In the name of Equality…

Men and women are not equal. Period. Let’s stop saying that and let’s stop justifying that! It just doesn’t make sense. Wondering what I mean??  I mean to say that we are not made equal…we are made to complement each other. If you look around and observe nature, its creations are wonderfully complementary. Every creation is exceptional in its own way and has its own strength.  Let’s allow that natural, in-built, unique quality endowed upon us by nature to help pave way for a well-balanced society, the way it’s meant to be.  By nature women are more nurturing and caring and similarly men are more logical and result oriented. There is nothing wrong with that. This doesn’t mean stereotyping men and women in any way. There are men who are nurturers and women who are go-getters. Let’s accept who we are and not try to be something we are not.

Today I see this growing trend where parents are often heard saying “I am going to bring my daughter up like a son” and therefore  will not let her waste her time doing household chores and instead let her focus on academics, sports and other important things. Nothing wrong with that, you might ask. What if I say, this mentality is not right.

If the statement means she will have equal opportunities as that of a boy, then all is well. But if it implies that she will not have to cook or clean or help with household chores as if it is somehow inferior to other things, then there is something fundamentally wrong. I recently read somewhere something divergent to the above statement, and that is “bringing up my son like a daughter”.  I feel both cases are wrong.
It’s about time we allow both our sons and daughters to do all the things irrespective of the nature of the job or gender.

Whether it’s a boy or a girl, both should be involved in all the household chores. Teach your son and daughter to cook simple meals, clean the dishes, tidy up the house, do laundry, change a light bulb, fix minor plumbing and electrical problems, sew a button and hem.  This will help bring a sense of equality at the same time teach important life skills. Children who grow up in such an environment will not grow up feeling superior or inferior towards the opposite gender. Inculcating the sense of equality has to start at home.

With the society changing and men and women handling challenging jobs outside homes, our mind set also has to undergo a radical change. What kind of a world will it be when the kids grow up, get married and start a family with both not knowing a thing about domestic life and what it takes to have marital harmony. What will your daughter who has been brought up saying she doesn’t have to enter the kitchen, do when she is suddenly faced with the responsibility of cooking and taking care of a family?  And how lost will your son feel not being able to contribute equally in managing household chores when his wife who also has a challenging job, is equally busy. What kind of chaotic life would that be? What will happen to the harmony of family life?

Implanting a false idea in a daughter that she may not need to do any household work ever and a bringing up a son with an idea that later a woman who will be his wife will take care of all his domestic needs is just wrong.

Aren’t we deceiving our kids and setting them up for a big disappointment and failure in future…

The Menace called Multitasking

I had never heard of this terminology when I was a kid back in the 80’s and 90’s. I don’t know when and how this word had crept into our lives but everyone seems to have become a multitasker and a proud one at that. Of course we had multitaskers before…..umm…duh…our mothers. But they are never called that, they are just mothers, they are born to do all those thousand and one things at the same time and look serene and calm too. I am not talking about these true- blue multitasking angels….

What I am saying is in all this hurry to fit in so many things in a short span of time, are we really doing any justice to the task at hand. Do we even consciously spend any time doing one particular task to our fullest satisfaction, giving it our best shot? Why are we in such a hurry to do so many things trying to just tick it off our to-do list?( No wonder we have so many ADHD cases being reported now).The more number of things we can do in a short duration gives us the euphoria of accomplishment.  This is just to fill the void we feel inside and to prove it to ourselves of our self- worth. Doing just a few things is just not good enough anymore. This is a sad state of affairs.

What happened to the slow pace and unhurried ways of our earlier days?  Summers spent day-dreaming, gardening, learning a new hobby not to perfect it but for the love of learning something new or seeing something grow.  These things need not be scheduled or put under the itinerary heading “vacation time”; it should be part of our regular everyday scheme of things.

Somewhere down the line, I have somehow come to despise this term and see it as a threat to creativity and originality. This word is slowly wreaking havoc in many households.  Women are the ones bearing the brunt of this so called menace. Women are expected to be superwomen juggling work and family life with finesse. No one is to even fathom the crushing load of work that has to be done to keep things running like clockwork. And God forbid if it shows, then you are just not efficient enough.

Prioritize and do what is most important to you and give it your best, not for any recognition, but for your satisfaction. Do less but efficiently. Once you put your heart and soul to anything you do, the need to over-achieve will vanish and peace will set-in.

With love, from mom..

“Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ” -Elizabeth Stone

I stumbled upon the above quote just around the time I became a mom. I realized how absurd it sounded and at the same time how true it was. It literally does feel like having your heart live outside your body. Anybody who is a mother would vouch for it, I am sure.

