand their approach to children from underprivileged backgrounds and children with challenges, not to mention children with a learning disability as well as difficult children. If you feel this matter doesn't concern you, then just pray your child does not turn out to be aggressive, hyper active, attention-deficit or even a laggard now or in the future. Schools that don't accommodate outliers, are sure to be intolerant to anything but the best, unless you are affluent and powerful.

Remember the heart of any schooling experience are the teachers and even in a great school, the schooling year is shadowed by the kind of teacher/s that your child is destined to be with. If you ask me, the quality of teachers is the deal clincher in any school and since teachers keep rotating in and around neighboring schools, every school has its list of good, bad and great teachers. So if you feel you are hearing the right things as far as the above aspects are concerned, don't be too worried about academics - definitely a school that gets these things right can pack a punch when it comes to academics and numbers.

Essentially, it means that the most popular school is necessarily not the best one. Any school that knows the art of academics and the pulse of children ought to get these right. Look for goodness, not greatness in a school. Don't dismiss a school because it is new - being in the first batches of a good school is very rewarding. Avoiding the pitfalls of hearsay and popular opinion, ask your questions, form your opinions and make an informed choice. And finally when you do decide, remember the only person you ought not to fail is your child. It sure is an exciting journey ahead!

HERE'S TO GREAT BEGINNINGS! CHEERS!

Resolve this New Year...

".... I never understand, but I believe. Help me hold on to it."

                                                                               - Anon

Are you one of those people who says, "New Year Resolution'....Nah!!! Despair not, you are not alone.But I was surprised though reading the list of New Year resolutions in the newspaper today and it hit me that, "Some people never give up". I was a naysayer too until a few years ago, but the tricky 30s kick in and alongwith it a sense of restlessness set in. Not just because it struck me that life can be meaningless even when and especially if it is perfect, but also because of the unsavory feeling that the best 30 summers and winters have already whizzed past you. I realized life can get pretty mean and miserly if you are way too complacent and even if you are way too comfortable. Purpose and meaning no longer become cliche`s... they become as potent and palpable as the sugar cravings you have after lunch. Ouch!

The 30s are a hard time - I give you that. The trick is to be forgiving, yet challenge every thing you took for granted about yourself and your relationships. Its about giving yourself a chance knowing full well when and how you will fail. So sail thro' the 30s and I reckon there's light at the end of the tunnel - I am simply saying who knows, the 40s could be kinder.

And every New Year - I give myself another chance. Maybe I will fail in a day, a week or even a month. But the important thing is to be kind - start again, continue... whatever! And the only thing that can scoop you up from massive disappointment is hope - even an ounce of it. The silly things begin to matter - those things you dismissed as juvenile and beneath you. You sigh that you, not your life is your biggest disappointment as well as your biggest redemption. You make peace with the fact that life is not about the large, big stuff - its about the small, almost invisible stuff - about being hopeful and positive and kind and not necessarily about being successful, beautiful and rich. And yes, there's also this distant nagging 'ding-ding' that the clock is ticking and there's so much to do and so little time left.

So don't scoff off New Year resolutions - people who made them never got hurt. They are just foolishly persistent people who invested in themselves every year. They are people who believed in the New Year, just the way we sweat to make our children believe in the Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and even the one eyed demon that would come at night if they did bad things. Now, that's not half so bad. So make a list, write a graffiti across the wall, hang a poster, post it on your fridge - whatever - remind yourself you have another chance and certainly deserve one. More people died of disillusionment than of failure. Maybe you are one of the many who says, I resolve not to make a resolution, but beware the numbers on the other side are certainly going up, year after year. Don't be on the wrong side of hope. So do yourself a favor and make up a New Year wish. And run along with it, as much as you can.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU. MAY YOU ALWAYS BELIEVE!