On cheating
Posted by: inbavalli on: January 24, 2010
- In: Blogging| Parenting| kids
- 18 Comments
Yesterday. It was a memory game at a funfest, with a Rs. 5 soap box being the prize. Kids were given a minute to visually memorize about 15 items on a table, turn away and write down at least 10 items they’d been shown.
Kutty’s friends S and K were participating in that round. K, standing a foot behind S, wrote down about 7 items and then her memory fogged. She quietly darted a few quick glances into S’s sheet and hurriedly finished her own list. K walked away jubilantly with the soap box while a crestfallen S got nothing.
This is the way we are bringing up our children.
****
Ten years hence K would probably make a movie with a story lifted from a poplar blog. She would probably get drunk with the praises being showered on her for someone else’s hard work. When accused of plagiarism, she would probably throw a fit, try to brow-beat the blog author and generally make a bigger fool of herself. I don’t want to mention names and put up links because I don’t want a bunch of idiots trooping down to my blog and saying a lot of cheap things under the shroud of anonymity.
****
I suppose we are to blame for the way the next generation is shaping up. Apart from comparing them to brighter and smarter classmates, we keep advising them to emulate their elders and famous personalities – be honest like you thatha, study like your mama, be brave as Shivaji, sing like MS, cook like your paati…
Why, why can’t we just let them be themselves? A three-year-old perhaps doesn’t see much of a difference between writing like his classmate and writing exactly what his classmate has written. In our eagerness to make our children successful we’re possibly inculcating a lot of bad habits in them.
****
I have no business talking of how others bring up their kids. I’ve screwed up as a parent. Somewhere. Somehow. I wish I knew.
Last month, in the midst of half-yearly exams, I got a call from the Principal’s office. I met her and she brandished a piece of paper. It was filled with formulae that went totally above my head. But the handwriting I knew. It was unmistakably Paiyyan’s.
The boy always jots down important formulae on a sheet of paper for last-minute refreshing just before the exam. He always leaves it behind in his bag. That day, he chose to carry the paper along with him to the exam hall.
He had cheated. I am tempted to absolve him of all sins – the poor thing was under pressure; he was struggling with school portions at one end and IIT preps at the other; apparently it’s very common amongst XI grade kids to cheat since they’re suddenly overburdened with academics; etc etc. But the fact is he had cheated.
I thought I would die that day, that very minute. It was too much for my middle-class, 1970-80s upbringing. I wept so inconsolably that the Principal ended up counseling me. I wished the earth would open up and swallow me, like it did Sita ages back. A month later I’m alive to be writing this.
For his part Paiyyan was shattered. He couldn’t understand what made him do it in the first place. For a couple of days we wouldn’t let him anywhere alone for fear of the worst. Eventually he got over it. The family’s apparently made of strong stuff.
The event has had a positive fallout. The boy has agreed to drop his IIT ambitions, as his dad and I had suggested 2 months before. While he’s a reasonably smart guy, his academic capabilities do not match up to IIT standards. It took him this horrible, totally avoidable incident to understand and accept that.
I’m writing this with a lot of hesitation and pain. It’s not easy to talk ill of your child. It hurts to concede that you’ve been an inefficient parent. But today I feel like sharing it. Maybe I’ll delete this post tomorrow. Till then…
Meaty Matters
Posted by: inbavalli on: November 19, 2009
- In: food
- 14 Comments
I am a vegetarian by birth. And by non-choice. In the sense, nobody has ever asked me to eat meat so I have never had to choose. Most of my classmates were vegs and those who weren’t were so busy making fun of us that none of them bothered to pass off aattu-curry as vaazhaikkai (that’s how all my closet-carnivore relatives claim to have got initiated).
While on an official trinket to a Far East country, we were at a dinner buffet. The spread had distinctly non-floral routes so I reconciled myself to sleeping dinner-less that day. Just then I noticed a chef behind a frying pan, doling out what seemed to be local bajjis. This was the modus operandi – from a vast spread of fillings, you had to hand over your choice one-by-one and the chef would dip it in the bajji batter and deep fry it for you.
