The Illicit Happiness of Other People

I have been harboring a half-suspicion about this for close to a decade - the ‘Chennai peoples’' inexplicable desire, pursuit and impetuous display of academic excellence. Now that Manu Joseph, who is ‘one of them’ has spewed it, I feel validated and relieved of my burden of impression.

The newspaper version of his Hindu interview, last week, has been purged of the ‘beeped’ words so one kind of loses the tone and emotion of the speaker. 

Strip away everything and it’s just boredom. And especially when you’re young and growing up in Madras: you can’t touch girls, you can’t go out with girls, it’s a s**t city; all the f****rs are doing entrance exams… Still, I did briefly lose my nerve when I was 20; I wrote some of those MBA entrance exams, went for the XLRI interview. I remember they asked me: what is the difference between “basilica” and “cathedral”? But fortunately, circumstances ensured I would come back to journalism.

Hahaha! Good sense prevailed.

My first neighbors in Bangalore were very nice, temple-going Chennai peoples. Two things wafted out of their home at all times. One, the delicious smell of sambar, and two, …I’ll come to that. 

Now, husband, mine, was at once baptised by the ‘Tamil’ sambar. He of few words but never short of praise for food had himself eating out of Mrs V’s hands - the end of her ladle that had become the extension of her hand. I was suitable ignored for confessing some knowledge of their cuisine, and was rude enough to learn to cook some too, while he at every meeting expressed spanking-new astonishment that ‘Pongal is a dish?’

Many mornings, Mrs V came with a dosa balanced on her dosa flipper and totally dismissing me as a claimant, asked smiling if ‘he’ was there. Now my ‘he’ was hers along with her own. He-Man was made to eat with both of us watching like his eating was our collectively responsibility and source of joy. Her face shone with sweat and excitement when He-Man extolled the finer points of her cooking, while I prayed that he would hurry, lest her face explode.

The second thing her home emanated was her talk with her 5-year old son. Not Tamil, not English, they spoke in numbers. Always. This was what we heard day and night, ‘Putta, 22 plus 31?’ The kid had to respond before the mother’s question mark was intoned. I have a suspicion they left their doors and windows open to let out their glee. 

Another young mother, Ms K, nose-in-the-air was telling us how no classical dance school in Bangalore was good enough for her two-year old. I stood hearing her lament till she left because ‘he’ will be home, na. Immediately, my Bangalore born and raised neighbor, stung and stung, remarked, ‘These Chennai people!’

More recently, on the train back from Chennai to Bangalore, I spotted a little girl, 3ish, with thick silver anklets looking about eagerly to make new friends. After a prolonged peek-a-boo with an older girl, she went up to her seat, her tongue hanging out with ‘shy’. 

The moment she ‘told’ her name, the mother’s ears perked up long distance and out came a sweet-sounding, cajoling but firm instruction, ‘Devika, tell the spalling of your name!’ !!

How early can one start! Non-Chennai peoples need reservation!

Like parents, like children

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Ad-hoc Parenting

No job is more challenging or more rewarding than parenting. However, with the dynamics of the family system undergoing a serious makeover, parents are increasingly ‘giving up’, turning a blind eye to signs of undesirable behaviour in their children. Where is this leading us, wonders Shefali Tripathi Mehta

A 16-year-old committed suicide because she couldn’t get the TV remote from her brother; another nine-year-old hanged herself after her siblings refused to let her watch her favourite television show — just two of the countless number of news stories about children taking the extreme step over trifles — upset over being scolded in school, doing poorly in exams, being stopped from seeing a sweetheart, squabbles with siblings.

Parenting has never been more difficult, parents moan. Has it ever been less careless, more ad-hoc is what we need to introspect.
The dynamics of the family system has undergone a serious makeover with urban, closed-door living, nuclear families and our newfound fixation with the notion of ‘my time, my space’. Parents are increasingly and unhesitatingly ‘giving up’, turning a blind eye to signs of undesirable behaviour to avoid conflict situations during the little time they get to spend with their children.
When a fourteen-year-old runs his car over pavement dwellers, it is parenting that fails.When teenagers rag and drive a fresher to suicide, it is parenting that fails. When a kid stabs his teacher, it is parenting that fails. Parenting is a full-time, regular job. Frequent leaves of absence lead to such dire consequences. When parents relinquish their responsibility of proper upbringing, they put their kids as well as those around them at increased risk of harm. The very basis of family is that children need to be brought up under the guidance, supervision, care and protection of mature and wise elders till they understand action and consequence.


