The Red Jacket

Anya was so happy in her new red jacket that her uncle had brought from Manali. “Anya, take off the jacket. You should wear it when winter sets in properly,” her mother said. But Anya kept it on. It was Diwali, and she wanted to look special.

All the children of the village had gathered in the flat ground in front of her house. The girls played with sparklers, while the boys were going crazy with noisy crackers. There was so much fun to be had that Anya got home later than her usual bed time.

As she took off her jacket, her heart nearly stopped. There was a round hole on the left side near the pocket. How could this happen? Maybe an ember flew off a sparkler and burnt this hole. 

Before she knew, tears had pooled in her eyes. Her beautiful jacket was ruined. And mother! She would be so angry. She had to hide the jacket someplace no one would find it. Where? Where? Under her mattress!

“Anya, wear the red jacket today. Your uncle will be so happy to see you in it,” mother said. “I don’t know where it is,” lied Anya, pretending to look for it. They were getting late, so the jacket was forgotten.

But mother had not forgotten. The next day, she called Anya to her room and asked her if she had given away the jacket to one of her friends. 

Anya was shocked. "How could mother think that? I love that jacket. I love my uncle. I would never give away a gift he gave me!" she thought to herself. 

She pulled out the red jacket from under her mattress and brought it to her mother. She expected to be scolded about the dreadful hole, maybe even smacked, but mom just looked seriously at the jacket and then at her.

A couple of days later, mother came into her room and handed her the jacket. 

Where there was a hole earlier was a beautiful embroidered flower in red and yellow. There was another similar flower on the right side of the jacket. The red jacket looked even prettier than before. 

Anya hugged her mother tightly, saying "thank you" over and over again.

Sometimes grown-ups have solutions that children like us can’t think of.

Note: This could easily have been a story about the perils of lying, but I stayed away from it. It is about creative solutions to seemingly untenable problems. It is about seeking help when lost. 

Words that don't follow phonics rules: Special, usual, flew, ruined, brought, couple

The beautiful illustrations are by Aradhya, a 12-year old friend of my daughter. 

But I am not all those things!

Vivan was livid. He had had a massive fight with Aryan during recess. He was still boiling with anger when he reached home. Even when his mother served his favourite meal of Rajama-Chawal, it didn’t elevate his mood.

“I absolutely hate Aryan. I am never going to play with him again!” he said when his mother asked him what was wrong. Mother was surprised. The two boys always played together, even during holidays.

“He is a cheat,” Vivan added. “You know why he always wins? Because he cheats all the time! When we play with marbles, he always takes one step closer than allowed. When we play hide and seek, he counts faster than all of us. And today, he insisted I got run-out when I had actually reached before the ball hit the wickets!”

“I thought you guys have an umpire to make such decisions,” mother said.

“Today everybody wanted to play, so there was no umpire. But I know I was not out. He just doesn’t listen, mom. Aryan is a cheat. And always so stubborn! He is no fun. I don’t ever want to play with him again!”

When she saw how distressed he was, mother gathered Vivan in her arms. She hugged him and stroked his hair. 

“I am sorry you feel so bad, Vivan. I want you to do something. Imagine for a moment that Aryan is with his mother right now. What do you think he is telling his mother about you right now?”, she asked gently.

Vivan was quiet for a while. Not that it was a tough question, but he didn't want to answer it. But mother insisted. 

“He must be saying that he doesn’t want to play with me anymore. That I am a bad player and a sore loser, no fun to play with,” Vivan said reluctantly.

“But I am not all those things, mom!”, Vivan added with tears in his eyes.

As mother nodded and murmured softly, Vivan closed his eyes and squeezed his tears out. Just before he opened them again, he could imagine Aryan telling his own mother, “But I am not all those things, mom!”

Note: This story is written to start a dialog with young children about perspective and empathy. I wanted to write a story that is not preachy, yet gets the point across, or at least gets children thinking about different perspectives of the same event. It is inspired by my own experience of explaining perspectives to my son when he was 8 years old. 

Sweetie!

Once again, I checked the bag to confirm it had our passports, credit cards and cash. It was a small anti-theft nylon bag, no bigger than my hand, that barely managed to hold all these things entrusted to it. I then slipped its strap cross body over my bra and stuffed the pouch inside my trousers, before wearing my shirt on top. For my other belongings like the inhalers and hair brush etc, I wore an outer cross-body bag over my shirt. It was quite a chore, and it had to be repeated daily. 

Walking with the nylon bag tucked inside my trousers, which had a lot already tucked inside them, was uncomfortable, to say the least. 

And when I needed to buy something, it was another story. I certainly didn't look very dignified lifting my shirt, digging into my trousers and then struggling to pull out cash or a card from the depths. And then carrying out the process in reverse to put the money back! 

It was no wonder I used to fling the bag in the hotel room at the end of each day. It was such a relief to get it off me, that anti-theft Auntie. 

