Every child is gifted...

Today is the time of cut-throat competition. We see people at work-places trying to be one-up that their colleagues at all times. However, I feel that people don't try to be as competitive in the workplace as they are in their parenting. It's a rat-race out there actually and everyone is trying to prove to an invisible someone that they are the best parent in the world. No-one is immune and somewhere or the other in varied degrees we are all in the same boat including me.

In fact, success at work even gives more gas to this phenomenon. This may probably be for the following reasons: (1) Working parents try to overcome their guilt conscience by demonstrating that they are actually working so hard and being so career minded so that they can bring up their children better, provide them with better facilities and give them all that they ask for. They want their kids to be the most accomplished of the lot. (Whenever I hear the term 'accomplished', I am reminded of the 18th century writings by Jane Austen whereby the women who drew, knitted, read books, played the piano and did 2 or 3 other things were considered highly accomplished.) (2) People have found a new way to show-off their "improved standard of living" when they brag about their kids going to high-end costly schools and 3-4 extra-curricular activities outside school hours. They want to tell the world, "listen... I can afford to give my kids this luxury." They hear other parents talk about their kids learning contemporary dance and tennis and swimming; then how could their child be far behind?

In the end, we are all moulding our kids in 1 generic pre-defined mould without giving them the space to grow on their own and the way they want. We compare the kids with their peers. We tell them that your so-and-so classmate can draw so beautifully, why don't you practice a little more. "Look at him, how well she writes. You need to brush up your creative writing skills. Let me see if there are some classes available." And it goes on and on. We all want our kids to be exemplary orators, comfortable and confident on stage and beyond. We want them to be best calligraphers and great thinkers all of them the next Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy in the making. We want them all excelling in dramatics, dance, instrumental music, martial arts, sports, and this and that and everything. We ourselves are not able to decide what we want our kids to be and we certainly do not give our kids the leverage to decide for themselves what they want to do and what they do not want to do. We talk about peer pressure on kids when we hear our kids say "Mom, my friend is learning this and I also want to do it." But, we forget that we only have developed this psychology in our kids where they look around and see others by comparing our kids to others.

What we don't focus on is that every child has his or her capabilities. And why only capabilities? They all have their own interests. A child may be really good at sports but his/her interest may lie in literature. But, then we will tell them, "no, sports is very important and you should focus there instead of reading these stupid fiction". Traditionally also, people have always forced kids to study and get good grades trying to fill in their minds with fears like "not everyone can become a Sachin Tendulkar. A cricket team has only 11 players and all the rest find it difficult to run their homes if they opt for sports over studies. So, focus on studies and make a decent career as a doctor, engineer or an accountant." We focus on what is a better option by looking at what pays and not what the child wants. And since every parent is thinking like that, it becomes a herd mentality and everyone starts focussing on the same stuff. The stuff that brings bucks.

We forget that any person will thrive and bloom best in something that they enjoy doing and not in something that gets them more money. The thrill of getting a fat pay cheque in your account is short-lived but the daily excitement and enthusiasm of doing something that you love doing is priceless and forever. Shouldn't we let our kids enjoy the sunshine and try every experience that they want to. Let them choose what they want to do and encourage and nurture their interests widely. How does it matter if the neighbour's daughter is learning salsa as well as instrumental music? If my daughter just wants to take her cycle out in the garden in the evenings and that gives her happiness, why should we insist in taking up an activity. If my son doesn't enjoy colouring and drawing, why should I insist in him practicing more just because he got a grade lower than most kids in his class. Maybe he got a good grade in another subject which another child might not enjoy as much. Or even if my child did not get a top grade in any activity, does that mean that my child is not capable of anything? Why should grades and levels decide a child's capability?

I look back at my life and I notice that I wasn't a top student in junior school. I struggled with Maths and languages. But later, I became a top scorer in both with almost 100% scores in Maths. Later in life, say in high school, I developed a flair for art and writing. I was good at painting and wrote good poetry and small articles. But, over the years, again my interests changed again and I took on to reading and blogging. Similarly, I believe every child has interests which are developed later and / or which keep changing. Let me call them their gifts which they are lying there untouched. They reach out to them when they feel like and then they cannot be prevented from opening it.

So, to conclude, we as parents need not fret over what our kids are not doing but other kids are doing and we should always remember that: Every child is gifted. They just unwrap their packages at different times.

I won't be this small, Mummy

I found this beautiful poem on the Internet. Now, when my daughter is over 7 years old and has outgrown the below kiddie characteristics (well, if you discount supermarket tantrums though), I can absolutely relate to this.

I won't always cry, Mummy
When you leave the room
And my supermarket tantrums
Will end too soon.

I won't always wake, Mummy
For cuddles through the night
And one day you will miss
Having a chocolate face to wipe.

You won't always wake to find my foot
Is kicking you out of bed
Or find me sideways on your pillow
Where you want to lay your head.

You won't always have to carry me
In asleep from the car
Or piggy back me down the road
When my little legs can't walk that far.

So cherish every cuddle
Remember them all
One day, Mummy
I won't be this small.

