Bringing up Children who Read

[On Banned Books Week, my thoughts on whether or not we should control what our children read]

My children were babies when the last of the Harry Potter books came out, and though we loved watching the first three movies, I was very clear that my children wouldn’t be allowed to read beyond book 4 till they were old enough to handle the adolescent angst. 12 was the arbitrary age I’d set, before which they would not be allowed to read Order of the Phoenix.

When the older one devoured the first three books before his 8^th birthday, I realised that short of implementing a blanket ban, there was little chance of me being able to keep him away from finishing the series in a couple of weeks. I was also extremely conflicted. The Liberal in me detested censorship of any kind- if I didn’t want people telling me which books to read and which movies to watch, could I really stop my child from reading something that gave him pleasure? While I wrestled with my conscience, my child finished the series, and I consoled myself with the thought that while he had read something I deeded age in appropriate, I had at least remained true to my principles of not banning the written word.

Two years later, history repeated itself. The younger one, too, galloped through the Harry Potter books long before the age when I thought he should be reading them.

While the deed was done, I continued to worry. And the more I thought about it, the more I was conflicted. Restricting reading to age-appropriate books was different from banning a book, and as a parent didn’t I have the right and the duty to ensure my children read according to their age. The later books in the Harry Potter series dealt with complex emotions of death, sexual attraction, romantic jealousy. Had I failed as a parent by allowing my children to explore those themes long before they were ready for them? Should I have controlled their reading a bit more? Surely there was a difference between a parent telling her child “not yet”, and the state telling all people “never”.

July Blume’s essay on accelerated reading consoled me slightly. Her theory was that children read over what they are not yet ready to understand. So I might read the book and feel the full weight of Hermione’s frustration when Ron refuses to recognise her feelings for him, but my eight year old will probably just skim over that part and only remember the flock of birds that Hermione conjured in her frustration up to attack Ron.

There were other things which they read and remembered, but which they fully understood only a bit later. When an uncle that the children were quite fond of passed away in a climbing accident, we debated whether or not to break the news to them. I decided to, because tragic though it was, death is a part of life, and I could not keep them insulated from it forever. Strangely, they took it well. “Don’t feel so bad”, they told me, ”death is the start of a new adventure, isn’t it”. They even quoted Dumbledore back to me- “Don’t pity the dead. Instead pity the living. And above all pity those who live without love.” My children had taken enough out of the books to be able to recall them in a different context.

If as parents, we want to raise children who read, we need to let them read what they want to read, not force them to read what we want them to read. Children have more than enough books to read as a part of their curriculum- if you give them yet another book on Planet Earth or a story that ‘improves’ them, they are almost certain to reject it. Instead, let them choose their own books.

As parents, we may not approve of Captain Underpants, but the books will make the children chuckle and what they will take away from it is a healthy appreciation for word play. The myth is that comic books stunt the reading capacity of children, but comic books also teach children to appreciate the use of space and to articulate themselves with fewer words. We may find the Wimpy Kid series repetitive, but as long as our children enjoy reading and re-reading them, should we stop them?

All books, as Neil Gaiman says, build empathy because the act of reading forces you to build on the words of the author to create your own world. The characters in a book are as much your creation as they are that of the author, and through them you learn to look at situations from the perspective of other people. Yes, certain authors are boring and certain books are repetitive, but why not let the children decide for themselves instead of forcing our decision on them?

If you look at the list of books that have been banned from various school libraries, many of them deal with themes like puberty, sexuality, sexual ambiguity, masturbation and teen pregnancies. All these are issues that children and adolescents confront in their daily lives. When Nico confesses his love for Percy Jackson, it will not create homosexual tendencies in boys, but it will reassure an adolescent struggling with his homosexuality that he is not alone.