It’s such a crazy place to be, you know, inside the mind of a mom. One moment, you are so sure of yourself and your parenting skills and the next moment you wonder if you have made a grave, irreparable mistake by following your instinct. Simple decisions like letting them go out to play by themselves is enough to drive you nuts if your child is a little late in getting back home. By then, your impatient mind had concocted thousand different horrible things that could have gone wrong.

You want to shelter them and protect them and hide them from pain and heart ache and all the evil in the world just by keeping them safe and sound in the shadow of your wing like a mother hen. But then you also want them to grow strong and confident, kind and tolerant, generous and forgiving. Now these are not things that can be taught or learnt in isolation, removed from social interactions, disappointments or failures.

While my overprotective mother’s instinct would love to keep them under wraps unharmed and protected, it’s important for them to step into the world and experience all of this, to become well-rounded and well-adjusted people;  whether we like it or not. Incidentally, we would be doing more harm if we don’t allow this transition.

Therefore I surrender to that universal truth and instead pray that I’ll have the strength to love them well by protecting and covering when needed and letting go when the moment is right.

I know that I am learning on the job…stumbling, making mistakes and learning, all at the same time, so please help me God.

I’ll have to trust in God with all my heart to care for them when I can’t and when I feel things are beyond my control.

There’s no turning back now. Those little hearts of mine are walking around in the bodies of my kids, I love most. But do they understand all this I am going through inside, while trying to look all normal on the outside?

An Ordinary Day

Dear diary, today was a regular day

Everything went as per routine,

Nothing out of the ordinary happened;

Just one of those days when

One thing follows the other

In a monotonous sort of way.

That’s when I thought to myself

What an uneventful and boring day.

Then….I looked around

And saw how many of them were

Having a terrible day today,

Enduring so much  grief and pain

How many had lost a loved one today

How many were struggling to make ends meet

How many wishing that it was

Just another ordinary day.

That’s when I realised

What a blessed day I had had today.

That’s when I realized

How we forget to cherish these

So called ordinary days.

How fortunate we are to have a day

When nothing out of the ordinary happens.

So dear diary, I take back my words,

It was an extraordinary day today...

And I’m blessed to be sharing it with you today.

 

Being different

Since when is being different a bad thing? On the contrary, being different is what makes a person unique and unique is good thing.

 In today’s day and age, trying to stay the way you are, in an ever changing world, is the biggest accomplishment. My kid that way is unique and one of a kind. She doesn’t follow the crowd or get bogged down by peer- pressure to look or dress a certain way. She is, in a way, almost fierce about guarding her comfortable way of life and doesn’t like to complicate things just because others (even her best friends) are doing it.  Any occasion that calls for some dressing–up, invariably becomes a struggle. The endless cajoling that takes on a threatening tone, to wear a simple piece of jewellery or dressy attire, turns ugly. Anyone and everyone we meet are like “Oh! Why is she not dressed-up for the occasion? Why isn’t she wearing any jewellery?  And so on.  Sounds familiar….anyone? Honestly, I did get upset about her fussing about such matters but then started wondering….. What’s wrong if she doesn’t want to? Yes, this might hurt my motherly desires of dressing up my only daughter and admiring her in pretty outfits, but if that’s not what makes her happy and on the contrary, makes her uncomfortable then its about time I put an end to my yearnings.

Similarly, instead of gossiping endlessly on whatsapp or chat sessions, she prefers writing and she calls it her “Creative writing” time. Either that or she paints/draws or reads books. These are her routine after-school activities. And it doesn’t hurt to have an incredibly sharp mind either…that way, she doesn’t have to spend a lot of time slogging over her school work.  She effortlessly aces all her tests, leaving enough and ample time for all her so-called activities. For an onlooker, it might seem like such a waste of a perfect evening, but for her it’s an evening well spent doing what she likes best. Sounds strange for a teenager, doesn’t it? Well…I definitely don’t think so and nor should you, if you have one like mine.

Do we unknowingly push our kids to be a certain way just because it’s the norm and everyone expects it from us? Do we regard other’s opinions over our own children’s likes and dislikes?  Most of the time, the answer is a very big and uncomfortable YES. It all stems from our inherent want to be accepted as perfect parents having perfect kids…(knowing well that there is no such thing called a perfect parent or a perfect kid).

Let’s step aside from the rat race for our own good. Let’s celebrate our children’s uniqueness rather than forever trying to make them fit into an ill-fitting mould. They are wonderful as they are, so let’s let them be.

My first batch of class 10…

“A teacher affects eternity, he can never tell where his influence stops” – Henry Adams.                      I realized today how true this statement was….

