The mesh around us
So high
Gates locked
They walk around morning to night
How will we run
And to where
Do they think
I don’t know where Ma is
Or Pa
When will I see them
Or will I
Where I come from
Was a mad place
This was my way to life
Path to hope
I look for the light
I look for Ma
Pa
All I see is darkness
This cage
Locked
And many
Like me.
Category: Random thoughts
A package
Last week as I was talking to my father about Father’s Day and what my sons were planning for my husband, I realized I should do something for him. I ordered a bag of Hershey’s kisses on Amazon India (my regular shipper of goodies to my father). I wanted to keep it a surprise so I did not tell him about the order. The norm otherwise is to tell him everything I order, I tell him when the item is due and he updates me when he receives the item. Just so he wouldn’t be alarmed while opening the box, I added a gift message ‘Happy Father’s Day Appa’.
This morning around 6am IST, I got a message that the package had been delivered. I did think it was an odd time for an Amazon package to be delivered and thought his alarm instincts would go up.
Like everyday, I called him on my way to work and immediately he asks me “did you order something on Amazon?”. I told him, I had. He said, since he was not sure, he did not open it. He went on to tell me that he had recently read in Mathrubhumi and Manorama online (his net-savvy newspapers for a few years now, since he became a netizen), that mysterious packages were being delivered which someone had not ordered. I told him to go ahead and open it. He opens it to find my small pack of chocolates. His relief at finding chocolates was quite funny. “Ooooh chocolate-aa?” He added, “the watchman said it was delivered at 6am, who delivers packages at 6am? The Amazon packing is not all that good either”. I asked him if there was a note inside the box. He did not find a note. So then I had to tell him, that I ordered them for him, for Father’s day and he was supposed to open it as a surprise and find a note saying ‘Happy Father’s Day Appa’.
So much for surprising my old man with a bag of chocolates on Father’s Day! His true happiness was when my kiddos called him and wished him a GRAND Father’s Day..
The little moments of a heart full of happiness.. tiny moments of immense love.. blessed!
He
His arms carried me as a baby
His arms bore the weight of my education
His heart celebrated my every success
His heart cried at my loss
His legs walked for miles for me to stand straight
His legs stopped for me to catch up
His eyes saw the now and fretted tomorrow
His eyes dreamt of my tomorrow
His words cautioned me of the world
His words strung a thousand stories for me
He is
My hero.
Buddies
This is one of my favourite stories. I was standing at the intersection of Gandhari Amman Kovil Rd and MG Road in Trivandrum. A tall girl stood there with her father. We had just attended a training class together. She wore a brown striped salwar, handbag on her shoulder and books in her hand. Her grizzly hair was tied back and she looked at me with suspicion. Her father asked me if I was looking for a roommate. I said yes. He suggested we look for a place to stay, together. I looked at her and thought, why not? I had no idea who this girl was.
Either the same day or the next, another girl from the training class asked us, if she could join us. She was a short, round faced girl. She wore a salwar with a dupatta neatly folded on one shoulder. She wore glasses and pretty much looked like a mirror image of me. She had the widest smile on her face and spoke faster than either of us.
We said yes. Again, we didn’t know her, except her name.
We found an agent, a short, stout guy who rode a TVS moped of the early 2000. I don’t remember how we found him. He wore a hat, probably to hide his baldness and glasses which he kept pushing up on his nose. He spoke like he was going to take us to the moon. We tagged along with him to find accomodation in the then unknown city of Trivandrum. The tall girl I met had an Ericsson mobile that looked like a modern day big remote. This mobile was to become our communication channel with our parents in the near future, for which she even charged us a fee. So coming back to the stout man with the hat, we set up appointments with him after the training session for the day, and hopped into an autorickshaw to see the place he had found for us. The short girl knew the in and out of Trivandrum, so it was relatively easier than I thought.
During these trips, we learnt a little more about each other. The tall girl had graduated from MES College Kuttipuram and the short one from Jain Engineering College in Chennai. We made many trips with the stout guy with the hat, to various nooks and corners of Trivandrum until one day, he took us to Pattoor. This was the first floor of a beautiful house which the owner was willing to rent. A one bedroom accomodation with a kitchen and bath. It was a luxurious setting. There was a PCO booth nearby to make STD (Standard Trunk Dialling, in case you thought something else) calls. The landlady was nice and liked us instantly. We paid the stout guy with the hat his commission and sent him away. The next day we moved our belongings to the Pattoor house and embarked on a beautiful journey of friendship, laughter and a million memories.
It has been eighteen years since we moved in together – three girls who didn’t even know the other existed till then, one from Bangalore, one from Kozhikode and one from Chennai. I cannot help but think, that this is destiny. Our paths were meant to cross and our lives meant to mingle with each other. We grew from naive (this is the short girl’s favourite word) twenty two year old young girls’ to mothers of children ranging from five to fourteen. It feels like a lifetime, and yet like yesterday when we were huddled in the autorickshaw following the stout guy with the hat, on his TVS, to the nooks and corners of Trivandrum.