“Gender Queer” which is the memoir of a bisexual, asexual young person coming to terms with sexual and gender identity topped the list of books that have been targeted this year. Many people fear the book, because it challenges the conventional cis-het gender orthodoxy. Yet, it is an important resources for trans, queer and non-binary young people who are struggling with their identity and may not have an adult role model in their life. Books like these, far from being banned, should be made accessible to young people who may need them to better understand themselves or their friends.

Reading broadens our minds. Reading teaches us to look at things from other perspectives. Reading empowers us to ask questions. Reading enables us to challenge the status quo.

People who are comfortable with the status quo feel threatened by readers, which is why they try to get books banned. Seek out the banned books. Understand why they have been banned. And leave them hanging around where your children can read them.

The ability to read books, all kinds of books, is the biggest gift we can give our children. Let’s do it for them.

Women in Academia are extremely vulnerable

[First published in Women's Web as St Xavier’s University Kolkata Allegedly Slut-Shames Woman Professor Over An Instagram Story]

A 30 year old Associate Professor at a well-known University, according to an FIR filed by her, was forced to resign because the father of one of her students complained that he found his son looking at photographs of her, which according to him were “objectionable” and “bordering on nudity”.

There are two aspects to this case, which are equally disturbing, and which together make me question where we are heading as a society.

When the father of an 18 year old finds his son looking at photographs of a lady in a swimsuit, he can do many things. What this parent does is to dash off a letter to the University which states:

“Recently, I was appalled to find my son looking at some pictures of Prof. [Guha*] where she has posed in a sexually explicit way causing deliberate public exposure. …[this] is utterly shameful for me as a parent, since I have tried to shield my son from this kind of gross indecency and objectification of the female body. It is obscene, vulgar and improper for a 18 year old student to see his professor dressed in scanty clothes exhibiting her body on a public platform.”

First, the photograph was not on a public platform. The photograph had been posted on a private account on Instagram where it was visible for 24 hours to a tightly controlled audience. The only way the son could have accessed the photographs was if he had sent the Professor a ‘follow’ request which she accepted, or by hacking into her account. If the former, he had reached out to her. If the latter, he is guilty of a cyber-crime. In either case, the Professor cannot be blamed for the fact that her student was ogling at her photographs.

Second, the father says that he has “tried to shield my son from this kind of gross indecency and objectification of the female body”. If we accept this statement at face value, then clearly the parent has failed in his stated duty, since the son had voluntarily sought out content that the parent deems objectionable. To shift the blame to the Professor is just an attempt to cover up what by his own admission is inadequate parenting.

Third, are these the only photographs of “scantily clad” women that the student has gawked at? Surely there must be other women who’s photographs have also come under scrutiny- why then single out the Professor? Don’t teachers have the right to living a personal life? As long as they are competent in their job, and adhere to the workplace code of conduct, how does it matter what clothes they wear and what photographs they post on their private Instagram account?

The reaction of the father smacks of a giant failure in parenting. The child is 18 years old, an adult. Ideally, the father should not be micro-policing what he chooses to do in his spare time. However, this is India, where even people much older are made to feel they are answerable to their parents, random family members and the entire neighbourhood!

The father has caught his child doing something he deems objectionable- instead of holding his son accountable, the father shifts the blame to someone who is not even directly involved in the incident. By writing to the University, and having the Professor removed, the father is sending out the message that his child can behave as irresponsibly as he likes, and the father will always be around to clean up the mess.

The attitude displayed by the University is equally wrong. Ideally, when a frivolous complaint like this was registered, the University should have stood by their staff, and told the father in no uncertain terms that the Professor was engaged to teach, and what she did in her personal life was nobody’s business. Even if the University has a code of conduct which does not permit its staff to put up photographs on their private Instagram accounts, knowing that the Professor had joined only two months earlier, the University should have first asked her when the photograph was uploaded before launching an investigation that ended in her dismissal. In this particular case, the photograph was put up on Instagram stories in June 2021, and the Professor joined the University only in August 2021. Since Instagram stories are visible only for 24 hours, at the time of joining, there were no photographs that could be deemed “objectionable” on the Internet, unless the account had been hacked into and photographs downloaded.