We can’t make guest appearances in our kids’ lives. When we do that, they in turn put on their best behaviour till our backs are turned again. The problems begin to crop up when, like an outsider, we peep into their lives now and then. 
My friend and I entered her home late one evening to find her teenager watching TV. The friend lashed out at him for forever being glued to TV and not studying hard enough. The kid tried to explain that he’d finished studying and was taking a break. The mother gave in to an impulse. She was anxious, wondering ‘what if he is doing this all the time I’m not watching?’ In such cases, the child may try to defend himself the first couple of times and then may just stop bothering. He may even end up watching TV all the time, confirming all her worst fears. Communication and mutual trust are both done with.
Who’s the victim?
It is natural for parents to sometimes feel overwhelmed by parenting responsibilities. The child’s demands on them may weigh them down sometimes. Parents suffer when their toddlers throw tantrums and misbehave in public, making outings extremely traumatic. They feel embarrassed, angry and hopeless. 
A young mother broke down because her five-year-old creates a big scene while getting dressed. Another, whose nine-year-old does everything she asks him not to, says she’s given up. A parent cannot feel victimised or give up on their child because if children grow up with these attitudes that lead them to bully others, demand constant attention, be unduly anxious or angry, they continue to spawn distress for themselves and others.
Earlier this year, a class 9 student stabbed his teacher to death for complaining to his parents about his poor academic performance. He was struggling to cope with his studies and when failure seemed imminent, the confused child did something that not only cut short an innocent life, but also ruined his own. How did the parents miss the signs of his distress? Why could the helpless kid not share his problem with anyone? The crime may have been committed in a moment of mad fury, but his despair must have grown over time.
Bringing in the ‘IF’
It is the responsibility of us parents to bring the ‘if’ into their children’s thinking; to make them understand when fun, adventure or peer pressure can turn into tragedy and ruin lives. It has become fashionable for parents to brag, ‘My kid doesn’t listen’. If parents have given the child enough reason to trust their decisions; shared their reasoning with the child; explained the consequence of undesirable behaviour; and the child is completely assured that the parents always have their welfare in mind, there is no reason for them to not listen.
A mother who said she did not allow her 12-year-old to join a social networking site was asked derisively, ‘But did she listen?’ The mother had shared her reasoning with the daughter, encouraged her to talk and discuss. If parents make half-hearted attempts at discipline and punishment, they will never win the child’s trust and face only rebellion.
How can we expect children who do not listen to their own parents to conform to any kind of policing in the world outside? Parents who have not tried to instil the importance of regular bedtime; sharing of toys or tiffin; being courteous to visitors, cannot one day start a sermon on underage drinking, driving, drugs and expect kids to conform. Likewise, it will be foolhardy to expect that the system in place will check accidents and crimes by young adults and protect them. If your kid is drag racing, you are responsible, not the State, the police, the school or the passersby.
Flawed investment
We may engage tutors to teach, house-help to fulfil all their daily needs and drivers to take kids for sports and dance classes. But is that all? Who will talk, discuss, understand; draw out the children’s views, fears and disappointments; and reinforce the notion of action and consequence? A simple example is how a child brings home a great report card and how a not-so-good one is kept away to be shown later. This is how difficult it is to talk of tough issues and feelings. It needs gentle drawing out. It needs time.
A working parent may be ‘all there, always’ for the child and a parent at home may not have ‘the listening ear’. The mother of a little girl, asked how her daughter is with other children, was clueless. She had never been around the child’s friends. The ayah always took her to park. ‘But surely you know when her friends come home?’ ‘No, no, I take them all out to a pizza place. I can’t stand the racket in the house!’ She threw up her hands showing exasperation.
We live for a social face. We encourage our kids to be competitive in school, among friends, neighbours; and get ahead in every way they can. But dealing with failure is life’s important lesson. We teach kids to read, write, play cricket and swim. Why can’t we talk about drugs, under-age drinking, under-age driving, peer-pressure, over-speeding, physical and sexual abuse? A parent tells how of the 20 children identified with various levels of dyslexia in school, only six joined the intervention programme. Parents’ denial to accept and seek help will put these kids through an immensely trying life.
The sum of our wisdom that we pass on to them seems to be that the world is full of deceit and danger; and we need to fight our way through. Are we making them grow up overcautious? Overprotected? Kids no longer lay the table, water the plants, polish their own shoes or even get the door. We see their hands full — studies, games, tuitions, other activities that are so important for them to stay ahead. Involving them into the daily, household chores seems unfair.
