Bangalore Roller Coaster

We have been disturbed about the charm that the Television holds over kids, more so over our daughter. Once the television is turned on, her perception of everyone else is turned off. You can say anything you like to her and she is likely to be transfixed watching the latest advertisement and totally oblivious to you and your rising anger. What started as a welcome distraction in the beginning suddenly became an unmanageable demon. Soon she learnt the names and times of the cartoons she wants to watch and how to tune in to her favourite channels. When I wanted her to start eating by herself, I used it as a bait, told her that she could watch cartoons only if she ate by herself rather than the maid or myself feeding her.She rose to the occasion and ate whatever was placed in front of her. The only catch was someone had to rouse her from her reverie and continually ask her to take the next bite, pick up the next morsel. There was no respite even during the commercial breaks much to my...

My daughter has learnt the alphabets and she is into the phonetic joining of words.. or so she thinks. She reads the alphabets off our car 'V-E-R-N-A' and tells me 'Mummy I know this is Verna'. Then she read it off 'I-N-N-O-V-A' and told me 'I know this means 'Innova'. So far so good. She is really scared of the elevator as my MIL scares her that she will get trapped inside it. I prefer it this way as it ensures that she never tries to take it on her own. Most times if she misbehaves in the lift, we tell her we might get trapped. The lift in my BIL's apartment has been acting up lately and quite a few times people have been trapped inside for a few minutes and the prospect is scary. She has figured out the numbers on the elevator panel stand for floors, the door-close/open signs are also obvious. But there are two more buttons, which even I do not know what they stand for. So we tell her that if you press any of the buttons unnecessarily, the lif...

Or should I say 'Padmabhusahan Jagjit Singh's concert' as the announcer always referred to him. It was a bit of a disappointment as Jagjit Singh never connected with the audience. I think part of the charm of attending a live concert is the connection that the performer makes with his audience. Jagjit Singh came, wished everyone a 'Good Evening' and then started singing. The only people he talked to (perhaps to his chagrin) were the guys who were in control of the sound system. He had to repeatedly ask them to adjust the tones and tenors of the various microphones. The accompanying violinist was extremely perturbed as he was not happy with his microphone. For the first half he kept signaling to the sound guys to make adjustments. Two microphone changes later he was slightly pacified. And then Jagjit Singh let him play a long piece to make up for it. The selection of songs wasn't the best, and didn't sing any of his extremely popular songs. The only renditi...

Yes yes, it is already June, but we are talking about the May that went by. It zoomed past me with such speed that I couldn't even get down to collect my thoughts.Just recollecting what it was all about. As Ananya's summer camp came to an end, we prepared for a weekend trip to Goa. Goa is hot in May, and we witnessed it in all it's splendour. Though the mornings and evenings were cool, the afternoons were sweltering and lazy. Spent most of them inside the hotel. Ananya totally loved the experience and wanted to stay there '20' days, the most that she can count to till now. She wasn't too kicked about the beach but she enjoyed the pool. Next on anvil was my Ludhiana trip. Hurriedly booked last minutes tickets to Delhi and got to fly Kingfisher, which was as expensive as the other lousy airlines at that time. They didn't disappoint. Thoroughly enjoyed the flight and the in-flight entertainment kept Ananya busy. Time in Ludhiana flew in a blaze.. yet again. I...

The summer has finally arrived and we can take out and wear some of our summer clothes. Ananya has her summer vacations and we are having the summer-dilemmas. What should she do during her vacation? Is this time for unstructured-play (AKA loitering around the house) or is it time for structured-play (AKA summer camps). I opted for the summer camps and the over-abundance of summer camps around our residence did not make it easy for me to chose where she should go ? Should she learn painting (when she cannot even write alphabets ) or should she try clay modeling (and clothes colouring). Maybe Bollywood dancing is going to be her forte (ruled out by my husband as her current repertoire of bollywood knowledge always makes him uneasy). Some of the summer camps were too far away and I would end up driving her up and down, and some of them were too long (full day-care substitutes). We wanted her to be busy for 2-3 hours in the morning and then have her day to enjoy too. Finally the summer ca...