Amongst numerous fish varieties, I spotted a bunch of baby brinjals and my heart sang. Down went one brinjal bajji, then two, three…. Somewhere down the line my teeth bit into something that was definitely not brinjal. Obviously, there had been a mix-up in the frying pan.
I was young, naïve and in tears. I didn’t know how to spit it out, I couldn’t bring myself to swallow it. Finally I went to the restroom and spat out the offender. But that marked the premature end of my bajji-only-dinner.
While I dislike the smell of non-veg being cooked, I don’t really mind the fare on my table. We often eat out at multi-cuisine outlets with friends happily devouring their Chicken 65. However, recently, we had a bad experience at the food court of a mall.
Right next to our table was a family of four that had loaded its table with chunks of meat. They cleaned up the flesh in no time and began to chew the bones. Every inch of every bone was chewed to a pulp. And then they heaped the pulp not on a plate but on to the center of the table. Maybe I’m over-reacting but it was totally gross. I’ll never forget the expression of the man who cleared the table.
The Man and I had once been to a veg & non-veg fast-food joint where I ordered a veg cutlet. One bite into the cutlet and I knew something was very wrong. When I asked, the waiter swore that it was indeed veg. I was pukey-pregnant then and my stomach revolted very badly over the cutlet. Sixteen years later, I can still feel the leathery taste in my mouth. Till I die I won’t know for sure what I consumed that day.
> 140 characters
Posted by: inbavalli on: November 17, 2009
Micro-blogging’s principal mission is to gag reasonably regular bloggers, me thinks. Once you begin to twitter, you begin to wonder why you need to bother with an entire blog post when you can so easily get over and done with it in one sentence.
Now I’ve reached that lofty stage of laziness where I neither feel like blogging nor twittering. However, some things I do need to get out of my chest and unfortunately my word craft isn’t competent enough to condense these to 140 characters. So here goes a random post.
- I wish CBSE were a person and I could give him/her a significant chunk of my mind and a whack on the back as well. What are they thinking? Till the 10th grade they treat our children like kids, putting great thought into minimizing their workload and stress. Come 11th grade and these kids – over a 3 month summer holiday – are expected to morph into soda-buddi adults. The syllabus is suddenly vaster and horribly tough. Yes, people have been going through this grind for countless decades and will continue to do so as well. But it hurts when my baby looks perennially perplexed with his performance. Or lack of thereof.
- I won the innerwear war, after all. I’ve convinced Kutty that she doesn’t really need to layer herself like an onion. “If the PT teacher says anything tell her that Amma refuses to buy you those offending tights,” I told her. She quite liked this shift of blame. To date the teacher hasn’t said anything.
- Peer pressure does strike unexpectedly. Kutty loves Marie biscuits but refuses to take them for snacks because her friends would find it un-cool.
- I had promised some time back that I would share the delight when I come across excellent blogs. I did come across many such blogs after that but felt too lazy to write about it. Sorry. If there’s a hormone whose jurisdiction is laziness, I have an excess of it.
- I’m in love with Tupperware. When I close my eyes I only see those green, blue, yellow dabbas. I’ve bought so many of these that people would think I’m running a plastic saamaan kadai. My kitchen is fully stocked with them and quite a few of them are empty for want of things to store. Why, I even love the soft, translucent, noiseless plastic covers that they come wrapped in.
- Our new house is now all wet bricks, cement and staffs and I just love it. Building a house is as much fun and involvement as having a baby.
Layered woes
Posted by: inbavalli on: October 27, 2009
- In: Gender| kids
- 29 Comments
The other day I noticed Kutty wearing a chemise beneath a thick school shirt beneath a pinafore and I bristled. Did she imagine she lived in Siberia, I asked. “History Miss says we should wear a slip beneath our shirt, Ma,” she explained to me. This history teacher surely lives in Victorian England.
“No more of this,” I said in my stubborn mule tone and the girl knew better than to argue with me. She’s terrified at the thought of me stomping down to her school and telling her teacher what I thought of her dress code.
I’ve actually hidden all her chemises so that she doesn’t wear them on the sly. The teacher will never know because in any case the uniform is as thick as a tree bark.
There’s worse.