By proceeding with an investigation on photographs taken and uploaded before the Professor even joined the University, they have also set a precedent which leaves women vulnerable to blackmail. Now, any acquaintance who has photographs or videos which are even remotely compromising can threaten to use it to against women in similar positions.

The manner in which the investigation was conducted also exposes how vulnerable women are to harassment in the workplace. According to the FIR filed by the Professor, printouts of the photographs which the parent deemed objectionable were circulated among by the committee members, which included two men. When a woman posts a photograph online, particularly if it is in a tightly controlled private group, it does not mean she is giving consent to the photographs being printed and passed around in another setting. By doing so, the University was invading her privacy, and putting her in an extremely vulnerable position. As she says, “It is a mystery to me till date how the university accessed those pictures. I felt so distressed and humiliated at that moment that I couldn’t bear to examine the rest of the pictures. I was in a meeting where my private pictures were being circulated among people unknown to me, without my consent.”

The Professor also mentions in her FIR that she was repeatedly slut shamed by the members of the committee, most of whom were unknown to her. Though she was dressed in a swimsuit, the members of the committee repeatedly referred to them as “nude” photographs. She, a grown woman of 30 with two PhDs from foreign universities was infantized and asked if her parents knew about and approved of the photographs. There is a decorum to be maintained while carrying out investigations, so the dignity of the woman is maintained, but that was clearly not followed by the University.

More than anything else, this incident exposes how vulnerable women in Academia are. Students and researchers have made allegations of sexual harassment against male professors who were in a position of power over them. Yet, years later, despite those allegations not being properly investigated, those professors continue to hold their positions and are treated as respected professionals. Yes, a woman is slut shamed for sharing photographs of herself with a tightly controlled group of people for a 24 hour period, and is forced to resign because someone who shouldn’t even have access to the photographs made a complaint against her.

This case, if not properly investigated and resolved, can have wide reaching implications for Women, particularly Women in Academia, and each of us should be extremely concerned about it, and should keep raising our voice till the Professor gets justice.

Why I do not celebrate Mothers' Day

 If I define myself at all, it is as "mother".

Becoming a mother was a life altering experience for me. It was not easy for a Type A personality to accept that precisely nothing was in her control.

Someone who stomped through life with the casual arrogance of one who believed she could do anything soon realised that practically every woman she encountered knew more than her.

It was humbling to know that babies don't come with instruction manuals. Initially, I made flow charts to determine why the baby cried- is he hungry, wet, hot, cold....., or plain fussy. But I soon surrendered them, and started relying on that most in-exact of things-instinct.

Becoming a mother taught me humility. It taught me fear. It taught me compassion.

It made me who I am.

YET, the only thing I do on Mothers' Day is wish my mother and thank her for being my mother.

Because there are many who are not mothers.

There are women who choose not to be mothers.

There are women who want to be mothers but are not able.

There are women who crave to be mothers but their situation forces them to delay.

There are mothers who lost their babies.

There are mothers who lost older children.

There are mothers who chose to abort a child, but still live with the guilt of doing so.

There are children who lost their mothers.

There are adults who lost their mothers.

There are mothers who were never there emotionally for their children

There are mothers who are disappointed in their child

There are mothers who disapprove of their life choices and keep away

Even a relationship as romaticised as the one between a mother and her child, is not always what it is made out to me.

To all those people, Mothers' Day is a travesty. It is a reminder of what they do not have. And a celebration which isn't inclusive isn't worth celebrating.

But, to all the mothers suffering from self doubt (and I doubt if there are too many who do not), I will just quote -

"There's no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one." 

The Batch of 2021

Saturday, March 14, 2020 was like any other day for my son. He went to school, took his exam, and returned home. Some of them planned to celebrate the end of the exams on Tuesday by going out for a milkshake, so the good byes were rather hurried. Little did any of them suspect how long it would be before they met again.

