Category: ABC Wednesday

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K is for kite flying

This is a completely wrong time to talk about kites and kite flying in India. But try telling that to the kids. Do they care? Not a whit. And so last weekend they decided they wanted to make kites. Here’s what they came up with:

We used kite paper, some sequins and sketch pens. Fed up of all the sticking and drawing they went on to make some simpler ones that were done in a jiffy. I seriously doubt these will get anywhere close to the skies but the kids had fun. 

While on kites I will not be true to my hometown Lucknow without telling a tiny bit about kite flying in my city. We call it ‘patang bazi’ or ‘kankauwe bazi’.

While all over India kites are flown on the festival of Makar Sankranti around 14 of January in Lucknow we do things differently, just like the twins! For us the kite flying day is the day after the festival of Diwali, sometime in October/November. The festival is known as Jamghat (literally translated it means ‘gathering’). The idea behind it is that all evil flies away along with the kites.

The entire city comes to a stand still that day. Shops are shut and so are offices. The entire population makes its way to terraces and fields brandishing their kite-flying gear for some serious action. The idea of a kite fight is to tangle the opponent’s kite in yours and then cut it off. The string plays a crucial role in this action packed drama in the skies. Known as manjha, it is coated with many layers of a paste of crushed glass mixed with a binding agent. It’s quite lethal and I well remember, for my cousins a good day at Jamghat invariably meant cut and bleeding fingers. Not that they cared one bit as they gloated about the kites they had cut and the victories they had scored. Of course the amateurs only got to hold the charkhi (or the spool) till they finally progressed to actually handling the kite.

Jamghat is said to have been initiated during the times of the Nawabs to bring together all communities of the city. The nawabs were known to be large hearted if degenerate rulers. A story goes that they used golden or silver strings so that anyone who got their kites could benefit from them. It was Nawab Wajid Ali Shah who brought in kites similar to the ones we have today.

One last word: Long long ago kites were also used to convey romantic messages. The only catch – you never could be sure who got your message! It must have resulted in plenty of intrigue I’m sure. 

Linking to ABC Wednesday for the letter K. Head on over for more K posts.

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10 things to remember on a journey without kids

I had often wondered if/when I could ever leave the children and travel on my own. Well, finally it happened. As it turns out the Husband was home and it was just four days (out of which two were over the weekend). 

Off I went.

It felt weird – to say the least – to be travelling without two small hands to hold on to. If you’re a mum too and have forgotten quite what it’s like to travel alone you might find these pointers useful.

1. It’s normal to carry just a single piece of baggage. Nah, you haven’t forgotten anything. And it’s not even important whether the bag is pink, blue or yellow.

2. On the flight, you are not allowed to cuddle people sitting on either side of you (to be on the safe side, keep your hands off the hand rests).

3. If your boarding pass says window seat, you actually get to sit at the window.

4. You can survive a two-hour flight without a visit to the loo. As a bonus – you also survive take offs and landings without admonishing your neighbours to ‘hold it in’ even while wondering anxiously if they will hold it in.

5. You can get through a flight without a single apology.

6. You don’t need to ask the airline staff for favours – no change of seats, no extra water, no extra tissues to mop off said water.

7. Airport shopping zones are a grossly misunderstood lot. Far from the disaster-waiting-to-happen-zones you thought them, they make for blissful browsing.

8. You get to decide what you want to do on the flight – reading, listening to music and sleeping being real options (over visiting loos, ensuring co-passengers don’t get kicked/ pushed, mopping messes and refereeing seats).

9. The baggage carousal is just that – a baggage carousal, not a forbidden slide you cannot allow your kid on.

10. A two hour flight is way too long. After a point you don’t quite know what to do with yourself.

A last bit of advice. Sit back, relax and try to enjoy yourself just as much as the kids are enjoying your absence back home.

Linking to ABC Wednesday for the letter ‘J’ for Journey. Joyful thanks to Mrs Nesbitt who thought up this wonderful meme.

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‘I’


Somedays I want
No food to cook, no beds to make
No laundry to fold, no rugs to shake
No fights to sort of girls and boys
a little respite from all that noise
No kids who slowly drive me mad
Not even their ever wonderful dad.

