Games Behind Doors

We've all been at home for more than a year now. Not just adults, but kids have adapted to being inside the four walls. Although not an ideal situation at all, kids have learnt to play all sorts of games at home, whether alone, with parents, siblings, or even friends.

Online hobby classes, games, school, tuition, and even get togethers have become the much-needed social interaction windows for children.

But kids are amazingly resilient and adaptive. Not just physically, mentally and emotionally too. They have invented newer games to play at home, even learning to play with each other through the online sessions, and across balconies.

My seven-year old daughter has concocted imaginative games for not just herself, but also for us adults to be involved in. And I'm rather proud to say that I've stolen some of her games to use them as ice-breakers for my team meetings.

Since last year, we started with simple word games such as Name-Place-Animal-Thing and Animal-Sounds moving on to Using Rhyming Words in a limerick, Jumbled Words, Describe an object in the room. It's been amazing to see how my daughter has improved her prowess at words and language.

We've played Chess, Snakes & Ladders, Uno, Carrom, Guess Who?, Pictureka, Scrabble, and some board games that she invented on her own. We've done hide-n-seek, role playing (doctor-doctor, school, hotel, visit to beach, staying in awesome hotels with room service, which is of course provided by my daughter).

She has been a traffic police, doctor and patient, teacher, PT instructor, yoga instructor, pilot, cruise captain, fire fighter, police, paramedic helper, ambulance (the vehicle, all with the beeper sound) and even a robot over the last year. How can you say that the year has not been happening and exhaustive?

I've seen her play and chat with her friends through online meetings, holding art classes for her friends, story telling sessions with her grandpa, and even daily video calls with grandma showing her new plants, activities, and even reading out stories.

She has written funny stories, a few chapters of two new novels, spooky stories, comic books, Chacha Chaudhary stories, and has moved on to write poems.

What is incredible is how imaginative this new life behind doors has been. I don't deny that kids haven't had enough physical activities, and they are missing out on playing out in the open. Yet, they have learnt and adapted.

There are a couple of kids who stay in a building opposite my house. They both stay on two different floors, but their balconies open out to the same side. Throughout the day, they are constantly calling each other, asking questions about daily routines, such as have you had your lunch, what are you having for lunch, what are you doing now, and all such questions, providing an awesome, free entertainment for us.

The other day, they decided to play hide and seek. I admit that this has been the most creative and imaginative hide-n-seek play that I have ever heard. Each took turn crying out, "Alright, I am ready! Guess where I am hiding!" Mind you, this is across balconies and across floors. The kids are at their own houses. And they are just imaging themselves hiding in the places. So the other kid would guess, "Under the bed, inside a cupboard, behind the sofa!" It was so much fun to hear them play!

I was not just astonished at their imagination but extremely proud at seeing them so adaptive and innovative.

We've all been harping about how excessively and utterly boring it has been being stuck inside the four walls. But we forget that windows, doors, balconies, and terraces are still open!

The Shapes In The Clouds

Dragon, alien, crocodile, fox, alligator, and a whole bunch of them you'll see if you choose to. But do you even look up? I don't. Or to be accurate, I'd forgotten till my daughter reminded me to!

This little exercise started in our household when my daughter read a lesson in her English book about how a little boy finds new shapes in the clouds. Their homework for that day was to go look out the window and find shapes in the sky. And how we do that everyday. Even when we are out riding in a car.

Boy! How we have really missed out on those carefree things! Those little things that made up our childhood. That finger crossing that we did when we saw a red mail van, those pencil shavings that we kept in water overnight hoping that they would turn into erasers (duh!), the small designs that we cut and preserved from the wedding invitations that we received in the hope of using them for making greetings and then not using them because we liked them too much!

Innocent things that didn't matter to anyone but to yourself. A little ghungroo that you found on the road that you've still kept, an ice-cream shaped eraser that you got as a birthday present, that peacock feather that your dad got for you on a rainy day, a keychain that your best friend gave you. So many things, now lost to antiquity, boxed up in a long-forgotten drawer of an old table.

As my girl grows, I find my own childhood in her. Some of the things that she does or says remind me of how we grew up, what our aspirations were, how our playmates were! Our childhood is far behind us, but our kids bring back those memories that help us relive them.

I don't regret growing up. But I do love it when my girl reminds me of what we did when we were kids. And it does make my heart carefree to do some of those things again.

I found an octopus today in the sky. What did you find?

Work From Home, Work At Home, And Home Work

 ... that's our new normal! Each one of us is doing this. I could also add a few more...No Work So At Home, Not Working From Home, Never Want To Work From Home, Enough Of Work From Home....