That weekend, the Telangana Government declared that all schools would be shut for two weeks. The exam was hastily postponed to March 31, and my kid grumbled at having to revise Science for two weeks instead of two days. Then lockdown was announced, and extended. Somewhere, the school authorities decided to promote the entire class.

Grade 10 started with online classes. A few weeks dragged into a few months, and then into the entire year. There was a project they were working on, which lay in school abandoned. Even if we wanted to rescue it, we couldn’t have.

My son never really spoke about his classmates, but you could see he was missing school. “I wonder if someone is feeding the rabbits?”, he asked once. We concluded that it would be the goat that most missed the students and the staple diet of cold rotis and subji that they fed it.

Mid term exams came and went. The second semester began. There was talk of Practical Classes being conducted in school, but to the delight of the teachers, the parents vetoed it. Instead they were given substitute experiments they could perform at home.

We had to go to school to fill up the forms for the Board Exams. There was awkwardness when they met their classmates. It was as if the masks established barriers of formalness, and they could only be themselves while interacting online.

The curriculum got over. The online classes were for revision purposes only. This was the time when they should have been having farewells, both formal and informal. When they should have bunking classes and playing their last basketball games in the grounds that had been home for six years. When they should have been watching the last cycle of tadpoles metamorphosis into frogs in the lily pond. When they should have been reading the last books two books left unread in the school library. When they should have been reliving old memories and creating new ones what would last a lifetime. They were isolated at home, instead.

My son’s batch has been luckier than most. None among them tested positive for Covid. The parents that did were largely asymptomatic. There were no major upheavals in any of their lives. Very few of them lost family members from the extended family. But a year back, would we have considered that ‘lucky’?

The batch was supposed to have their Board Exams this year- that rite of passage that marked our graduation from kids to young adults. Despite an academic year like none other, the Board Exams were going to be as conventional as they had always been, with the addition of face masks and sanitizers.

Then the Exams were cancelled. People said they were ‘lucky’ because they passed the exams without having to take them. But is that really luck? Despite all the uncertainty, they worked hard throughout the year. They self-motivated themselves and attended the classes even though they knew the teacher would not find out if they didn’t. They adapted to a teaching methodology as unfamiliar to the teachers as it was to them. They figured out ways to seek help from each other, despite being miles apart. They were denied a ‘normal’ year, yet they did what they had to. They were also denied a logical culmination to the year- despite having prepared for them, they would have no Exams.

They should have been chilling after taking the Board Exams, trying not to think about the results. Instead they are at home, cut off from each other, unofficially locked down. They can’t bring themselves to put their books away, and to look at their ugly school uniforms one last time. They are worrying about COVID. They are trying to help connect people to resources. They are trying to distract themselves with the IPL. They try to escape reality, and they try to pretend this is what is normal.

As a batch, they have coped with more uncertainty than any other. They have developed a resilience which even many adults do not have. They have grown as people. If the Board Exams are a rite of passage, the Batch of 2021 didn’t have it, but they have learnt so much more.

They had a farewell party on Friday. They should have worn their sarees and suits. Taken lots of photographs. Eaten and drunk and danced too much. The party was on Zoom. My son didn’t attend.

Paint an Eagle

 “What do you think I should paint?”, I asked my younger one.

“An eagle”, he replied.

“But I can’t paint eagles”, I said. “I can only attempt landscapes and flowers.”

“Do an eagle”, he repeated.

“But I can’t.”

He could have told me that if I wasn’t going to take his advice, I shouldn’t have asked him the question. Or he could have sulked and told me to paint whatever I wanted. Instead he insisted that he wanted me to paint an eagle.

“If you only do what you can do, then what is the point?” he reasoned patiently. “You learn only if you try something new.”