Somedays I want to put up my feet 
to pick out a book and read and read
to sit in a mess if that’s what I want
to wear raggedy rags I wouldn’t dare flaunt
to swing in a swing or snuggle under a quilt 
to watch mindless TV without a shred of guilt.
to listen to a song and sing out loud
or lie on the grass and watch a cloud.

To rekindle a friendship over a hot cup of tea
A long forgotten friendship with myself and me.
In the books and quilt, the grass and the sky
Maybe that’s where I’ll find a little bit of ‘I’.

Linking to ABC Wednesday for the letter ‘I’ with thanks to Mrs Nesbitt who thought up ABC Wednesday.

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When hugs get few and far between!

Sometime back I needed to pick up a gift for one of the kids’ friends. I took the children along with the understanding that we WOULDN’T be shopping for them. However, the obvious happened. H found something he just had to have. N somehow never troubles me as much as he does. While she sulked quietly H threw a full fledged tantrum. We had a big blow up and walked out of the shop. A few slices of pizza later, when all was forgiven I put out my arms for a hug. And H refused. Simply refused.

“No hugs or kisses when we’re out of home, mama,” said he biting off a huge slice of pizza. “Only high fives,” he added putting out his hand as a concession to my bewildered look (or was it to ward me off?).

This is H – the cuddle freak. H who could be soothed with a hug even at few weeks old, who would sleep for hours on end as a newborn as long as I held him tight, who would snuggle endlessly and when I’d try to move he’d say ‘I can’t let go we’re in a permanent huggie.’ And my heart would totally melt making me wonder why I ever wanted to get up at all.

He was refusing me a hug. My son has officially entered the tweens and he’s not nine yet.

It’s strange how kids change. While H the born hugger is suddenly conscious of his big boy status N, the one who often howled to be put down in her crib and enjoyed being left to herself as a was baby, is growing more and more cuddlesome, even in public.

For now, I’m just glad I get to hug both my kids at least at home. Mercifully H’s hug embargo doesn’t exist at home. However, this does make me wonder if sometime in the distant future there exists a day when he’ll say no to hugs completely. That will be a sad day indeed, though I have no intentions of going down without a fight.

Wonder if they turn back into huggers once the awkward teens are through. 

Linking to ABC Wednesday for the letter H. Do drop by to see other H posts.

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Girls and boys are good for each other

H is intensely competitive, specially when it comes to N. He likes to think that anything she can do, he can do better. However, at the same time he has quite a dislike for all things he has labelled ‘girly’. So it was with a bit of surprise that I discovered him making loom bands the other day. Apparently his competitiveness won over his dislike for ‘girly’ stuff. 

ENGROSSED!!

Even at 8.5 years he is clumsy as ever and can do with some hand-eye coordination practice, as also with a hobby that involves him keeping quiet and sitting in one place for some amount of time (other than watching the telly). I was one happy mum :-).

Linking to Mel’s # Microblog Mondays . Do drop by to see how others are faring after the weekend.

Also, linking to ABC Wednesday for the letter E for Engrossed.

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On a somewhat related note I stumbled across this debate here on the Net about whether boys and girls learn best if they are segregated in single sex classrooms.

Research suggests children perform better in single-sex classrooms. Some maintain that the teaching pattern is skewed in favour of girls since sitting in organised classrooms works well for them while boys are better at hands on learning.

However as a mom to a pair of different sex twins I find myself disagreeing. Of course life would be much simpler with same sex kids, just as it would be easier with single sex children in a classroom. However the education we’re aiming at doesn’t have only to do with scores, is it? Boys and girls are different, that’s a fact. Their brains are wired differently, also a fact. Out of the classroom they have to live, love, compete and socialise with each other. The earlier they learn how to do that, the better.

H and N fight. A lot. Yet they have been teaching and learning from each other with no awareness of it. Without going into whether an ability is a ‘boy skill’ or a ‘girl skill, here’s how..

H might continue to be a Barbie destroyer but he has mastered plaiting their hair albeit shabbily, he knows how to make loom bands and, wonder of wonders, often remembers to put down the toilet seat! He makes an effort at drawing, crafting, singing and dancing again thanks to N.

As for N, she’s as girly as girls come but can throw a mean punch, enjoys computer games and is addicted to the outdoors perhaps even more than H.

Together they’re good!

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