- Anonymous

Why India should not rejoice over Nadella's selection as Microsoft's CEO

Ever since Satya Nadella got selected as the new CEO of Microsoft, Indians have been over the moon. The newspapers are filled with editorials dedicated to the "the great Indian elevation" and everyone's swelling with a touch of pride.

However, have we once stopped to ask whether this pride is well deserved? Satya Nadella has not even once referred to his homeland, India, in any of his speeches, blogs, tweets, whatever. He has not been overwhelmed by the Indian love that is pouring all over him. Why? Maybe because he understands that he owes his success more to the US than India. Maybe because he knows that the best decision he ever made was move to the foreign shores because he probably wouldn't ever have attained these heights in India. And why only Satya Nadella? We have many other examples of such immigrants making it big because they managed to move out of the Indian borders. Case in point, Kalpana Chawla, Amartya Sen. One must ask: Why is it that every India-origin person to win a Nobel after independence in the sciences is not an Indian citizen anymore? Hargobind Khurana won the prize for medicine in 1968, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar for physics in 1983 and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan for chemistry in 2009. And they had all left India far behind.

Who is to blame here? It would be easy to assume that all these people are highly ungrateful for having not thought of their motherland in their hours of glory. But the truth probably is far from that. The truth probably is that, as already mentioned, their motherland did not do anything for them to hand them their hour of glory and had they stuck by her, they probably would have fared no better than the millions of educated professionals, thinkers, entrepreneurs that follow their mundane lives in the hustle bustle of the Indian cities. Indians tend to flourish only when they go abroad. Okay. Let me be honest, even going abroad is not a guarantee that you will fare as well as Nadella, Chawla or Sen. But, at least, there you are only competing on the basis of skills and talent. The only thing probably pulling you down is the lack of the same and not the system itself.

That's right. The root cause of the problem is our system itself. The Indian system of exclusion rather than promotion. Our system is designed to keep the mediocre out and not to promote the extraordinary further. Our IITs and IIMs are designed to be one of the best institutions in the world. But, 99% of our aspirants cannot get in. Half of these may actually get through to any Ivy league college in the US and would also fare well in life. The question is are IITs and IIMs actually honing the skills of the people who are selected? They are the already selecting the best of the best, then why should it be a surprise if these people shine in their lives. What is the value add by these institutes? When the people entering the institution are the best among the best, they will shine no matter what the quality of faculty or the curriculum. Also, after that is the question of what next? Most of the grads from IITs and IIMs grab the placements in MNCs and take the first flight out of India. Why? Probably because the years in these institutes have dawned on them the realisation that IIT and IIM are just brand names whose stamps they have earned, but by and large, it's up to them to give a direction or a boost to their careers.

Well, Nadella did not study in either IIT or IIM. He graduated from Manipal, which is also a good college / university but not in the league of IIT and IIM in India. And he has fared well because just like many others, he flowered only because he had left India, and not because he was an Indian per se. If Satya Nadella had remained in India, he would probably be working as a coder in Infosys or TCS. Earning a high salary no doubt, but an unlikely candidate for CEO. Not much unlike many of our non-IITians are doing nowadays.

Even if we leave education sector apart, we see the Indian system's design to 'keep people out rather than help them get in' in other spheres as well. Our politicians' resort to name-calling and strategies to pull each other down when they actually should be focussing on doing something themselves. It's running in the blood of politics now. So, if Modi talks about a Gujarat model, everybody has to bring it down. If Rahul claims his government's biggest achievement is the RTI, everyone will belittle it. If Chidambaram claims high growth as UPA's success, the Left will say this growth is not helping the poor. So much so that, a candidate with a track record of years of demonstrated development work is being run down as a 'chaiwallah' while a certain nobody who knows nothing about sorting out problems except sitting on 'dharna' and blaming all and sundry (read, Delhi Police, Central Govt., previous CM, etc.) for all the problems of the society is voted in to power and designated as a CM. What a spectacle is being made of the Indian democracy in the world at large when the CM sits on a 'dharna' and sleeps on the road. Maybe Kejriwal needs to remember now that he is not an activist anymore and it's now time to stop acting like one and start delivering on the promises made. Time to pass the buck is long gone now.

In the world of sports also, we felicitate Sachin Tendulkar with the highest civilian honour, Bharat Ratna, when more often than not he played for himself, setting extraordinary records, rather than for the team; while we let Rahul Dravid vanish into an oblivion, when he almost always had put his heart and soul in bailing the team out of difficult situations instead of focussing on his personal records. If the records did come by, they just happened to be incidental. (With all due respect to Sachin, I truly believe that his skill is legendary and beyond par but I also believe that Sachin benefitted more from the Indian team rather than the other way round. Also, I feel that in comparison, Rahul Dravid has been handed an unfair deal when in his case, it was truly the team benefitting from him rather than him from the team). Then again, the younger breed was kept at bay as long as the 'diggaj' were still on the field and the awesome talent of Virat Kohli, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Shikhar Dhawan, etc. were brought out only after the likes of Saurav Ganguly, Anil Kumble etc. faded helplessly after the endless struggling days of sub-dued, out-of-form performances. But, actually no bureaucrat in the Indian system had the guts to challenge why they are not bringing forth new players when the old ones are not performing. Another example of our system of exclusion: keep celebrating the past, rather than focus on the future.