This new normal has really become a different life from what we had five months ago. Nothing had prepared us for this phase of our life. When we started with this lockdown, we had assumed that it will be short-lived. But now after five months, our lives are irrevocably changed.

Being cooped up at home has changed our lifestyle. We are now spending so much time at home, just looking out of the window that I've now reconciled myself to the feeling of being a caged animal in a zoo. We really don't have a life outside. 

Milk, food, vegetables, groceries, even non-essential items are now delivered to our places. We just open our doors to our cages, get the parcels in and barricade ourselves back in our cages. No wonder zoo animals have such busy lives!

Back in March when the lockdown started, it was summer. The harsh summer set in April and we were glad we weren't out in the scorching sun travelling to work and back. Kids enjoyed extended holidays, exams were canceled, and for them it was heaven being home. Of course they did miss playing outside and meeting friends. But slowly, we all accepted the new normal.

As April galloped into May, our life had turned upside down. Mall visits, evening drives, shopping sprees, friend meetups all morphed into cooking, cleaning, standing in self-distanced queues for essentials, working from home, entertaining kids at home, and surviving on meager supplies. Shops were closed and stepping out of the house was strictly forbidden.

Most of the kids have adapted faster than the parents. They are all tech savvy, attending schools and co-curricular activities online. I've seen kids who are giving interviews online, solving puzzles, learning gaming and coding, all through the internet. Earlier, parents fought to keep the screen time limited for their kids. Now, parents have no choice but to allow kids to learn online.

My family is no exception to these changes. My kiddo attends school three hours a day and then moves on to watch her favourite cartoons and shows online. Add to that the TV that she watches and her screen time has exponentially increased.

 When we keep her away from the screen, she devises different games for us. Some of the games that she has devised are: Danger crossing race, Guess the word, Clock game, Chocolate fair, Running competition, Karate exercises, Dance classes, Mask making competition. Almost every day, she comes up with a new game in which Aaya-Baba are the opponents. The games have elaborate rules, and not adhering to them ends in us getting expelled out of the game, or worse, double punishment. Thankfully, the game conductor is biased towards Aaya, and ensures that Aaya wins most of the time!

The other big part of the day is home work. And I'm not talking about the homework that my girl gets from her school. This is the homework that I need to do that she assigns me.

And that is the reason why I am so very busy these day! Imagine how much writing and work I need to do at home: usual office work, household chores, and my school homework.

The pandemic has brought so many changes in our lives that it is hard to imagine how it was a mere five months ago. We are still unsure of how it will be, or in fact, whether it will ever be completely normal again.

Till then work from home!  

Revisions

Exams are on and my days end with revisions. Not for my little one who's taking her mid-terms! The revision is for me.

My little one has agreed to do revisions with me on the condition that I do all her study again after she is done with her revision. So here I am, dreading the revision, not because I am afraid of the little teacher, but for different reasons altogether!

Here's an example:

My work is on the right!

Writing in a four-line pattern is not a joke now. With my fingers that are used to computer typing and not holding a pen, forget even a pencil, it is such a task to make the fingers move to write in a legible handwriting. My little teacher is very strict about not writing beyond the top and bottom red lines.

Whenever I get such a revision, I am reminded of the lengthy answers that I had to write, including the English, Hindi, and Marathi essays in school.

I also need to remember to (deliberately) make mistakes so that my teacher can correct me. The teacher is also very clever. She sometimes dictates the wrong words and "corrects" those in my notebook!

But my teacher is also very generous! If I so much as make a crying face, she will immediately give me a couple of more stars with an Excellent! remark even when I don't deserve it! Such a wonderful teacher indeed!

So the next time you sit down with your kids for revisions, do send a "Good Luck" to me too!

The Drama Of Fancy Dress

The new year of the school has started. We are covering the portion faster than the last year. And in the middle of all this, we get a notice of a fancy dress competition for the 4-year olds in 3-weeks time.

After last year's experience, we decide to start practising right away to ensure that the little one progresses to the final round! There's a preliminary round, and kids who do well are selected for the final round that takes place a week later.

We started discussing what Mahika wanted to be and she came up with the idea of becoming a house! Oh my!! Couldn't she think of something easier?

So then the journey started of trying to find out what to make, how to make, how feasible it is! By that time a week and a half was already gone.

When I was googling for some ideas, I stumbled upon some videos of kids performing in fancy dress as eggs, and we stuck gold! Mahika now wanted to be an egg!

The next phase of the journey started. I viewed those videos online and came up with some lines that she could learn. I made her practise the lines with appropriate gestures. She too enthusiastically learned the lines without getting irritated by the number of times that I made her repeat them.