The reason for all this was simple. We were travelling in Europe. I had been robbed of all my cash and cards the last time I was here alone and did not want to go through that hell again. No way. And if that meant I had to wear a nylon anti-theft bag across my body and into my trousers in the heat of summer, so be it. 

The first phase of our month-long trip was over. Today, was a busy day. We were travelling from Malaga to Tirano to start the second phase- scenic train journeys across Switzerland. Malaga to Milan by air, and Milan to Tirano by an inter-city train. 

As much as I love train journeys, trains give me anxiety. I find platforms confusing. I find finding seats nerve wracking. I find luggage storage stressful. So, when a woman stopped by and offered to help me put our luggage in the storage above the seats in the train in Milan, I was relieved. She called out to a couple of other friends and they all lifted one bag and tried to put it in the storage compartment. But what a clumsy lot they were. The luggage kept slipping from their hands and I ended up holding it up most of the time. Wait, one of them was pregnant- heavily pregnant! Why was she helping me pick up a bag?

That's when I felt it- a hand tapping on my waist. The moment I realized what that hand was up to and uttered my discovery to Aloka, my luggage was magically back down on the floor and the helpful ladies nowhere to be found. All the zips of the outer bag were undone, obviously by the woman standing closest to me. She had made full use of my extended arms and distracted head to go through everything in the outer bag. Fortunately, there was nothing of value in it. Everything of value was safely tucked away inside the inner bag in the depths of my trousers.

When we finally reached our hotel in Tirano, I took off the anti-theft bag, folded its strap and placed it gently on my bed-side table. "Good night Sweetie!" I whispered.

I am Free, I choose!

I loved a man once, but I broke up with him.

Brother was ashamed of his profession, mother was alarmed by his caste,

But breaking up was entirely my choice...

I chose. 

I then met this man they wanted me to marry

He is from our biradari, with a good paying job, but nothing like the one I once loved,

But saying yes to the proposition was entirely my choice...

I chose. 

I wanted to wait a year or two to know each other better

He didn't, and mother didn't either,

But saying yes to the wedding next month is entirely my choice...

I chose. 

He was in a fight recently and broke a leg while drunk

He works in a cruise, not in merchant navy as we were told earlier

But the decision to ignore these discoveries is entirely my choice... 

I chose.

I am proud of making my own money, I am good at my job

But then a girl's real job is keeping her husband's house, I am told.

Yes, leaving it all to move to his village far away is entirely my choice...

I chose.

"Don't worry about me didi" she said to me yesterday. 

You see, I am free, I choose. 

Soar on Aloki!

Seventeen years ago, I had a dream. A dream of a little girl in my home and in my heart. A happy little girl, who would fill my life with chatter and songs and laughter. I can’t explain why I had this particular dream, but it was almost like an obsession, a certain madness. And believe me, this dream wouldn’t have come true without this obsessions and my own mother's acceptance of it. (It took us two to tango!)

Many people questioned my madness. Some thought I was too old to be a mother to a young child, some other wondered why I would want to go through the stress of schooling another child, yet another family member worried about having to take care of the child if anything were to happen to me (my health had never been great).

I looked at these people and these objections incredulously. A child is a gift from the universe. Rearing a child is a privilege. How can anyone look at it as a burden or a duty? I knew fully well that joy comes hand in hand with sorrow, but that is no reason to not open the door to joy. Isn’t that why one is alive? For me, wanting to be a mother to another child was as urgent and necessary as wanting another breath.

And please, I had already done it once and loved every moment of it, so I wasn’t an ignorant fool. Err, maybe just a little bit!

Aloka came into our lives like magic. With my mother chasing my dream as hard I was, all the obstacles that seemed impossible to overcome at one time, vanished in a second. And just like that, a little baby girl in a silly bunny cap became my daughter in December 2007.

These last 17 years have been fuller of chatter and songs and dances and laughter than I could have ever imagined. I look at old pictures and videos and can’t help but notice how sassy she was (her own words) even as a little child. The way she posed for pictures, the way she acted in her tiktok videos, the way she danced to Korean songs, it was so different from anything I had ever seen. From a very young age, my little girl was her own person.

Now as a young woman, she is still doing things that surprise and delight this mother. I never tire of listening to the songs she sings in her honey-sweet voice. I look on incredulously as she picks up any new song effortlessly, making me understand what musical intelligence is. I relish the stylish food she cooks and the way she presents it. I love the way she demonstrates her love for her nani, whom she calls Corna, and for Mallika, whom she calls Minga Nani. I marvel at the way she sits quietly to listen to adults talking about serious issues. I am surprised at her deep understanding of people and her willingness to extend empathy even to people who hurt her. I enjoy seeing her dress up, always aware of the latest styles, yet careful about the appropriateness of what she wears to the occasion. And then, I smile at the way she still clutches Witchy Aunty in bed and gravitates towards candy shops just as she did as a young child.