I have been toying with the idea of getting Ananya's ear's pierced and one thing or the other has been coming up. Finally this weekend we got the nerve to do it. I had already inquired about the procedure and Manipal Hospital informed me that we could come any day between 2:30-4:30pm except Sundays. So this Saturday, myself and my Sister-in-law with her daughter went for the dual piercings. As we waited outside the girls played and created a ruckus and we tried to keep it down. Finally it was our turn, the doctor asked us to come, Ananya tripped along and Akshi waited outside. As she sat in the chair in anticipation she was clearly excited, not aware of the pain she was just about to go through. The doctor who came in asked me to mark the points where we wanted the piercings and I did it for him. And then he brought out the gun for the same. The nurse had told us 5 piercings had happened this morning and all was well. As he pierced the right ear, Ananya wailed in pain not prep...

The US trip materialized at the last moment and I managed to have the worst traveling experience till date (of course barring the hijacking). The Air France flight started off late from Bangalore, we missed our connection from Paris to San Francisco. It was more like they didn't want us to take that flight, as there were no Air France officials to expedite our progress through the security checks. The plane was still at the tarmac but we were denied boarding. 6 hours later with a meagre food coupon to see us through, we were put on a flight to Houston from where we were supposed to take another flight to SFO. With only 40 minutes to go through the customs we rushed through the airport, checking out and checking in our bags only to find out the flight was delayed by 2.5 hours. The whole airport was closed as it was past 9:30pm and we waited hungry and tired for the last flight. Boarded the last leg of the flight, we finally reached SFO in the middle of the night. Rented the car at...

Finally the passport arrived and the visa is all fine too. So I am off to San Jose for the business meeting and it also means leaving my dear daughter behind. I will miss her birthday too and I am feeling so guilty about it all. Hopefully she'll manage okay without me, and these 2 weeks will pass in a jiffy. More posts when I am back.

As luck would have it, just when my US Visa expired, I was moving to Bangalore. I will get around it, I told myself and added this to the long list of to-dos in my head. Of course it took a back seat to finding us an apartment, getting Ananya's school started, getting her used to her school bus and then all of us figuring our way around Bangalore. Yeah, it also took a back seat to catching the latest movies, and then my impending vacation to Ludhiana. I kept telling myself, I will do it as soon as I come back. I checked my mail during the last few days of my vacation and saw a message, asking me to travel to the US and panic struck. It was an important business meeting and I didn't want to miss is, but what do I do now. I called up my husband frantically, asked him to scan my passport over to our admin and asked her to start the process. As the date to take the appointment came nearer, I became aware of a lot of impending holidays. Finally, I managed to secure the appointment f...

Yesterday was Ananya's annual sports day, the first formal function we attended at Greenwood high. She was really excited about it and we too were eager to see her perform. As doting parents are wont to, we had eyes only for her and her performances. She got ready early in the morning and left in her school bus. We too hurriedly got ready and reached the main school at dot nine. There were few parents and we took our seats in the first row. Though we had vantage seats, the sun shone on us brightly roasting us in no time, but we stuck on. We could see the children in their tents, eager and energetic, waiting to perform. After a few glitches with the sound system, the program started just about half an hour late. They welcomed the chief guest, Mrs. M.K. Asha and with an opening speech, the children began their march past. There were kids from Nursery, LKG and UKG and the tiny tots marched on with their eyes seeking out their parents from the crowd. As soon as the kids saw their p...

Rang in the New Year in Ludhiana, with my cousins. It was fun to do it the way we used to when we were kids. We would all sit and watch Doordarshan as it was the only channel playing those days. And one of us would bake a cake, which we could cut as the New Year came calling. Later years saw us add coffee to this ritual, but the pattern was the same. As the number of channels on the idiot box increased so did our choice and we ended up clicking channels and not really watching anything in particular. The increase in the quantity had led to a dilution in quality. Then we all went our ways, some to hostels, someone to pursue their careers but we would meet up on New Years. And then we some of us got married, which made things more complicated as now with spouses in tow, it was difficult to meet up. But this year, the stars aligned themselves and there we were together again, all but my brother. So there were four of us, Tania, Henna and Sukhman and myself. We baked an apple pie as some...