We got the costume on rent from a nearby shop and made an egg cutout at home to go with that. Mahika was all excited about the whole fancy dress competition and the egg cutout.

With (more than) enough practice for Mahika (and for me where I had started reading eng. - read ‘engineering’ as ‘egg’), we finally were ready for the D-Day!

The school was thronging with multi-coloured fairies, Barbie dolls, fruits, trees, soldiers, policemen, pilots, farmers, and animals. There were different types of mobile phones, toothpastes and toothbrushes, Dairy Milk, Maggi, Bharat Matas, and vehicles.

A few odd ones that stood out were a newspaper (Mahika had become a newspaper last year-they stole our idea!), an egg (Mahika), a rainy cloud (with an umbrella having cotton on the outside for the fluffy cloud and shiny strings to the umbrella as rain), and a rakhi.

It was a pretty sight! All colourful and exciting! The younger kids were looking apprehensive. The older ones, who had already had a fancy dress last year knew the drill and were looking out for their friends.

Girls and boys with their different props were hustling and bustling to their classes! All those props made me think of how hard the parents had worked! All this for the drama of just a couple of minutes!! So much of trouble, so much hard work…all over within a few minutes!

Some parents had been smart and rented out outfits! Some had painted and cut and coloured and pasted the props themselves. Some others might have just reused items that they already had…There was this little girl who had become a fairy. One of the parents said that the girl must have worn her birthday frock, because every girl must be having a frock like that!

Once all kids had been tucked into their classes, the parents were all outside the closed doors. Only after the school got over did we meet the kids to know how they did! And all we got to know was, “आया, मी छान म्हणाले egg चं !"

All parents thought that their kids had done the best and were expecting that they would be selected for the final round. But only a handful got selected. Mine wasn’t! Frankly, it was a little disappointing! But then, participating is what is important.

To take it in the right note, as one of the parents mentioned, “Thank goodness the kid wasn’t selected! We don’t have to do this fancy dress drama again for the final round!” How true indeed!

The rented outfit is returned and the drama is over! But we still have the egg cutout as a reminder of the good fun we had!!

का?

महिकाचे 'का' प्रश्न सुरु झालेत. इतके की कधी कधी आपल्याकडेपण उत्तर नसतं त्यांचं.

काल रात्री महिका आणि तिच्या बाबाचं 'Knowledge sharing session' चालू होतं. काय काय प्रश्न विचारले तिने बाबाला!

पहिला वाहिला प्रश्न: "बाबा, आपण जेवण का करतो आणि पाणी का पितो?"

किती 'basic' प्रश्न झाला! पण तिच्या बाबाने खूपच छान उत्तर दिले. तिला कळेल आणि पटेल अश्या भाषेत. त्या नंतर तर प्रश्नांचा भडीमार होता. हर एक प्रश्न वेगवेगळा.

"बाबा animals आपल्या बरोबर घरात का नाही राहत, जंगलात का राहतात?"

"बाबा आपण newspaper का वाचतो?"

"आपण घरात का राहतो?"

"सिग्नल का असतात?"

"आपण खुर्चीवर का बसतो?" (How cute and funny!!)

"How shall we make a cake?"

"How shall we make a tomato?"

"How shall we make bhaji and roti?"

रात्री सगळे प्रश्न संपले नाहीत की काय म्हणून सकाळ-सकाळी उठल्या-उठल्या मला एक-दोन प्रश्न:

"आया, आता तू सांग. आपण घड्याळ का घालतो?"

"झाडाला फुलं का असतात?"

हे सर्व प्रश्न ऐकून त्यांना समर्पक उत्तरं द्यायची ही आपली जवाबदारी.

पण खरं तर ह्यातून हेच दिसतं की ही लहान मंडळी किती वेगवेगळ्या गोष्टींचा विचार करत असतात आणि किती कुतूहल असतं त्यांना!

लहानग्यांचे भावविश्व, विचारसरणी, आणि imagination हे असेच विस्मयकारक असो! कायम असे प्रश्न सुचो आणि उत्तरं पण मिळो हीच मुलांना शुभेच्छा!

लहानपणची निरागसता आणि curiosity आपण मोठे होताना का बरं हरवून जाते? 

New Year New School

Mahika started her new school today. It must have been quite an experience for the little girl. New place, new teachers, unknown faces, unknown surroundings, and new friends. But like all new kids, she put up with it rather bravely.

The day started with us all waking up early, getting ready, and starting for school on time. We reached the school well before time to see a whole crowd waiting at the school gate. Various school vans, buses, cars, bikes were parked on the road. All parents with their little ones were gathered together waiting for the gate to open.

