Change begins at home and it begins now

One balmy winter morning when Father had been in one of his relaxed moods willing to listen and tell his two little children stories while my brother and I seized the moment asking away everything we knew would otherwise be met with a stern look of disapproval, I had asked him whom he loved more – my brother or me?

“You both are like my two eyes. How can I favour one eye over the other,” he had answered lovingly as I beamed with joy, gleefully throwing my arms around him.

For me, even as a child, his words were an assurance that he did not see me any differently than he saw my brother.

When our son, Sid, was born, as first-time parents, our world unconsciously condensed into our little bundle of joy. During the months that had led to his birth, we built tall dreams, made unreasonable promises and vowed to soak up in every moment with our precious bundle.

Within a week into the soak-up-in-every-moment phase, I had wised up to those lines. Motherhood was beyond what I had envisaged – it was extremely rewarding and absolutely draining, immensely exciting but equally terrifying and often felt so easy yet totally confusing.

We pampered him with the finest toys but Sid was smitten with playing a noisy game of clanging pots and pans from the kitchen cabinet and the toys remained untouched.

A few years later, when we thought that we had seen it all, Little Princess made her arrival. That moment when we first laid our eyes on her was as extraordinary as it had been with my son. Our experience did not deter us from building tall dreams; making unreasonable promises and vowing to soak up every moment – only that we hoped to do it better.

Luckily the experience and the exercise in patience with our first born came in handy with our second. The miniature superheroes and cars that had remained untouched took to her fancy while the perfectly pretty dolls that she received as gifts failed to get her attention.

If one preferred to devour books, the other enjoyed shredding them.

They were born five days apart on different years yet are as different as chalk and cheese. It has been easy for me to accept them as two individuals as my brother and I have very little in common too.

Today, two children later, the weight of Father’s words resonates better and reinforces the fact that we can never see our children differently.

If I expect my daughter to undertake a responsibility in our home, I would expect my son to do the same as they both will need to be able to shoulder bigger responsibilities in the future.

If my son has a dream which he wishes to fulfil, my daughter is bound to have one too!

It is not about flexing muscles with the other gender or competing to be better than the other but about respecting the other and their choices as much as we would expect to be respected. Beauty lies in the fact that men and women are equally complex and made very different from one another, but it takes them both to complete the circle of life.

Here is a reminder to me as much as it is to you – if we wish to see the change in the generations to come, we must become the change by teaching our sons to respect women as much as we would teach our daughters to respect themselves as they would the men around them.

It all begins at home and it begins now!

Hello, WP World, it is so good to get back here. Will reach out to all of you soon!

This piece was first published in the Off the Cuff section of the Gulf News. Please click here for the link.

Smart phone, smart phone on a stick, who has the best profile pic?

My daughter barely missed getting trampled on,

By a shopper and his cart, enticed under the spell of his phone, the real world forgone.

Pulling her from harm’s way, clucking my disapproval, shaking my head in despair,

This man adrift in his virtual world barely noticed, moving on without a care.

My little girl is fine, hale, hearty and enjoyed her time,

For she spent the evening fiddling with a new gadget on display – the Galaxy Note 9!

 

IPads, mobiles and other gizmos so sleek and fine,

Throw open the doors to the splendor of the virtual world ashine.

Wrecking quiet havoc to family’s routine, harmony and time,

Leaving the outdated ones marooned in the real world, offline.

Stealing the pleasure of leisure without FB, Twitter, Instagram or another digital shrine,

Reading a real book or making an actual conversation almost feels like a crime!

 

“Dinner is ready”, reads a message on Hangouts from mother to her son,

He snaps out of his digital dream and stays grounded to reality until dinner is done.

A Whatsapp forward, a joke, a wish sent to your partner on the run,

A conversation that keeps the pretence of a relationship alive, going and fun.

Emojis, emoticons, internet slang and bizarre abbreviation,

An internet lingo for every kind of communication!

 

Shopping lists, weather update, cricket scores or playing a country capital game,

A virtual assistant to your rescue – ‘ALEXA’ is her name.

