Author: Tulika

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Open House at school

Open House Day.. their first in this class and I was curious and a little anxious.. not about their academic performance, that doesn’t worry me yet, but I like to see that they’re bonding with their teacher. I’d hate it if they are lost in the crowd of students, if they have no connection with their teacher, if they get comments like “She/He is quiet, conscientious, hardworking.” Please… it’s just such a dull, average kind of feedback, the kind of thing a teacher says when she doesn’t really notice/know the child.
I don’t know if I’m making any sense but I hope the kids are a visible presence in their class. Of course I’m here to encourage each ability they have but school brings out different sides of children’s personalities. I need the teacher, to do her bit too.. to notice something I might have missed… to encourage them at something they’re good at.  I’d hate it if their pluses are hidden behind that ‘quiet, shy child thing’.. gosh I hope they’re never quiet… even if their teacher and I nurse permanent headaches.
Thankfully the school has a policy of 25 – 30 children in each class with two teachers… so the child is not ignored. They got fairly good feedback.
Hrit first…
While I was worried about Hrit’s ‘mirror image’ reading and writing,… he often reads and writes English like Urdu, the teacher said it was a common problem.. so one sigh of relief. Then his speech is not very clear and I’ve been toying with the idea of going to a speech therapist for the past one year.. the teacher said vis a vis the class she hadn’t noticed anything significant.. so second sigh of relief. She had issues with his eyesight.. he reads with his nose in his book and can’t see the blackboard and looks with one eye sometimes. I had already taken him for an eyetest a few days back so I hope that would be taken care of too.
Academically he’s doing wonderfully, is genuinely interested in everything academic, loves to study.. yes study.. where did he come from, I wonder sometimes.
.. then Naisha
And then there’s Naisha. She’s really not into studies but she does enough to get by. She makes an effort to do well not out of a love for learning like Hrit but because she hates to leave a bad impression and loves to be the teacher’s pet. She got a decent review thanks to her ability to talk… now that’s my daughter… well spoken, articulate, she knows what she wants.. those are the things the teacher said. In fact Naisha has always spoken well and clearly. Perhaps that is why Hrit seems like he needs help. Anyway, I’ve decided to give him some more time before I go to a specialist.
On the whole not bad at all.
The Husband at Open House 
The Husband had come along… in fact he has been coming along for the past few times. I like the way we have two completely different takes on issues. Each time we sit with their teachers my question is ‘What are their weak areas? Where can they improve?” While his question is, “What are their strong points that we can encourage further.” He does surprise me still, sometimes. I have to admit I liked the positivity of his perspective.
Finally some shopping
At each Open House Scholastic puts up a book exhibition and the kids get to shop. The Husband and Hrit have been bonding over the Solar System these days so Hrit picked a book on planets. After Sharks and Bugs this is his new passion. He knows all of them.. the smallest, the largest, the shiniest.
Naisha is always lost when it comes to choosing something for herself. She takes ages.. yes ages to pick a simple toy. She just cannot make up her mind. She looked at scores of books and in true womanly fashion, was completely blissfully oblivious to the two men getting restless by the minute. Finally she settled on a ‘Princess – Things to Make and Do’ kind of a book and we all sighed with relief.
Right brain left brain
Come evening and I sat Naisha down with her homework.. which Hrit had already completed. The Husband disappeared in the study with Hrit to read his newest buy with him. Anxious that Naisha would lose out on her share of gyan I told The Husband to read the book to her too after she’d finished with her homework. However, “No more planets, mama’, she declared with finality, “I’m going to do some drawing.” And that was that. I’m reconciling myself to a scientific, academic son and an artistic daughter.
Really, God believes in variety.. not just did he give me a boy and girl he made them as different as he possibly could.
A good day.. Saturday.
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For that first crush

He wasn’t the hottest star around. He hadn’t been seen in a film for years. He wasn’t in news either. Yet Shammi Kapoors’s passing away last week filled me with immense sadness. He was our first crush, my sister’s and mine.
The Kapoor Khandan must have intrigued every Bollywood Buff back in the 70s but for us it was just Shammi all the way. Our grand affair was fuelled by the new arrival of the television. How we waited for those Chitrahars when he would come on dancing, clapping, teasing, romancing… all with equal elan.
We’d sit glued to the telly soaking up each expression of his eyes, each inflection of his voice, each wave of his body, each shake of his head. Could anyone have done a better A a aa jaa, or his ever famous Yahoo? He certainly had the Kapoor sense of rhythm. If those were his high points he could also do a meltingly soulful Deewana mujhsa nahin or Ehsaan tera hoga mujh par. We remembered to breathe only when the camera moved away from his closeups.
We stocked up cassettes of his songs.. “Mohammed Rafi sings for Shammi Kapoor Vol 1, 2, 3… ” We knew them all by heart.
I fought many battles for him. Each time there was a Kishore Kumar versus Mohammed Rafi debate I stood up for Rafi not realising then that it was primarily because he was the voice of Shammi Kapoor. We had these huge struggles with our grandmother who was also a television freak but didn’t seem too fond of Shammi’s juvenile act. “One day he’ll break his back while dancing,” she’d comment wryly. However I suspect she wasn’t untouched by his charm as we’d often find her smiling at his antics… juvenile though they were.