After waiting for around 25 minutes, the gate was finally opened. There was a huge rush to go in, just like entering a theatre for a movie. A total chaos reigned for some time where nobody knew which line was for which class, and how long it would take to go in. In the big rush, students and parents were all cramped towards the gate, sweating, and getting irritated by the minute.

But even in that big rush, the little ones were really brave. I couldn't hear anybody crying. Every little one was anxious, and fearful of what lay ahead. But they all were very forbearing and brave. Kudos to the little ones!

As we entered, we could see the school buildings, playground, and the surroundings. We all took our kids to their respective classes and left them at the doorstep.

It was a big moment. My little girl had grown up to go to a big school. Her eyes were so expressive, full of anxiety and fear, yet trying to be brave, and holding back her tears. Although not completely heart-wrenching to see her go, I did feel a little shaken to see her sitting in a strange place, coping it up with everything. Brave sweetheart!!

All parents waited outside the gate for the first day of the school to get over. We formed groups and talked about the school, studies, experiences of interviews in different schools, and remembered our own school time.

Soon enough time was up, and all parents again gathered at the gate. A few first goers returned with crying kids and there was an eerie silence around. Each parent was wondering how his/her kid was.

I picked up Mahika from her class. She did cry for some time on the first day, but was a bit settled as I picked her up. Today, she didn't cry at all. Bless you!

The first hurdle is crossed. More to go. But to start well is half done!

I am proud of you dear Mahika!

Hello World!

My last post was in the August of last year. And all this time, I kept on thinking of returning to blogging again. But never did I ever get the time, and somehow didn't have the inclination. I hope that today's post won't be the only one this year.

Three quarters of the year is already gone and we are all looking forward to the Navratri, Dussehra, and Diwali festivals, as well as the end-of-the-year vacations.With all this, I am also looking forward to the end of the current release that I am working on. It will be a good release done and also taking stock of how the whole year went by.

That reminds me of how quickly the year is gone. After Mahika was born, I got back to work after a break of seven months. I rejoined in December and it's already almost a year. Mahika is also one and half years old. This past one year has been full of surprises, learnings, unlearnings, adjustments, frustrations, and of course joy.

Mahika is a constant source of joy. She finally started walking at around 14 months and now runs around everywhere. Full of energy, she keeps me on my toes all the time. She keeps herself busy all the time by playing some sort of game, babbling away all the time, following me in the house, reading books, listening to her favourite songs and watching her favourite videos. When I go to work, I really miss her.

At work, I cannot believe that I have already worked on two major releases this year. A lot has changed at work. We have had a change in management and the team has changed. It really is a reminder that change is permanent. It's been exciting to go through this phase and survive.

I keep on thinking of what should I write about in my next post. And I still don't know. But I hope that I'll keep writing something consistently.

Change Of Status

It's been months and months since I have posted here. The last one was in October when I was staying at my mom's place. Now so many things have changed.

I have now moved to a place closer to office, staying apart from in-laws. It was such fun to set up my own place, decide where to put what, buy the required utensils, and generally manage the household. It definitely is a job to keep a tab on all things in the house: grocery, washing, cleaning, changing of bed linen, ensuring guests have the required things, bathrooms are cleaned, maids are kept in check, monthly expenses are monitored. But I love doing all this and enjoy it immensely.

Being closer to office means I don't have to travel a lot. It also means that Sanjeev can pop up home earlier and whenever required.

Having my own place means my relatives and my parents can visit me without inhibition. I can do whatever I can, place things the way I want them, and generally be the queen of the hive. :)

But most importantly, what has changed is my status. In April, I was blessed with a beautiful daughter. I am now not only a wife, but also a mother. And that makes all the difference.

My daughter - Mahika is two months old now. And these days have gone in a whiz. My mother still works, so she could come and support me only for some time. Now I am alone managing a two-month old baby and the entire household. It is tiring, trying, and frustrating at times. But it is fun.

I am on maternity leave now. After few more months, I'll start working again. I don't know how my daughter will cope up with that or how she will react. There's still some time for that.

But the new status of motherhood is a lot of things. It definitely is fun. But it is also a big responsibility. As a mother, I need to take care of so many things for the baby. Playing with the baby, feeding, nursing, bathing, nappy changing, all those things are obviously there. But what comes naturally is the unconditional love that is showered on the baby. Even with the sleepless nights, frustrating times, and constant attention that the baby requires, one look at the baby and you know you can do anything for it.

So far, things have gone well. I am sure I'll enjoy it more as Mahika grows. Sanjeev and I are both tremendously happy that we have a daughter. Now, it's impossible to think of a world without her. Bless you Mahika!