A tweet, a picture, a status update or a ridiculous claim,

May thrust you into controversy or a spot of overnight fame.

Slouching over the basking glow every day and all night,

We, as a generation, are a chiropractor’s delight!

 

There will not be another Emil Rustige from this home of mine,

Protesting for lack of attention against parents who are on the phone all the time.

For I am the lone protester and the digital dieting mother,

Playing the screen referee to two children and their father.

Microwave the phone, grill the iPad and plug off the Wi-Fi I wish at my will,

But to get all that done I now need a helpful date with Google!

Good Morning Friends, 

I hope you enjoy this poem. Let me know what you think.

Have a wonderful  Sunday!

 

 

 

 

Picture Perfect

There are two kinds of people in this world. The first are those who can strike the perfect pose and get the perfect picture every time– the best of them are gracing the silver screen while the rest are on Instagram.

Then there are the second kind – people like me – who, let’s just say, are photogenically challenged.

Simply put, I am a photographer’s nightmare!

The photographer atop the Titlis who boasted of her years of experience in the field as her assistant helped me with the Swiss costume, struggled with her patience than with her camera as every picture either turned out with my eyes half closed or fully closed – as if I were in a trance or smiling asleep.

The result of her efforts (and the husband’s patience) now adorns the wall beside our dining table and has often become an interesting distraction for our  guests especially when the my culinary experiments have gone a bit wrong.

A friend, who is an Insta-star, explains that the secret of a perfect picture is to crane your neck enough to give an illusion that the subcutaneous fat that is jingling around it has momentarily ceased to exist and the source of light is towards you. Hands on hip, shoulders angled, one leg forward extended forward, tummy sucked in and smile. (or pout)

This must be a work in progress for up until now most of my pictures have had me either squinting at the source of light with an elaborate display of dentition or have eyes popping out from sucking my tummy in.

Or just maybe I am yet to find a good photographer – one with more patience than skill.

Sneezing Away a Beautiful Winter Weekend

The awesome months of winter are welcome with an endless stream of outdoor activities — along with coughs, sniffles and examinations.

I am grateful that we are spared the ‘examination’ bit as my children are yet to enter that phase of schooling, but there is no sure way of escaping the sneezes that develop into a cold and then a fever that makes a burning entry in the dead of a cold winter night when I have to toggle between checking temps, administering medications and comforting a delirious child while fighting off the urge to allow my drooping eyelids succumb to sweet slumber.

It is a joy to see the scorching days of summer give way to cool winter mornings.

Every year, the husband and I resolve to take advantage of the weather and include a walk into our routine, but I have long since made peace with the fact that sticking to resolutions is not in my stars. Nor is a slim, trim and hour-glass shaped figure.

Spooling the tape back a few weeks this winter, I wished to make weekends special by spending as much time as I could outdoors. Once I had zeroed in on one of the many events that would hold the interest of my children and us, I meticulously planned out the weekend.

My enthusiasm failed to ebb even after the husband appeared to only show interest in the culinary options available in the area or when I heard Little Princess sneeze.

By Thursday evening, Little Princess had bright red patches on her face, a sore throat and a rasping cough. We spent the early hours of our meticulously planned fun weekend nursing a sick child who quivered with soaring temperatures.

The rest of the weekend and the next four weekends were spent with paediatricians and general practitioners as we took turns borrowing the nasty cold from one another. I whiled away waiting time at the hospital catching up on the details and pictures of marathons, food fests and other events through the eyes of reporters and photographers of the newspaper and social media.

On the plus side, the frequency of our visits encouraged the friendly staff at the hospital to welcome us with more-than-just pleasant smiles. I also learnt that a doctor’s job was no easy task with getting to meet and greet sick children and exasperated sleep-deprived parents.

With a few weeks left before the mercury rises and our household making a return to some form of normality, we are hoping to go to any place other than a hospital. The husband is hoping to catch a movie, but there is no extensive planning involved for I am not looking forward to catching one of my children sneezing away our weekend plans — yet again

 

Hello Fellow Bloggers, hope you are all doing well. This is an extract from a piece published in the Gulf News. Please click here for the entire article.

