Category Archives: Family

September 13, 2013 · 1:15 am

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round and Round…

My two-year-old daughter is obsessed with ‘The Wheels on the Bus’. I don’t use the word ‘obsessed’ lightly. She wakes up in the morning singing the song, and puts herself to sleep at night singing it again. Even as I write this, it’s playing on continuous loop on the iPod dock so she’ll let me use my laptop and not demand that I play ‘wheeshondabash’ for her on Youtube instead.

Youtube, of course, is the ultimate enabler for a song-obsessed toddler. There are approximately 5000 versions (a conservative estimate) of this song on there, and my daughter listens to them all. Her favourite way to do that is on her grandma’s iPad, and she’ll hop-skip-jump from one version to the next until the iPad is taken away (accompanied by heartbreaking sobs and huge tears, naturally). She expertly navigates the endless list of videos, choosing, playing, pausing, repeating. She listens to a German version, a Korean version and a Spanish or Portuguese version, the Barney version and the Mother Goose Club version, and a version which randomly has vocals by Roger Daltrey of The Who (I can’t decide if that’s super cool or the ultimate sell out). Atrocious singing, miserable animation, ridiculous lyrics (“the gas on the bus goes glug glug glug”… I mean, seriously?) – none of that deters her, though it can drive the adults in the room to want to smash something, usually the laptop/iPad/iPod.

But technology isn’t a necessity. Sometimes all that’s needed is her battered little “Wheels on the bus” board book, which she carries with her as she goes round and round (no pun intended) the house singing. As a Tamil saying goes, if that book had a mouth, it would cry. It’s usually dragged around by one page, the rest dangling forlornly, the binding giving little by little every day. At other times, mom’s (dad’s, thatha’s, or paati’s) vocal chords are called into service, and we’re ordered to sing wheeshondabash for her (our reward is seeing her smile beatifically as she follows along doing all the requisite actions).

There was a time when she would daintily sing ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’ and ‘Row row row your boat’ and ‘Baa baa black sheep’ upon request when we went visiting or when people dropped in. Now any such request is firmly rebuffed with a “No! Wheeshondabash!” and she’ll proceed to give a neverending rendition with all the stanzas from various versions cobbled together. So it isn’t just wipers going swish swish and horns going beep beep, but also, in no particular order:

–          Doors going open and shut

–          Lights going on and off

–          Money going ding, ding, ding

–          People going up and down / bumpity bumpity bump / ha-ha-ha

–          Babies going wah-wah-wah

–          Mummies going shush-shush-shush

–          Mummies going I-love-you

–          Monkeys going ooh-ooh-aah-aah

–          Drivers going move-on-back

–          And of course, gas going glug-glug-glug

When you consider how much repetition there already is in this dratted song, this is a long, long list. The visitors usually start out listening with wide ‘how-sweet’ smiles, and then as we progress along the list, the smiles start getting a bit fixed, and you can almost hear them thinking, ‘Ok, when is this going to finish so we can actually have a conversation again?’ (especially when she takes a deep breath and starts again from the top). Meanwhile, I keep trying other suggestions, including the equally addictive ‘I love you’ from Barney, but it’s all met with the firm, “No! Wheeshondabash!”. And really, there’s no answer to that.

But recently she’s taken it to a whole new level. Those of you who’ve read this post know that she’s already like ‘this’ with the umachis in the house. Now she’s taken to singing wheeshondabash for them, while hanging out before the pooja area. During the recent spate of festivals, her grandma and I tried singing bhajans, but found ourselves drowned out by the Bus Bhajanai. Any attempts to teach her more…er… appropriate slokhas and songs have utterly failed. When we took her to the temple the other day for Ganesh Chathurthi, she treated the amused audience there too to a loud and clear rendition. What Pilliyar thought of wheeshandabash we don’t know; but at least she chose a day when he was well appeased with kozhukottais.

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August 7, 2013 · 11:22 pm

Feel the burn

Recently, my younger brother was doing what he does best — annoying the heck out of me. He first learnt how to do it when he — and I’m not kidding — was around a year old, and he’s never let up. Anyway, I responded in the same way I have for the last 22 years; I hit him. Or threw a cushion at him. Or both. To which he had this to say, while rubbing his arm: “Man, you’ve gotten really strong.”