My sister and I spent long hours debating the song Tareef Karoon Kya Uski where the song ends with Shammi falling into the water with a splash. Even now she is convinced that was spontaneous.. not a planned act at all.

 But then spontaneity was his charm. Spontaneity and an ability to laugh at himself. Tell me how many actors can look utterly, heartbreakingly handsome even while making a complete idiot of themselves? Well Shammi could do just that. There he was singing Subhan Allah Haseen Chehra in a burkha. Or wearing a weird contraption with the most ridiculous pom pom cap in the song Tumse Achha Kaun Hai or strutting around with a supposedly angry pout while Saira Banu sang Kashmir Ki Kali in Junglee. He could have you in splits even while mesmerising you with his green brown eyes. Those green eyes, squiggly eyebrows, broad shoulders, his trademark bracelet they were all just so Shammi.
He’ll be missed. Sorely.
Really… tumse achchha kaun hai?
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Polish your vocabulary

I found this really cool new parenting vocab on the Cambridge Online Dictionary. Check out which ones fit you.
The helicoptering parent: That’s a parent who continuously hovers over the child.
I try not be this one and have learnt to let the kids be after plenty of practice.
The lawnmower parent: The lawnmower parent is obsessive, smoothing the way ahead for their offspring, doing all that they can to ensure that the future is without obstacles and inconveniences (and in doing so, maybe removing the challenges and setbacks that build character?).
Too lazy to be this one.
Free-range parenting, a relaxed, hand’s off approach in which the child is given the freedom to make more of their own decisions and choices.
This one I try to be… but fail many times… I don’t think I can handle too much freedom for the kids at five years of age.
The hugger mum: puts the infant at the centre of her world, and everything else on hold. She revels in physical closeness – often sleeping with the child – and refuses to impose routine but rather goes with the flow.
Well I like the ‘hugging’ bit but I’m a totally routine person.

The scheduler mum: regulates naps and meals with military efficiency, making the baby fit her regulated world.

… guilty of being this one.
The fleximum: treads the golden path between these two extremes. A paragon of sense and moderation, the fleximum imposes a degree of routine, but is able to relax that routine when the situation requires it.
I would like to think I’m the fleximum but I tend to be the scheduler mum. I’m a bit like the hugger mum too because I love physical closeness with my kids and they do sleep with me still. Though I hope to see them sleeping in ‘their’ room by next year. Hope.
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The Husband

It’s been almost five years since I started this blog yet I’ve barely mentioned The Husband. Oh he’s been there all along… leaving wet towels on the bed, making shoe marks on freshly mopped floors, lounging endlessly before the television, getting onto my nerves yet somehow sorting out my life by his mere presence. He’s the one who pampers Naisha silly, banters with Hrit till he’s stamping in frustration, telling them stories of planets and volcanoes with the occasional prince and princess thrown in for Naisha’s benefit.
Well it’s his birthday today and it’s time he got his due. So here’s the story of how The Husband came to be christened ‘The Husband’ on Obsessivemom.
The blog, started off as a first person account from the twins’ point of view.. it was my perception of their perception of the world… complicated? I thought so too. By the time the kids were in their second year I gave up. Besides it is MY blog isn’t it? I deserved to have my say.. of course it’s another matter that it was still all about the twins, if not by them. At least the real obsessivemom got a voice.
The first thing I gave thought to, was the christening of the family. I was of course OM. I decided to let Hrit, Naisha keep their names. Before they were born we’d spent hours trying out all kinds of girl-girl, boy-boy, boy-girl combinations and all had come to naught at the time of the actual naming because we decided on something totally different. There was no way I was going through all that again.. so Hrit Naisha would be Hrit Naisha.
The husband was a different story. I wondered what to call him. The obvious option was of course DH, dear husband… but that sounded a bit corny to me… besides I knew it would come out sounding sarcastic if I was not in the best of moods, which was often back when kids were small and maids were scarce. So DH was ruled out.
I stumbled upon another one OA, other adult. Hmmm interesting.. except that involved the presence of at least two adults and I doubted if even one existed in our family.
Or there was BF, best friend. Sweet, I thought. The only problem was.. coming from an all girls’ school to me a BF was someone who sat next to you in class, or shared her tiffin with you, or watched your backside while you were picking up forbidden amlas from the school grounds, above all she was a SHE. Much later, as I entered my teens, BF changed meaning as well as sex turning into ‘Boyfriend’ which was really too juvenile to call the husband.
Then I thought of The Guy.. well he was The Guy in my life alright.. ummm but it sounded too impersonal .. no that was not quite right.
This was proving to be tough. I then considered Significant Other.. yes this was it.. the perfect fit. He certainly was my ‘significant other’. So there.. Id’ found a name for him. And then I looked at the acronym SO….what? Oops such a no no.
And so he remained simply The Husband or The Daddy. Nothing flowery, nothing mushy… direct, to the point, unpretentious.. .. just like him.
Besides, Shakespeare did say “That which we call a rose… DH, OA, BF… really what’s in a name? He’d remain the same – chronic workaholic, absentminded forgetter of birthdays, thunderous snorer. We’ve been together now for a decade and a half only because, despite it all, he let’s me be me.
Happy birthday Husband.
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