Discipline & responsibility
Parents lament that in school their children are so well behaved but not so at home. In school, the rules are clearly laid out and everyone conforms. Establishing a routine at home is not a priority in households anymore. Parents who cannot switch off their phones during PTAs and watch TV at dinner time are reluctant to impose ‘rules’ on their children. A UK study found 79 per cent of school kids sleep deprived. Insufficient sleep affects cognitive ability, physical and emotional well-being. Cellphones, TVs and computers keep children up late at night. Overindulgent parents who consider fixed bedtimes harsh are surprisingly okay with waking up and sending a cranky kid to school.
Children need discipline for their own good — to remain safe, to know their limits. Also, it is discipline which helps them get along with others. Disciplining a child cannot depend on parents’ whims. When in good mood we allow every excess and when preoccupied with work or problems, we refuse perfectly legitimate demands. Kids soon begin to understand the pattern and learn how to manipulate situations to their own advantage.
In the incident where a teenager was killed when three of them were drag-racing their way to school, in Kolkata, no passersby stopped to help, to take him to hospital. A fellow racer also fled. Children see parents making their escape from difficult situations. The kid who panicked and fled did not understand right from wrong because it wasn’t instilled definitively into him. He was scared, he could not face the consequences, he did what he may have seen his elders doing — run from the mess. He could have saved his friend. As could the others who drove past the injured child.
When children bring to parents their problems with others, if parents do not assess the situation objectively, but believe in only their child and proclaim biased judgements, the child gets acceptance for his conduct, validation for his action. Reinforced, this may lead him to have a lopsided, self-righteous attitude towards others. If we tend to bail out our children from trouble every time, they fail to understand the consequences. If we do not show compassion for the house-help or respect for one another at home, children cannot be courteous or genuinely kind in the world outside.
Extreme parenting
American writer Sloan Wilson said, “The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realisation that this is what the child will always need can hit hard.”
While the fly-by parents pop in and out of their kids’ lives, there are the helicopter parents who are always hovering over their children. These kids will be told what to wear and asked ‘did you go to potty today’ well into their teens. Their need and ability to make independent choices and decisions is irreparably stymied.
Also known as Velcro parents, these parents tend to be over-protective. A kid came home with a scraped knee, howling. The mother first shouted at the ayah for not keeping an eye on him and then at the child, ‘How many times have I told you not to run!’ No running, no jumping, no climbing trees. Cuts, scrapes, bruises and fractures used to be an integral part of growing up. When we went home with scuffed knees, crying, we were told how brave we had been or that we had killed ants! Something to console and cheer but never to condone or curtail childhood fun and learning.
At the other end of this spectrum are parents who are against overprotection of kids — and are bringing them up ‘free-range’. Again, detractors of this style feel the world is not safe enough for such extreme parenting. The safety concern overrides everything else. So even though we understand the ills of letting our kids watch unlimited TV or play computer games, it seems like a safer option always. The dangers of a sedentary lifestyle, of online bullying or abuse are minor as opposed to the harm that may befall them in the real world outside.  
Granted that the world today is more indifferent and dangerous. Even parents look the other way if a matter does not concern their own child. Not many will caution a child leaning dangerously out of a window or parapet (even though they will scan other kids’ exam sheets and question the teacher how they got half mark more than their own kid). 
In Punjabi, the term sanjhe, meaning ‘belonging to all’, is used for children in the belief that children belong to everyone — the entire community they grow up in. Consequently, everyone is responsible for them and everyone cares for them. Now children get murdered inside their own homes in the presence of family; they are molested in the school bus; and killed in their own school. Gone are the days when the community watched over kids.
It is rightly said that ‘there is no way to be a perfect parent and a million ways to be a good one’. While there can be no ready-made, rule-of-thumb, sweeping answers to parenting issues, there still are a few excellent, time-tested ways of avoiding most young-adult troubles — expressing love, paying attention and open communication.
Children don’t learn responsible behaviour and good conduct from lectures and reprimands but from seeing it reinforced in their lives again and again. “Our children are extensions of ourselves.” As I write this, I hear a swishing noise outside and looking out see a young man thrashing the tops off the plants that stand in a neat row before my window. No, the parents aren’t away at work. Amma is right there talking on phone. 