That was kinda gratifying, since I always prided myself on my arm-wrestling skills and such when I was a kid. But as I grew older, I got less and less strong, since I got lazier and lazier about working out (don’t judge me). So what’s my secret now, you ask? It isn’t one of those fad diets or one of those cool new workout places in the city. Nope. My secret is as old as the ages: motherhood.

I’m serious. Moms with young children may not always look it, but they’re as strong as most dedicated gym bunny. The reason? We’re weightlifting, all day, everyday. We start at a low weight, like any good instructor at the gym would tell you to — two or three or four kgs, whatever your bundle (dumbell?) of joy weighed when she was born. And then we work our way up rapidly over the course of the next year and a half, lifting six, eight, ten kgs effortlessly. We lift them in and out of their cots, off the floor, into the car, out of the shopping cart. We walk them and rock them and swing them to sleep. We carry them up the stairs, down the escalator. We juggle them while simultaneously working our biceps/triceps/whatchamacallits by carrying assorted bags, pots, pans and cookers, laptops, books and files, etc. in the other hand. And we lift almost double the weight when we tussle with them and/or drag them kicking and screaming from the toy shop/friend’s house/other random public location mid-tantrum.

Can even the most devoted gym enthusiast boast of that sort of consistent weight training through the day? I think not. If women bulked up easily, most moms would have bulging biceps to rival any pro-athlete. And while most of us don’t have the time or energy to sculpt those abs, our core is strengthened like you wouldn’t believe.

So the next time you mess with a young mom, think twice. She may look kinda soft and cushion-y but she’s packing some serious muscle underneath 🙂

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March 19, 2013 · 12:30 am

Telling time the hard way – Kumar Standard Time (KST)

I’ve realised something. It’s incredibly liberating when all the clocks in your house tell the same time. And the right time, at that.

I don’t know if anyone in your family does this, but my father has always insisted on setting the main wall clocks in the house 10 or 15 or 20 minutes ahead, so that the Kumar household existed in its own imaginary time zone. Let’s call it Kumar Standard Time (KST). He once had the clocks turned a full half an hour ahead, but i think the family rebelled and he compromised by making them ‘just’ 25 minutes fast instead.

The theory is, apparently, that making clocks faster will ensure that family members (read: the women) are on time for outings/events. It’s never worked. Thirty something years later, my mom and I are still always late. How could it work when you’re perfectly aware that the clock is how-so-ever-many minutes ahead? All that happens is that you’re constantly back-calculating and having to do complicated mental maths when you’re in a tearing hurry. “Oh gosh, I need to be there by 6.25 so I need to leave by 6.05 ‘Real Time’, which means 6.30 ‘Our Time’…” It’s even worse when you realise that the time adjustment wasn’t particularly precise to start with, and ‘Our Time’ or KST isn’t 25 minutes ahead of ‘Real Time’ as originally thought, but more in the region of 22 or 23 minutes (6.05 p.m. minus 23 minutes = ?).

Then there’s the added confusion caused by the Forgotten Ones. Those are the scattered alarm clocks and kitchen clocks, etc. which were not notified of the time change, and still steadfastly continue to broadcast ‘Real Time’. Not to mention the Losing Time Conundrum, when a clock gets tired of telling time, and randomly drops five or ten minutes here or there without so much as a by-your-leave. In both cases, you think you have 25 minutes to get ready because you think the clock is on KST, but actually you’re already late. See? Disaster.

So, finally, after all these years, my mother put her foot down. No more fast clocks. No more ‘Our Time’ vs. ‘Real Time’. No more maths sums while telling time. She climbed on a chair, pulled down the wall clocks, asked me what time my cellphone showed, and changed the time. One after another. No fuss, no drama. It was all over in 10 minutes. Just like that, a new era had been ushered into the Kumar household.

And I have to say it’s been absolutely wonderful. I catch myself looking at the drawing room clock tensely, thinking, “It’s 6.17, so I have to subtract 25 minutes, so it’s… Oh wait. It is just 6.17.” I see the grease-covered old kitchen clock and think, ‘Add 25 minutes for KST so it’s… Oh wait. There is no KST.” And then I relax and let out the breath I’d been unconsciously holding. The time is what it is. ‘Real Time’, IST. Whatever you call it.

Of course, there are some times when I miss the Artificial Time Buffer. That feeling when you’ve overslept and see the clock and panic, and then realise that you still have 10 minutes to get dressed and shoot out the door since the clock is actually ahead. But the weakness passes and  I’m strong again. No more KST. I live in Real Time now.

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