I’m a certified blogger on the new portal Parentcircle.com š It’s a great initiative to try and gatherĀ the writing of Indian parenting bloggers in one space. Do check it out! Here are a couple of clipbooks of my blog pieces and column articles that they’ve put together on the site:
Tag Archives: parenting
Miscellaneous toddlerisms
Impossible toddler goals-
1) D: Amma, I want to lie down on my lap.
Me: You mean you want to lie down on amma’s lap?
D (bending over and twisting her head onto her knee): No! I want to lie on D’s lap!
2) Wanting to sleep on six-inch long dolly beds, and coveting her baby doll’s clothes and shoes (“I want! I want!”)
Accurate toddler misinterpretations:
1) Me (being pretentious): Excuse-moi
D (cheerfully): Excuse amma!
2) Me: Let’s go to the library, D
D: I love going to the libraread!
Filed under Family, Humour, Motherhood, Series, Toddlerisms
Thank you for the music… Not
‘Donna donna’ — Joan Baez at her soulful best. It’s a melancholy but melodious Yiddish theatre song about a calf being led to slaughter, its lyrics filled with solemn symbolism.
Not exactly what you’d callĀ a children’s song.
But someĀ folks in Chinese toyland thought differently:
Yes, ladies and gentlemen. That is what they did to ‘Donna donna’ (please don’t miss the electronic barnyard chirps in between). What I really want to know is, why? What was the thought process here? Why this particular song instead of, say a ‘Baa baa blacksheep’ or even a ‘My bonnie lies over the ocean’?
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that there was some sort of American folk music bias in the song selection. So what were the companion pieces, you ask? Some Dylan, some Simon & Garfunkel, maybe some Joni Mitchell? Nope. Pressing each successive button (green and fish shaped, please note) was an adventure in musical randomness. What followed in tinny, cacophonous succession was:Ā ‘Polly put the kettle on’, ‘Jingle bells’, ’12 days of Christmas’, ‘Oh Susanna’ and oh yes, not to forget Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (I’d upload that too, but it’s just too heartbreaking).
Of these, ‘Donna donna’ was the hardest to figure out (it was the most mangled by far) and if it wasn’t for one of those Android apps that nameĀ a tune for you when you humĀ it, we wouldn’t have figured it out at all. It was the husband’s brilliant idea, and so, to the daughter’s increasing annoyance, mummy and daddy sat hunched over her (usually unpopular) toy, playing the tune over and over, and then humming it into daddy’s phone. Not our finest hour as parents, but the sense of elation we felt once we’d placed the song made it all worthwhile. As we played ‘Donna donna’ on youtube, it was as though, finally, one of life’s mysteries had been solved. A puzzle piece fallen into place. Things made senseĀ again. As we high-fived and the daughter whined, it seemed we would prevail over the diabolical designers in Chinese toyland.
But, alas, it was not to be. Fired up by our success, we tried, tried, and tried again to place the last two unidentified, elusive green-fish button songs. But they were just so tuneless, so utterly random, that even the musical app finally threw up its hands in despair and crashed. It really gave its all first though… it suggested everything from classical pieces to Spanish dance songs. But we had to admit defeat at last. Whatever technological strides man makes, some mysteries must remain. It is the way of the world (and really crappy toys).
(Just out of curiosity — can you, dear readers, do better than the app? Can you figure out what these dratted tunes are? The husband and I would be very grateful):
Edited to add: Woohoo! My 100th post on this blog! š
Filed under Family, Humour, Motherhood
To all the Divya Ks out there – Part IV
As you can tell from the title of this post, I’ve written on this subject — i.e. the infuriating commonness of my name — several times. In fact, it was one of the first subjects I wrote about on this blog, given my glee over grabbing the domain name divyakumar.com out of the clutches of the many other Divya Kumars out there.
It’s been a while now since I wrote about it last, but nothing’s changed in the interim. I still regularly get emails meant for all those other Divya Ks. One of the most annoying instances was when I received a flood of resumes from a bunch of desperate job seekers. Obviously one of the Divya Ks was recruiting freshers and, as always, there had been an email address mix up. Or had there? In this instance, I began to suspect that she’d given the wrong address on purpose to the least promising/most aggravating candidates. Because, from what I could tell, none of these kids could spell or construct a grammatical sentence. And at least a couple had some form of severe short term memory loss, since they just kept sending me their CVs again and again in spite of my repeatedly telling them they’d got the address wrong…
It’s amazing what insights I’ve gotten into the lives of all these Divyas over the years, though. Bank and credit card statements (so much for secure online banking right, Divya Kapoor?), flight booking details, phone bills (that Divya Khanna sure has been talking up a storm)… these, of course, I’ve written about before. What’s new is the peeks I’ve been getting into their online shopping habits recently. With the internet shopping boom that’s happening in India, I now regularly receive emails from various online stores about all these goodies they’ll be shipping to ‘me’ soon — saris, electronics, books, you name it. It’s kinda fun… for a little while, I live vicariously through the Divya Ks out there, getting that virtual retail therapy rush without actually burning a hole in the credit card (though I can’t say I like Divya K. Sharma’s taste in clothes much. Not all that glitters needs to be on your sari, m’dear).
But recently, I got some emails that were less fun. Actually, with each one that arrived, I started getting increasingly jittery. You see, for the first time, I was feeling the pain of a fellow Divya K parent. Her child, it appears, studies at this institution that emails parents their child’s grades at the end of the term. Clearly, parents’ email ids is not the only thing that this school was screwing up on, because, let me tell you, the report cards weren’t pretty. Subject after subject was marked ‘FAIL’ in bold red. By the time the third email arrived, with the child’s language scores, I was a nervous wreck, and found myself desperately hoping it wasn’t another big, fat F. Thankfully, the child had – just barely – passed English and Hindi, so I could breathe again.
As I get older, I’m getting more philosophical about this whole having a common-as-heck name thing. After all, it gives me a glimpse into these women’s lives, and I realise we share a whole lot more than our names. We share the stresses of parenthood, we share the joys of shopping and troubles on the job too. So, to all the Divya Ks out there… I salute you. We’ll make through. And to the Divya K whose son is flunking so dreadfully… hang in there. And maybe look for another school?
***
This was written for the “Power of names” weekly writing challenge over on Daily Post.
Filed under Humour, Series, To All the DivyaKs
Divya Kumar 