May our conversations never be silent!! Love you girls, always and forever!!
xoxoxo
Taboo, long gone
An old post, I wrote a few years ago, yet relevant today.
In the eighties and nineties, like many other girls my age, one fine day I started leaking. Unprepared and unaware. Like many of my friends I was given a something, in hush-hush tones to catch the leak. There were whispers around the corridor to aunts and neighbors. A few months and I whispered to a friend at school. She whispered back to me. These whispers continued in close quarters. Come ninth grade, and the God-given biology textbook enlightened many of us. The specific chapter on ‘Reproductive System’ with the diagrams and parts labeled. Many of us read that chapter and knew it verbatim, much earlier than it was taught in class. I studied in a girls school, so I have no idea what happened at the boys school. Although, now, I can simply guess.
Fast forward close to two and a half decades and I am sitting with my sons, explaining that particular chapter in my Biology textbook. The class went easier than I thought, ending with a Q&A. I know my friends are doing the same and can’t agree more with them about the importance of having this conversation with our children.
Back then, we didn’t have the internet to bombard us with information or nonsense. Today a five /six year old knows how to use Google. Its very easy to be misinformed and thus misled. The children know some, assume some, ignore some. To add to this, they have friends who also know some, assume some, ignore some. This concoction has the potential for a disaster.
I explained the male and female systems of reproduction. My intention was to build an understanding of what their female friends, women around them experience, so they know, it’s all natural. We were all made this way. Deep down for me, it was the foundation for them to respect women. Understanding and behaving in a manner where they know that women are equal and should be respected as a human is a virtue I cannot miss installing, in them.
Talking about physical aspects of men and women or sex education between parents and children, I believe opens that door of communication for children. They don’t have to dig into dark holes, instead can have a conversation with either parent.
I am glad, this is not a taboo anymore. If you have not had this conversation with your tween or teen, I would encourage you to do so. Because, it is important and education starts at home.
Whose fault is it?
Twenty second school shooting in twenty weeks of two thousand eighteen… Casualties, injured, children, teachers, law enforcement officers… I have children in high school and middle school and I am terrified like many other parents. It’s like living under a threat all the time and I feel helpless. I pray that no parent has to get that call with news of potential danger to their child. As parents we hold dreams and hopes for our children; for the baby we brought into this world. The thought of their future takes a permanent place in our minds, the day they are born. And today I feel so bad for the parents who had to forgo of their dreams and hopes. My heart cried when I heard a mother telling her daughter “run, baby and I will come get you”… What a devastating moment..!
Whose fault is it?
Is it the child? The teenager who reaches that darkest corner of his or her mind that the only way he sees out is to kill another. He goes to the extent of ruining his own life while taking the life of others. An extreme form of depression? Is the child born with depression? I don’t believe so. His circumstances lead him to take extreme steps.
So, is it the parents? When their child does this henious crime, do the parents wake up from their personal issues? Do the parents have issues or are they people like you and me? I am forced to think that the parents neglect about their child’s activities or child’s life in general isolates the young mind. I am surprised that how can a parent not know what’s happening in their child’s life. They don’t have to pry into each and everything, but don’t you always maintain that virtual umbilical cord even after it’s cut?
So is it the peril of abundance of resources? Are we paying the price of technology with innocent lives? Today we can search anything on the internet. The internet flows more easily than water. Anyone can find anything in that dark jungle. With nobody to restrict you or even tell you right from wrong, are you misled ?
So what is the school teaching you? In India we have classrooms or homerooms even in high school. There is a class teacher or homeroom teacher when you are in your teens. The teacher knows you and keeps that door open for you. You have the same set of friends. What I see different here is each child has his or her own schedule. After grade 6, you are on your own. You are given so much Independence and the importance laid on your Independence kills the, “I will watch over you” syndrome that we carried while in school. There were fifty girls in my class and I knew all of them by name. We knew each other’s parents. There was a bond. Here kids see each other maybe at clubs or in common classes. Aren’t they to young at 13 to be given this enhanced level of Independence?
So then is it the laws of gun control? Maybe it is. How is the seller going to know if the buyer is responsible enough with guns? In the first place, if you are not a law protection officer why do you need a gun? I have never understood this.
So is it everything? It is. It is the parents, the education system, the laws, the technology that empowers, enables and pushes the teenager to that dark corner where nobody should go. I believe nobody wake up one day, picks up a gun and shoots people, especially not teenagers. There is an underlying reason that has had a snowball effect over the years.
Parents, please involve yourself in your children’s life. You don’t have to poke your nose into everything, but be aware of their thoughts. Talk to them, understand them, teach them the good virtues. If you have guns, lock them up, store them safely. It could destroy your family and many others like yours.
The best thing we can give our children is our time…!
With prayers…
indupatikkal 