Leave of absence

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Shefali Tripathi Mehta, July 1, 2012

The days I bunked school, I waited for it to get over, for friends to return home and after quickly having whatever it was that had to be had — lunch, mother’s scolding — call to ask, “Why didn’t you come to school today?”

That one sentence made life seem worth all the loving, missing and true friendship quotes that are set in loopy font over blue-skied pictures of hand-holding and hearts. Anyone who did not bother to ask, I remembered to ignore when they missed school next.

These mild to severe attention-seeking shenanigans of childhood led me to pull out of Facebook one day. Pleased as mango panha, I lay waiting to be missed and longed to see my friends say so on Facebook.

Someone had just to say, “Watup?” and others would follow, like they do a hot cause, to appear cool and not wanting to be left behind in their concern for the ‘sweetheart’ who they last ignored at the mall five days ago, or the one they remembered vaguely from school before someone else enlightened them, “that this was the scum who rode the same school bus and wiped her nose with the back of her hand,” 30 years ago.

So I waited. After school, this was the first real ‘test of absence’. I fixed this ‘miss me’ campaign for five days. Miss me or be unfriended, I sent out a telepathic warning to all my Facebook friends.Meanwhile, calm as a storm, I read their posts. Day one, I smashed four dinner plates to counter the emotional build-up from desisting to comment.

Day two, I managed not ‘liking’ 43 statuses, forwent the urge to tap in 11 emoticons, including three ROFLs that I wanted to, badly. Then, I almost buckled under the strain of finding no way to ignore the tedious, preachy bores! I read that people rode a tonga, wanted to keep someone’s goat. Bouncing off walls, I watched the world lose sight of me. People were drinking tomato tea, sighting sparrows, burping babies, suing their exes and clicking celebrities. I spied unguarded hints of love, jealousy and animosity. Unable to indulge in spicy ‘closed group’ gossip, I made 35 trips to the fridge to binge on chocolate.

On the third day, I dreamt of a record number of ‘where are yous’ and ‘missing yous’ — all in shouty caps and appended with three question marks. Expecting even my ‘friends of friends’ to notice my absence and ask them, “Hey, watup with your friend?” After all, everyone is candid on Facebook, friends of friends, especially. They ‘loyally’ like your every comment on the common friend’s wall, directly address you, comment on your comments, and send you requests and messages unknown to the mutual friend.

Let them not call or email, god. Let them write on my Facebook wall, I prayed. I imagined a wave of concern not different from the flood of obligatory birthday wishes. But for all its smartness, Facebook doesn’t have an app yet that would detect a user’s absence and send out an alert, “Your friend hasn’t shown up on FB for 19 hours, raise an alarm.” A little red SOS icon flashing next to it.

Finally, my friend of 20 years called and talked about family, fuel, fat, film, never once mentioning Facebook. In a desperate effort before she could hang up, I summoned up all the sadness that I was truly feeling now, and let drop, “I haven’t felt like Facebooking too.”

It was meant to elicit, “Are you okay?” Instead, like she’d discovered a mela-snatched sister, she sang, “Same here!” and was gone. On the fourth day, someone I don’t know from Shahrukh Khan (also because he has SRK for his profile picture), wrote on my wall, “looong tym, no c.” You spell trouble, you know, dood?

My break was supposed to free me, give me time for that which I had none. Earlier, I checked Facebook notifications every half-hour, now I was doing it every two seconds. People carried on with watering their plants and planting their feet, someone cooked up a storm, others stormed their party, someone’s tee said “pick me up” and another told her to “drop dead,” someone had to “eat crow” and someone else was “throwing up at both ends.” With one more day to go from this self-imposed exile, I could do nothing but twiddle my thumbs and worse, not even put that up as my status!

Loo Injustice

Pan to age 2, school nursery, story time, sitting on a durrie and... Ajaz pooped in his pants. The first tummy-tickling joke of my life that I told and retold at home for centuries. Potty jokes flowed easily but answering nature’s call as we grew out of our cotton bloomers was pissing off. Every time I stepped out of the house, the ‘did you go?’ came before the ta-ta. And if you lied and left, you could bring such shame! From having to enter a perfect stranger’s home to ask if you could ‘do bathroom’, to finding a really leafy bush next to a wall and heartbreaking stuff like forfeiting that Coca Cola for which you came in the first place. Shopping trips, outings had to be timed according to the weakest (leakiest?) link’s bladder control. One ‘I have to go’ meant end of trip.