Yesterday the husband noticed his dear daughter walking like a hippo in labor and demanded that I probe. Some investigation revealed that the girl has rashes on her thighs. I arrived at the cause in no time at all – she wears a pair of bloomers + tights + a thick uniform. All that sweat and lack of air is giving the poor thing rashes.
I was FURIOUS. Why is this pre-adolescent child made to wear tights considering it’s not part of her school uniform? That’s because her moronic PT teacher insists on it. “There are boys no, Ma? So Miss says we should wear tights,” Kutty reasoned with me.
So poor little virginal male minds uncorrupted by MTV, Sun Music and Maanaada Mayilaada will get corrupted by the sight of my baby’s modest polka-dot bloomers.
In that case, bloody PT teacher, make the boys wear blinkers or gorge their eyes out. I don’t care. Spare my child this quasi-purdah.
Today I put my foot down and insisted that Kutty will go without tights. “If your teacher scolds I will come over and talk to her,” I said firmly. The girl, smart IIM-A material that she is, wriggled out of the situation by taking the tights in her bag and promising to wear it only during PT.
Hotel shampoos
Posted by: inbavalli on: October 27, 2009
I love them. They smell good, are easy to wash off and do not make tall claims about nourishing my hair, preventing hair fall or removing dandruff. Their sole assignment is to make my hair squeaky clean and that they do well. They come in cute little containers and what’s more – they are complimentary.
Our Frugal Lives
Posted by: inbavalli on: October 21, 2009
- In: Parenting| Parents| family
- 14 Comments
“Dabbu laedhu”. I’m sick of saying this to my kids, ‘Tuppperware’ friend, salary-advance-seeking maid, and just anybody who asks. I honestly mean it. With a huge home loan EMI gorging into our salaries, the husband and I seem to perennially fall short of funds these days.
This is when I look back at my parents with renewed awe. With a single modest monthly income and no inheritance on either side – apart from a few bronze urulis and silver lotas – they did a fantastic job of bringing us up. They built an independent house and educated and married off two daughters without borrowing a single pie.
That’s probably because back then we hardly spent anything. No pizzas, no b’day parties, no weekend getaways, nothing. Cinema meant movie tickets plus a packet of popcorn (most of which would be un-popped) shared by us sisters. We traveled second-class and stayed at relatives’ houses. Often these relatives were random people we barely knew otherwise but somehow they never minded. After all, we would similarly play host to them at our place.
For all this frugality, I don’t remember being unhappy at all. We were told horror stories of how our parents – in their younger days – had even lesser than what we did. No TV, no fan, no tube-light and no eating out, we were told. This made us immensely happy that we were born a good three decades later.
Two things we had unrestricted access to were food and books. Amma would ply us with a fantastic variety of dishes and fruits. Today, as a mother, I don’t seem to do a fraction of what she has done for us. We could visit the library any number of times and borrow any number of books. The budget for buying books was seemingly limitless.
Appa firmly believed we could operate with exactly two sets of clothes – one on us and one on the clothesline. For a good 15 years, apart from the Deepawali and birthday dresses, I was exclusively on hand-me-downs from my sister. This never upset me. In fact, I would often look desirously at her new clothes and look forward to inheriting them 3-4 years later. Once I hit mid-teens and grew taller than her, our lives became a little easier – we could pool our modest wardrobes, much to Amma’s chagrin.
Similarly, Appa was strictly against spending money on costume jewelry – what we call ‘pee porukku’. “You can save that money and invest in gold,” he would thunder at us if sis and I meandered towards Pondy Bazaar platform.
Today, I don’t buy any pee porukku either. For a different reason altogether – dabbu laedhu.
Generously inspired by this and this. Please don’t sue me for copyright.
It’s your hair, so what?
Posted by: inbavalli on: October 4, 2009
- In: Parenting| kids
- 21 Comments
To the daughter who thinks she’s old enough to handle her own hair:
No, at nine, you aren’t that old. C’mon, you aren’t even a teen yet! As your paati would’ve said, “molachchu moonu ela paayala”.
No, I will not let you chop off that beautiful waist-length hair. That stupid friend of yours went for a stupid bob cut – most unsuitable for Chennai climate – because her stupid mother is too lazy to maintain her child’s long hair.
Yes, I’m a horrible, stubborn, bulldozing mother. But I care for you, tresses included.