Wishing you all a great Sunday.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

I look in the mirror

And what do I see

A strange looking person

That surely cannot be me.

 

For, I am much younger

And not nearly so fat

As that strange face in the mirror

That I am looking at.

 

Oh, where are those mirrors

That I used to know

Like the ones which were made

Some thirty years ago.

 

Now all things have changed

And I’m sure you’ll agree

Mirrors are not made as good

As they once used to be.

 

So never be concerned,

About those wrinkles and flab that your eyes see

For one thing I’ve learned

That is now very clear to me,

 

Should your complextion

Be less than perfection,

It is really the mirror

That surely needs the correction!

 

 

 

 

Good morning! I hope all of you are relaxing and enjoying this happy Sunday. Sharing a poem that I came across and found very interesting and amusing. Enjoy!

Shouldering Technology and the Slump

I know what you are doing right now.

Your shoulders are rounded and down, your back is curled and your head is bent forward at an angle (at about 60 degrees) that is exerting about 60 pounds of pressure on your cervical spine as you read this post on your smart screen.

Now that you are aware and have quickly corrected your posture, you can take a look around you. What is common in all of us – you, me, the glamorous, the cool, the sophisticated and the introvert?

We all slouch.

We, as a generation, have become every chiropractor’s dream.

In the days of yore, ‘Sit up. Stand straight’ was like a chorus that was repeated after every other sentence by our parents, teachers and even by the neighbor’s father-in-law, who was visiting. Practice (and warnings that bordered close to threats) made us perfect our posture.

It took a smart phone to ruin it.

Today, when we see someone slouching and radiant in the glow of their cell phones, we slouch over ours and text, ‘Whatsup. Who are you texting?’

While good posture helps neck and back pain while combating fatigue, it also gives you improved confidence, better memory, increased motivation, uplifts your mood and gives you the ability to rule the world.

Superman, Batman, Shakthimaan and even Wonder Woman are superheroes who stand tall in expansive postures and straight. I am not too sure that they can get away by slouching over their phone inbetween saving the world.

Now that you have corrected your posture and trying hard to maintain it, I can assure you that if this post does not uplift your mood and make you smile, then your posture will!

Good morning Friends, hope you all have a happy and a slouch-free Sunday

Snippets for a Better Tomorrow

One activity that I love to unwind with over the weekend is to sit down and catch up with a pile of a week’s worth of newspaper. A little tower of them, when I have to make up for the previous week as well. It just about feels like you are catching up on an entire series of that popular soap or the highlights of a series of matches that everyone is talking about but you were too caught up in the web of chores and responsibilities to sit back and enjoy. The advantage is that you never miss the details and you save the stress of figuring out that nail-biting, heart-thumping finish as you have already heard it.

I am also among those people who cannot drink in every inch of the newspaper or a magazine without cutting out (read tearing out) an interesting article for later reference or to enjoy a read of the same at another time.

My cutouts for that week will depend on how I feel like on that particular day.

If it is a period after a stint of holidaying and binging, my cutouts would range from  eating right or eating less to a series of yoga postures that seem graceful when performed by the toned woman in the pictures but close to impossible when it is your turn to try. Sometimes it is sport and other times a dose of inspiration.

Instead of cutting out just the article of interest, I usually save up the entire page.

Little Princess is delighted to see her mother tear up paper and just to keep my catching up going without untoward tantrums  from her side, she gets her turn at tearing after I am done with mine.

Now these saved-up snippets overflow from shoe boxes that occupy the uppermost deck of the cupboard. Having realized that the tomorrow has never come and those life changing alterations that I had once resolved never became, I recently took a quick peek into one. I was left in a fix as to what part of that paper inspired me to save it up. I am even left wondering if Little Princess swapped hers with mine.

Now, I might need another weekend to deal with those.

What Do You Practice?