Tulika, Author at Obsessivemom

25/06/201615/04/2017

When Chalk and Cheese decide to mix

The twins are back at school. This year is a bit of leap for them from primary to secondary and the sections have been shuffled pretty drastically. As a result they left all their friends behind.

A surprise…
However something quite spectacular happened – something that we have successfully avoided for the past 6 years – they have landed up in the same section. This happened only once before when they were in nursery and such was the mayhem they created that the teacher begged us to ensure it never happened again.

Why we never want the kids in the same class
Not only are we worried for the teacher’s sanity, the Husband and I, dreadfully dread the C word – The Comparison. Up until now they have been very secure in themselves and their capabilities. I am afraid to rock the boat. Then there’s the other thing – Competition. The whole world does not matter to them but they compete with each other passionately. This has often lead to tears for one or the other.

But sometimes we have little choice
However, when I suggested I’d get one of them to change their section, in a rare show of extreme bhaichara and solidarity they broke off from their squabbling to protest in unison. An onlooker would have branded us evil parents trying to separate the joint-at-the-hip twins. So we have finally decided to let them be together and watch how it goes.

For now they are sitting together and coming home with new stories everyday, laughing good-naturedly at each other.

– She is the blackboard in charge, he is in charge of the morning prayer.

– While she sits like a lady with back erect and hands crossed (that’s how one should sit in class, says she), he sprawls on his chair (how can we concentrate if we aren’t comfortable, asks he).

– He lost his locker key on day 1, she discovered her key could unlock his locker too.

– She almost dozed off during Marathi class and he nudged her awake.

– She forgot to take her pencil box, he lent her a pen.

He resents it a bit that she gets more than her share of attention from the teacher purely because she is ‘better behaved’ – those are his words, not mine. Other than that it has been largely peaceful.

Change can be good
It’s been almost three weeks. I waited to do this post lest I jinx the whole camaraderie thing. It’s so good while it lasts.

This got me thinking and I wondered what it would be like if I shared a class or a workplace with my sister. I’d like it I think. Maybe that’s only because I don’t get to see enough of her.

What about you? Would you like to be in the same class/office as your sibling? Would it be one big party everyday or would the closeness get to you after a while?

14/06/201615/04/2017

On accepting differences

When the twins were babies I heard a lot of ‘Oh she looks so much like you’ or my mum would say, ‘That’s exactly what you used to do when you are a baby’. And that would fill the new mother in me with such happiness. If you’re a new parent you’ll know exactly what it feels like. Is it vanity? Perhaps. But more than that it is a sense of reinforcement of the fact that the babies are part of me/us – the better, sweeter, most innocent part of me.

Then they begin to grow, as babies are wont to do.

They are no longer as innocent as they used to be. They will be sweet still but they will also be frustrating. They will have a personality quite their own. They will take a bit of you and a bit of your husband and some of your dad and some of his aunt till it is all wrapped up in a wonderful, exasperating, loveable mix.

Try as you might they will be different from what you ever were, because they are different. They are different people with different likes and thoughts and wants and needs. The sooner we as parents realise it and learn to appreciate them for what they are, the easier life will be for us and even more for our children.

This is what my post at Parentous talks about. Do take a look.

10/06/201615/04/2017

A tween in my kitchen

H burnt his fingers recently while cooking, quite literally. As he was scraping the egg off the pan, he caught it with his hand to steady it, forgetting how hot it would be. We did the whole cold water-ice routine. Once the burning sensation subsided he was fine but for a blister on his thumb and index finger.

I’ve mentioned this before, H loves to potter around in the kitchen. However, as he’s growing up he’s beginning to brand a lot of things he once enjoyed ‘girly’, and has started staying away from them. I wrote about it at Parentous here when I talked about peer pressure and how it can change the kids.

He gave up playing with his kitchen set ages ago and doesn’t seem inclined to hang out with the pots and pans. When his friends are around he adopts this macho air and pretends to be all grown up which I find kind of cute, though he’d never forgive me if he heard me say so.

After his adventure in the kitchen I was curious to know what he’d tell his friends about his hurt fingers, whether he’d admit to being in the kitchen at all.

When they dropped by later in the day there he was brandishing his thumb, showing off his blister like some kind of a trophy. And he was saying, with absolute pretend nonchalance, “This is nothing I just burnt my fingers while I was helping my mother in the kitchen.”