Then came Sulabh. It worked at the psychological level alone. As long as there was a Sulabh toilet somewhere one didn’t have pinkie problems. Soon Malls toad-stool-ed and solved forever the problem of where to dump the apple juice.  

If you’re among the vast majority who on checking into a new hotel must first check out the bathroom, that is, standing precisely as far as it allows you to stand and tip-toe to super stretch your arm so it can lightly touch the ‘shower panel’ and gently tap visible and invisible buttons, knobs, bulges and bumps all the time fearing the onslaught of a sudden scalding hot or melted icicle deluge, you will understand her predicament. 

The uniformed attendant’s antennae caught her on sight. This past-middle age woman entering the washroom at BIAL (Bengaluru International Airport Ltd.) wearing a traditional ghagra, choli, her head covered with an odhini. ‘Sit on the seat,’ the attendant hollered from the other end, above heads crowding the limited space. The woman said she only needed to pee. ‘SIT on the seat!’ the attendant was firm. In her anxiety, the woman left the door ajar. She lifted her voluminous skirt, faced the seat, and wondered, then she turned, her back to the seat, and wondered, finally, totally at sea about how to do it ‘sitting on it’, she left without relieving herself. Pee in your pants all!

Are the Eastern style squat toilets that the whole country used not so long ago suddenly so uncool that they cannot be installed in a couple of cubicles at public ‘conveniences’? Is it better to allow a major part of the population such humiliation, distress and watch them make puddles on the roadsides? We’re modernizing, opening up -  people still walk up on escalators going down, women in sarees frolic in swimming pools, international pizza chains serve peet-ja do pyaza nicely ‘hand-eled’ by their local staff. So even though many a with-it women think it is a crap idea, some mirror polished malls in the city have graphical illustrations inside the facilities on how a commode should be used by women. And then, when we’ve got them all to learn how to sit on it to pee, we will begin the next lesson of how women must not sit-sit on a public toilet seat.

The NY Times tells us that apparently, the Right to Pee movement in Mumbai has activists demanding “that the local government stop charging women to urinate, build more toilets, keep them clean, provide sanitary napkins and a trash can, and hire female attendants.”

In case, you didn’t know already, a large population don’t have toilets in their homes and they use the great Indian outdoors or public toilets on a regular, that is, daily basis. 

This movement seems like such a dream, really. I go back to BIAL because it is such a bladder-bursting distance away from town. It showcases its features ‘runways, taxiways, apron, , fuel farm, airport fire service, aircraft maintenance facilities, access roads, car parking...’ Where’s Number 1? I’m asking, da. I need to pee. Where’s the washroom? Restroom...toilet, bathroom...? Mujhe bathroom karna hai! swalpa guide maadi, dhanyawaadagalu,... I pour out all my Kannada.

Once you find the place, you’re confronted with the Rs 2/- and Re 1/- trade. The latter for the short business. But now who will time you? How can they be sure that you have not deceived them? Shit happens. So don’t mess, just pay up Rs 2 and do whatever. The loo-mafia ‘manning’ the place ensures that you don’t do it anyway - there is no running water, soap, toilet paper and they keep the better part of the loo cordoned off so they don’t have to maintain it. This happens at the country’s top international airport. 

When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go! So one needs to know how to ask for the small room. That was my single-pronged objective in learning Kannada. 

Every day we were promised that we’d be taught everyday, useful phases. What can be more ‘everyday’ or ‘useful’ than taking a leak, tell me? From namma, nannu we jumped straight to ‘I have appendicitis problem’. Ondu, yerudu, mooru,... I could manage the figures with my fingers but how to tell with gestures, expression or mime that I needed to go?  I waited each day for them to tell me just this, how to ask in Kannada, where the bathroom is. But they discussed, ‘Today the water pressure in the tap is low’. I waited for other pressures. Then one day we almost came to it, ‘How much distance to go - Yestu doora hoghabheku?’ But their destination wasn’t the pit stop. On the twenty ninth day, while discussing root words – snan, dayamadi, namaskara, swalpa... I could hold it no longer and burst out ‘shauchalaya!’ Whatta relief!