Today being the last working day for my class 10 students, lots of things were on the cards.  First was a temple visit to get the blessings of the almighty and then of course a class photograph, to be cherished for years to come and there was also the farewell party for class 12.  I got ready for school expecting only these events and of course a small reminder to myself that I need to tell my students to collect their practical records from the lab as a reference for their board exams. Today being Friday, I had the first period with them and that gave me some surety that I might be able to do as I planned before they got caught up with their events for the day.  After I reached the class and handed over their books, I sat down for a casual chat with them, knowing well that this might probably be the last time I will be meeting some of them, as they may have plans of moving to another school.

What I didn’t expect was the torrent of emotions this was going to unleash. What started out as a casual reminiscence, going down the memory lane (some as long as 6 years back, as I had been teaching some of them since they were in 4th grade) slowly turned into an emotional roller-coaster. Soon there was no stopping those tears from streaming down their cheeks. Everyone shared some incident or the other….saying they loved me because I was fair to all and never partial, some said they liked how I always came well-prepared for every class, while some liked the fact that no matter how silly or out of context their doubts were, I never brushed them aside etc..etc…

The most heart-warming one was shared by my newest student who had been with me for just a year. She started out by telling me how I was the reason she started liking Biology, as up- until then she had hated that subject. (Did I mention that I am a Biology teacher? Well, now you know).  I couldn’t believe it completely though, as kids say the darndest things sometimes in an emotional state. As if sensing it, she insisted that I listen to the whole story and went on to share that due to her earlier hatred for the subject, she had clearly told her family that she would never take up medicine as a profession. It seems her parents were really disappointed as they had high hopes of seeing her become a doctor.

Then, one day, after one of my classes where I was explaining the circulatory system and how the human heart works (yes, she even remembered the exact topic) she had gone home and told her mom that she wanted to do medicine. Her mother was obviously stunned  and of course very happy to hear that and the reason behind her decision.

Just like that.....an important, monumental decision was made. So when I hear such instances, I wonder how many lives we touch in this profession, without even realizing it.

Organic all the way....

The newspaper articles are buzzing with this new favourite word of theirs, organic this organic that….now what’s this hullaballoo all about. Is it just a fashion fad or is it here to stay? Who is to decide…
Organic farming is a form of agriculture that relies on techniques such as green manure, compost, and biological pest control.
Oh hey, hey! Now don’t stop reading this post because you are suddenly pondering over the complexity of it all. This is just a definition given in Wikipedia when you search for organic farming.
An exclusive kitchen garden that provides a sufficient supply of cooking essentials for a family does not require a huge space or a lot of additional burden. All it needs is a little patience and some perseverance.
From ever fluctuating vegetables and fruits prices, from pesticide-ridden vegetables and herb, there is only one solution; your own small kitchen garden. And yes, even you can do it. If you think you can’t, let’s see what’s stopping you from trying your hand at this; space constraint, resources, time constraint…What if I tell you all this can be worked out, you know, the space constraint, resource and guidance…umm....the time constraint part, now that no one can help you but yourself.

 Even in a 20-30 sqft space in your balcony/kitchen or terrace you can have this vegetable garden. For spaces less than this, you can opt for a vertical garden. I mean, space is really not a constraint.

 So, now that we have one constraint down, let look at the second one. We have umpteen number of online sites for guidance and reference. For not so net savvy people, we have a number of urban gardeners on the rise to help you give hands-on training and support with a minimal consulting cost.

 Now for those with time constraint, I am sure squeezing in half an hour (15 minutes in the morning and 15 min in the evening) won’t be such a hassle. Just take a break from your facebook and whatsapp and see how much time you can save in a day and the plus point is, you not only get a zen feeling of calm and peace while gardening, you experience a euphoria when you see something grow…from a tiny seed to a sapling, to a plant bearing flowers and then the flowers turning to fruits…oh what a feeling of accomplishment!!! Now that’s definitely worth sharing with your friends on facebook. I am sure you will agree.

So, imagine growing your own vegies and knowing what’s in them while you relish your dishes without any doubts of chemical contamination…feeding your family without doubting the nutritional content and freeing yourself of the constant worry of feeding poisonous chemical in the name of nourishment to your young kids…Isn’t that worth a little time and space in your busy schedule.
Imagine never having to rush to the nearest store for vegetables (saving on petrol is just a side-effect...err....benefit) or ordering one day ahead on those highly popular door delivery portals which are dime-a-dozen, mushrooming all over the city (aptly targeted at people like us making us lazier by the day)
Imagine a terrace garden or balcony garden in every household…Not only will the chemical menace stop, our needs will be met more economically, instantly and in an eco-friendly manner. How gratifying…