“But, I can’t paint an eagle”, I insisted.

“I don’t care. Make an eagle”, he replied with a shrug.

I glared at his retreating back. It was a test and it was a challenge. Was I going to back down? Or was I going to rise up? Had I backed off, he may have judged me or he may not. But could I survive how I would judge myself?

No, I certainly couldn’t draw an eagle, much less paint one. But did that mean I shouldn’t try? What was the worst that could happen? I’d waste a piece of paper and some time. I could certainly live with that.

And so I went to google- how do you draw an eagle, I asked. I followed the first few steps to get a form that looked a bit like one. Then I used a photograph to guide me with the colours. Spilt some paint, and covered it up.

The eagle looks a bit like an eagle, but not too much. It could certainly look much better, but it could have been worse.

“What do you think?”, I asked my younger one.

“Nice”, he said. And smiled.

I think I passed his test.

July 2014: Do They Read At All?

“I don’t let my kids read such disgusting stuff”, said a mother about the Captain Underpants books.

“Do they read at all?”, I asked.

She evaded the question. “I have bought them [blah, blah, blah books]”, she said.

Why was I not surprised that her children don’t read? The books she mentioned were good books- books that are morally edifying. But they are not books that engage a child. If you want them to read, you have to give children books they will like. Once they are addicted, they will voluntarily reach for the books you want them to read.

____
2014: The Year That Was

February 2014 : What we are taught to see

“Draw a scenery’, the Art Teacher would say, and we would all whip out our drawing books and spend the rest of the period finishing near identical pictures. A mountain range with three triangular peaks. A  river snaking down to drain at the bottom of the page; trees lining it banks. The Sun peeking out from behind the hills; its rays arranged in perfect formation.

That was the ‘scenery’ we saw. That is the scenery we have taught our children to see. If we do it long enough, will the Sun grow straight line rays, and mountains develop triangular peaks?

____
I saw the rays of the sun leaving behind streaks of light in February
2014: The Year That Was

Mr. Responsible

He is Mr. Responsible.

Though only two years older than his brother, he is expected to keep an eye on him, and steer him away from trouble. He is the one who gives the dog his lunch, and runs errands for me. Kids instinctively turn to him when they are in trouble, and though he doesn’t enjoy it, he ends up taking care of them.

Sometimes, I feel guilty about forcing him to grow up so soon. And then he does something really cheeky, and I realize he’s still a kid at heart. A responsible one, but still a kid.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Responsible

Each Day is Precious: day 41 of #100happydays

The melon can never get too large for the vine, goes a saying in Tamill. My Younger One seems determined to prove it right. Everytime I lift him up, I’m sure it will be the last time I can. And the next time I try, I am pleasantly surprised.

But knowing that this might be the last time I can toss him in the air, makes every occasion when I can do so memorable. Knowing life is short, makes it more precious.

The day will soon come when he is too heavy for me - but it is not Today.

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One year back, I was musing about the same thing- I still am!

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Setting Curds: day 37 of #100happydays

“Can you teach me to set curds?”, asked the Younger One.

After heating the milk, and adding the starter, he even make a pretty note to place on top of the bowl where the curds were setting- “Do Not Touch. Curds being Made.”

Since he thought overnight was too long a period for him to wait for the curds to set, he wanted to try something new. “What if we mix some strawberries into the milk before setting the curds, will we get strawberry curds?”, he asked.

There was only one way to find out- by doing it. We did!

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Surviving the Rest: day 30 of #100happydays

There are those idyllic moments. Those moments when your child slips his hand into yours or gives you a sudden hug; when he brings home a leaf which he thinks you will like. Those moments when he comes up with insights that leaves you speechless.

And then there are those moments when you realize what a miserable failure you are. Those moments when the child answers back; or worse, pretends you don’t even exist. When you struggle to explain something to them, but they refuse to pay attention.

I guess parenting is about enjoying the good and surviving the rest.

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