Favourite songs

“Now, the Mamma will sing their baby’s favourite song with their babies”, announced the teacher.

I was in a fix. I have no idea what my three-year old’s favourite song is. Not that we don’t sing songs together, but they are all made-up numbers set to tune by a musically challenged me.

My son saved the day by grabbing the mike and humming a song I recognized as ‘Jai Ho’.

But I wonder how people would have reacted, if we had launched into “Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars…”, or “The King of the Jungle pounces on me, R-O-A-R goes the Lion.”

Sandbag Fortress

It is the High Court building that the uniformed policeman is guarding.

Honesty?

My bag got picked today. The thief unzipped the bag, took my purse and the pouch containing my mobile phone, house keys and flashdrive, without my even being aware of it.

Onlookers managed to wrest the purse away from him, but the rest of the stuff is lost forever. It would be expensive to replace all the stuff, but would have been much worse if it had been my credit cards that were stolen.

Strangely, it is not anger I feel against the thief. It is sheer gratitude towards the people who got the rest of it back for me.

Overloaded?

Is he helping his sister move houses? Or carrying the gear of an entire cricket team to the station? Maybe he is a luggage delivery boy ferrying stock to and from the store?
Are those bags fully loaded, or totally empty? Are they new, or have they been used?
A three-wheeler is not supposed to take more than three adult passengers- is it allowed to take so many pieces of luggage? And if one falls off, would the person accompanying them even know?
So many questions, so few answers. I just hope the vehicle is upto taking the extra load.

Shoes on little feet

For some strange reason, I thought shoes were meant to be worn. To keep the feet from getting dirty when you ran in the mud. To protect them from getting hurt when you stepped on something sharp.
Apparently not.
Shoes are something you slip your feet into when you step out of the house, and abandon as soon as you can. Shoes deny you the grip when you try to climb up the slidey part of a slide. They don’t let you feel the roughness of sand or the smoothness of metal.
Shoes are pretty, but not on little feet.

The Special Child

She strolled across the stage where her schoolmates were performing. A pretty girl, immediately recognisable for the special child that she was.
Two songs later, she was easily the best dancer in her group. Others went through the motions- her body was one with the music she was dancing to!
Having tasted applause, you just couldn't keep her away. She wandered into every song, and within moments was able to pick up even the most intricate steps.

Few schools would have allowed her to ‘mess up’ the carefully choreographed show. I am proud my son’s school let her be herself.

Womans' Day

"Happy Womans' Day", said a couple of SMSes, all of which I ignored.
"Happy Womans' Day", wished a friend when we bumped into each other at the ATM. "And the same to you," I said, "for whatever it is worth."

There are several reasons why I don't get excited about Womens' Day.
For one, special days are celebrated only for the marginalised- and I definitely do not qualify. The only child of doting parents, there was nothing I lacked, and the only thing that was, perhaps, denied me because of my gender was cricket coaching, and even that I would have been provided had I asked for it. Few men in the country have grown up with as many opportunities as I have, so I definitely do not deserve a 'day' to draw attention to my plight.

For another, by celebrating one day as 'Woman' Day', is anything going to change for anyone?
Will the woman who wakes up at 5 am to prepare breakfast and lunch for her family before rushing off to a mindless job which pays for school tuition get the chance to lie-in even one day a week because of Womans' Day?
Will Womans' Day give the grandmother who has been blackmailed into caring for her grandchild so the mother can go off to work the strength to stand up and tell her children that she has earned a peaceful retirement?
Will Womans' Day provide solutions to any of the professionally qualified women who are forced to become full-time mothers because few employers are willing to look at people who do not commit their entire life to a job?
Do my maidservant, the fruit vendor, the lady begging outside a temple, the mother cooking and serving meals on the pavement, any of the women I see but do not see every day even know today is their day?

And hence, I would rather not celebrate Womans' Day.

Rather, I would want to celebrate everyday the spirit of womanhood that keeps all my sisters going even when there seems nothing to look forward to.

And nothing epitomises that spirit better than this picture of a lady who has taken such pains to dress up for something as mundane as vegetable shopping.