Yes, maybe I do view your hair as if it were my very own acreage of agricultural land. After all, I’ve ploughed it with almond oil, weeded out lice, massaged it, washed it meticulously and groomed it for the past nine years. You bloody well shall shut up and keep your bloody hands off it.
I’m sick of saying all this to you in nice, polite language. If you ever get to read my blog, please note that I’m actually capable of more meanness than what you currently accuse me of.
Lots of love (really)
Amma
Scratch a man and you’ll find a bigamist
Posted by: inbavalli on: September 23, 2009
- In: Gender| Marriage
- 18 Comments
That’s my mum’s favorite theory. She firmly believes that every man, given a chance, will let his eyes rove. And his hands – or at least his mind – would like to follow suit soon after. Aeka pathni vratham, she says, is a vratham after all – not at all the norm and a tough stance to maintain.
Amma insists that every man would like to have at least two wives – one to feed him, produce his progeny and tend to his parents, and one to cater to him at an intellectual level. The other requirements fall on the concurrent list.
The Usman Road jewel merchant and the vella-vaetti politician can afford two wives each – the former thanks to his financial strength (which can provide for very many sons and their respective harems) and the latter because he cares two hoots for what you and I think of his moral values. The rest of mankind gapes at these men, with a sneer on their face and grudging admiration at heart.
Now why did I start on this topic? Especially given that the dear husband is Sriramachandramurthy personified, if you discount some occasional harmless ogling.
Well, I thought my mum’s gnyan should be written somewhere for posterity, since she herself doesn’t blog. Maybe some naïve wife who happens to read this gem will decide to sue her philanderer husband instead of calling him a ‘gentleman’.
Oil orgy
Posted by: inbavalli on: September 13, 2009
- In: Cooking
- 10 Comments
I honestly don’t know why I do this year in and year out. Every Janmashtami I crib and cringe over the bakshanam torture and then end up slaving it out in the kitchen, as I did yesterday.
At least earlier I had little choice – my MIL would have none of this Janmashtami-with-milk-and-fruits-alone business. But now I have the choice of stopping with a payasam and vadai but I go all out and make uppu seedai, vella seedai, adhirasam, mullu murukku, paal payasam, aval kesari, siguli and vadai. The only thing I skipped this year is sugiyan.
Anyway, here are the spoils
Adhirasam, paal payasam, siguli, vella seedai, mullu murukku and uppu seedai. The aval kesari and vadai were prepared later
And now the confessions. The uppu seedai and vadai exchanged characters. While the seedai turned out soft inside, the vadai was firm and sturdy all over. I gave up on the vadai but re-fried the seedai and reformed it into something edible. It got badly tanned in the process. Makes an awful sight but tastes good.
Appam has become so passé that I decided to make adhirasam instead this year. The first few rounds got screwed up thus
Early avatar of adhirasam
The purpose of posting this photo here is to remind me for posterity that I should be CAUTIOUS while making adhirasams – let it cook slowly, do not trouble it with the ladle too early, etc etc. And hopefully make just payasam and vadai for Janmashtami.
I’m this mean and unfriendly
Posted by: inbavalli on: September 6, 2009
- In: friend| myself
- 14 Comments
With Facebooking, Orkutting and What-not-ting, I’m suddenly getting in touch with a plethora of henna-haired, Talwalkars-shaped ophthalmologists, Montessori teachers, investment bankers and mid-level executives who were once my schoolmates.
For someone like me who sucks at networking, this is turning out to be one big bore. Now, if it’s just keying in a polite, two-line email I don’t mind it all. But these people insist on asking me for my number and actually calling up.
After the initial 4-5 lines (are you still alive? you married? kids? where on earth are you? do you still eat that stinky maahali kazhangu? etc) I clam up. The next 10 minutes on the phone simply drag, and I hate every nanosecond of it. I don’t want to talk about teachers who are now 70 plus if not already dead. I don’t want to know which idiot is working for which conglomerate. Why, I’ve become so fossilized that I’m not even bothered about who married whom.
These telecons often take more alarming routes – these ex-classmates actually suggest meetings. Maybe I should seriously think of shifting to sub-Saharan Africa.
They say so...