The awed looks on his friend’s faces made me let out a sigh of relief. I can say with some confidence that along with cricket and computer games cooking remains macho in the tween world.

These kitchen adventures are all towards the fulfilment of one single dream of mine – that there’ll come a day when the kids will wake up on their own, make a healthy breakfast for themsleves, dress up and go to school while I’ll laze in bed. What?? One can dream.

24/05/201615/04/2017

Old mess new mess

I’m back. Back from the land of the Nawab’s to Peshwa land.

There’s a sheen of dust on everything in the house even though the maid has been in to clean once. The pigeons seem to have converted my balcony into a mass loo of some kind.

That’s just the new mess – the one I knew will be there waiting for me. That’s the one I’m prepared to handle.

What’s worse, my old mess also seems messier now that I see it after a month. The thing is, some bits of my home accumulate disorder slowly, over days and months, so slowly that I barely notice. I live with it all, in peaceful cohabitation, a kind of happy chaos.It makes the room cosy and ‘lived in’ or so I like to tell myself.

Clearly I’m not a cleaner. As long as my bit of workplace is neat and dust doesn’t come away when I put down my tea cup on the table I’m good.

If I’m away just for a week or so I won’t even notice anything. But when I’m away for a month, I see my house a bit like an outsider would, a rather judgemental outsider, I might add. And all the clutter comes leaping right at me.

There’s that side table that simply accumulates suff on its own, the rather worn out tissue box I’ve been meaning to change for ages, the medicines that need to be in the box not around it..… and so much more.

I’ve been cleaning, scrubbing, giving away stuff, arranging books, changing footmats, discarding faded towels – they fade away so silently I never even notice when I keep seeing them everyday.

All of this might have something to do with the fact that my mom’s and my MIL’s houses are always spotlessly clean and perfectly maintained. The two of them are bad influence.

I do need to get back to my comfortable messy self soon. This cleaning will be the end of me.

12/05/201622/06/2024

How do you eat your mangoes?

The other day I was watching my kids eating mangoes. The fruit is peeled, stones discarded, then diced into neat little cubes or slices (if I’m feeling lazy). I then leave it in the refrigerator to cool till we get on with lunch. Later, the kids pick the fruit off the plate with fruit forks or toothpicks.

Mangoes in Lucknow have always been plentiful. I had once stumbled upon this quote by Ghalib, Aam meethe hon aur bahut saare hon.

That’s exactly how they always are here.

During the summer our cousins would come to stay with us. Each afternoon all six of us aged 4 to 10, would sit around a tub of mangoes out in the aangan. The tub would be full of water to keep the mangoes cool. We’d be dressed in the barest minimum – vests and slips – as we fished out the mangoes, oblivious to the heat, and competed at amassing the largest pile of guthlis. We’d peel the fruit tooth and nail, quite literally, and bite right into the pulp, delicious juice dripping from our hands, running down our chins and smearing our faces.

One of our favourite mangoes was the Lucknow Safeda.

If you know anything about this particular variety you’ll know it isn’t meant to be pealed and cut at all. It is more juice than pulp and has to be sucked on, not eaten. There’s a whole art to eating a Lucknowa Safeda. I’m not sure I’m equipped to explain. Let it suffice that it has to be handled with all the Lakhnawi nazakat you can muster. No, I’m not being a snob – the nazakat is crucial. The thing is the fruit has an exceptionally fragile skin. A little inelegant impatience and you’ll have the guthli shooting right out from the wrong end (of the fruit, of course) splattering you with juice and pulp.

Each time that would happen the expression on the face of the callous offender would be priceless, giving us hours of laughter. What’s worse, he would get an earful from his/her mum because mango stains are the devil’s own work when it comes to getting them off.

Anyway, once you’ve got down to the guthli without accident you scrape it off with your teeth and discard it. Finally you slurp off the remaining juice.

I am sure we weren’t the most sightly of sights, yet it was the perfect way to form strong bonds of shared memories. Perhaps that’s why even though we don’t meet, sometimes for years together, we can take up from right where we left off, the sweetness never varying quite like that of the dussehris, langadas and safeda.

Aam will always remain a very khaas part of my childhood memories.