Today, as I bid her goodbye at the examination centre where she is to take her exam, I felt my heart swelling with emotion. This dignified beautiful girl is almost ready to come out from under my wings and fly into her own world. 

Soar on Aloki! I am sure you will fly farther than I had and make this world a better place than I ever could.

For the love of the thing!

 

Read this today and it simplified everything. 

I teach kids daily. Come rain or shine or snow, I am at school after lunch because I love it. If I didn't love it, I wouldn't be able to do it. There would always be reasons to skip it. All the time, I am thinking of ways to make learning fun and accessible for my students. We design card games, charts, skits, and various combinations of these to make the kids familiar with the language. It's a daily creative process that happens every morning at home. 

No one knows what I do and I don't announce it. Only those who are very close to me hear about it from me. 

But sometimes, I am swayed by thoughts of recognition and appreciation. How shall I talk about it so it sounds exciting? How do I make my work appear important to others? How do I make people realize it's not a pastime for me? 

These thoughts always made me restless and I used to wonder why. Now I know why. 

The Failed Conspiracy

In December of 2011, my mother had a house full of visiting family. My elder sister, her daughter and my son Atreya were all there to spend a few sunny winter days with her. But it snowed instead. Heavily.

It snowed so heavily that everything came to a standstill. Power went off, water supply was disrupted, roads were snowed in, and the government departments dealing with these issues were at their wit's end. Even on good days, it is difficult to get them to react in a manner matching the urgency of the matter, but these were bad days. Phone calls were going unanswered and the local gossip suggested that no one knew how to fix snapped wires and frozen pipes because they had never encountered them before. 

Led by a feisty grandmother, the family tried to make the best of the situation. They made and remade a snowman in the front yard, threw snow balls at each other, read books and old reader's digests, made phone calls to friends and acquaintances, and kept warm by snuggling together in the master bedroom. But by day three, it was all getting too much. The roads to take them back were too slippery, so they were basically trapped in a small cold flat with no electricity, little water and no booze. 

My brother in Delhi knew of the crisis in his mother's house and would call them every now and them to cheer them up. He sensed their desperation on the third day and unable to help them in any way, thought that a prank was called for. He roped in his nephew, telling him it would break the monotony and give everyone something to talk and laugh about. Atreya agreed immediately and was excited to be part of the conspiracy.  Or so he thought! 

After that call, Atreya got busy with breakfast and card games with his cousin. Mom tried calling the electricity department as was her routine, and to her surprise, this time she finally got through. After letting the man on the line know that she was the retired principal of LHMC and Tanda medical College, who was instrumental in setting up Tanda hospital, she demanded quick action! Quick action or else- her voice reverberated through her tiny apartment! 

The phone rang within a few minutes of that conversation. It was a lineman from the electricity department, who wanted to speak to Doctor Sahib ji. The word spread quickly in the house and everyone surrounded mom expectantly as she spoke to the lineman assigned to fix her electricity problem. He told mom in a surly voice that he had to leave other work incomplete in Norbulingka because of pressure from top to fix her problem. This riled mom up and just as she began giving the man a piece of her mind, everyone gestured to her to calm down. No point making this very elusive lineman angry. 

Elusive, surly and a very demanding lineman indeed. He insisted that mom, as the owner of the house, has to meet him under the electricity pole number 52, where he was perched. When mom said she didn't know where that pole was and it would take her time to get dressed, he asked her to come to Amar's shop instead, where he was going to have chai and samosa in the meanwhile. She asked why he needed to meet her at all but the response was garbled. Not wanting to take a chance, everyone in the house agreed that she must go. Anything to have the electricity restored! 

Mom didn't want to go alone, so she took Atreya with her to help her navigate the snow covered street.  They trussed themselves up in jackets, mufflers, caps and gloves and trudged through the ankle-high snow to reach Amar's shop. 

Mom looked around and when she didn't find anyone having tea there, she asked Amar about the tea-drinking lineman's whereabouts. He looked blank. She then asked him about the location of electricity pole number 52, which is where the lineman must be waiting for her. This time Amar's eyes lit up. He said "Poles pe number nahi hotay ji. Mujhay lagta hai koi aapka ullu bana raha hai doctor sahib". There are no numbers on poles. I think someone is pranking you doctor sahib. 

That's when Atreya's hands went to his face, akin to Sushmita Sen when she won the Miss Universe crown, except he was more embarrassed than delighted. He dragged mom away from the shop while laughing and blushing and laughing some more. The prankster co-conspirator had just realised that he had got pranked himself! 

My brother, who never expected his prank to go that far, certainly not as far as Amar's shop, pledged that he would never include Atreya in any conspiracy again. 

PS: Electricity was restored the same day, with no special favors done for anyone by anyone.