So, to conclude, before we felicitate Satya Nadella, we should learn to felicitate a Cyrus Mistry, who broke the family legacy barriers in the omnipresent Tata Industries to take over the reins from Ratan Tata at such a young (comparatively) age. We must learn to discard the 100% cut-off in SRCC and encourage our children to look beyond a ranked college and then offer equal opportunities to students coming out of a Hansraj, Hindu, Venkateshwar College. We must learn to support politicians who have demonstrated development work and not shun bureaucrats like Durga Shakti who actually act instead of sitting on their chairs and do nothing but answer affirmatives to bosses.

Only after we learn to do that and raise as many Satya Nadellas, Indra Nooyis, Kalpana Chawlas and Amartya Sens in India do we have a right to hail them.

Seven complicated facts about women

Seven complicated facts about women:


1.       They believe in saving.

2.       They believe in saving, but buy expensive clothes.

3.       They buy expensive clothes, but never have anything to wear.

4.       They never have anything to wear, but are always dressed beautifully.

5.       They are always dressed beautifully, but are never satisfied.

6.       They are never satisfied, but still expect men to compliment them.

7.       They expect men to compliment them, but don't believe them if they do.

Extremely complicated!!

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Good girls are still real!

A friend of mine once told me that 'good girls' are hard to come by  anymore and that I just might be 'the last Good Girl' in the world. I actually tend to disagree with him. On the contrary, I feel that good girls get dismissed even when they are ever present. They are simply looked past because they are the ones that you know are good for you but you don't really want them. They are the ones whom you think you're too good for or even sometimes whom you think are just too good for you. But the fact remains that even though the 'Good Girls' still exist and are very much real, there are no takers for them.

You may ask what are the characteristics of a good girl. The most common response is that the characteristics of a good girl are that they do not go partying or clubbing, don't booze, are saintly virgins and follow all the rules laid down by their parents (read no late nights, no going out with guys, etc.). I personally feel that these restrictive definitions are very orthodox and incorrect and do not actually describe what 'Good Girls' are supposed to be like.

The real characteristics of 'Good Girls' are as follows:

1. She is realistic.
She doesn't live in a fantasy world full of daydreams and fantasies. She understands that the real world is not fair to everyone so she plays by the rules and although might take chances once in a while, she plays safe with full understanding of the repercussions and doesn't concede into depression if the things do not turn her way.

2. She has a heart.
What I mean is, she has a good heart. At the base of it all, the good girl cares more about things than she lets on. She wants to save the world and the least she expects from a guy is to help her do it. It is not her that needs to be saved. She is the front-runners to stand up for ideals and ethics and morals and is rarely seen to have dual standards. She is helpful to all and sundry, even going all out of the way to do so at times, and is generally someone you can rely on.

3. She is strong.
Guys often feel that the good girls are a vulnerable lot. Ironically, they are not and contrarily, they are quite strong. Whatever be the situation, the good girl will not fall to pieces and would instead pick up the pieces and rebuild her life. She will build a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at her.

4. She values relationships.
The good girl puts others - family and friends and people who care for her - before herself. She will fight not only for her own self-respect but equally for the respect of these people. She lives by her principles and will never let her people down.

5. She won't break your heart.
Because she values relationships, chances are, it's the good girl who will be the one to stand by you and fight your battles shoulder to shoulder with you, loyal till the end. Chances are, she will be the one left behind when you decide to move on. And, chances are, she'll be the one with the broken heart. But in true spirit of a 'Good Girl', she will put it behind her and move on to the next battle.

So, give the good girl a chance, guys... They might be the best thing that could happen to you.

Things I learnt from my child!

I often hear mothers jest that "You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance." This is becoming such an oft repeated quote by mothers that I actually started to think about what are the things we can learn from our kids, on a rather serious note.

To elaborate, it is natural for children to learn and gain understanding of the world around them from their parents. And as parents, we look at our children and think that because we are much older and wiser, we are their teachers, and they should learn from us. We must fill their eager minds with all of the knowledge we have obtained through the years of experience we have endured while endeavouring to become the wise sages of our time. Yet, if we pay attention to the beauty of their innocence, we will be surprised at the lessons they teach us in return.

All parents, including me, tend to expect their children to be on their best behaviours 24x7. Absorb all advices at one go, be in their gracious charming moods every minute of the day and be the exemplary personification of the well-mannered children we teach them to be every second. Probably, we want to prove a point to an invisible someone constantly watching us that we have been successful in raising the ideal child. We want our children to be the models and ambassadors of an excellent upbringing and we expect nothing but a perpetual live demo of the same from them. Are we not being unfair? When we adults, with all our experience and maturity, are allowed to be irritated once in a while; when we expect others to forgive our mood swings; and when we ask others to forgive our 'less than polite' or even out rightly rude mannerisms once in a while; why can we not allow the same leverage to our kids? We always blame circumstances for behaving against our good upbringing, but are the children not exposed to the same circumstances? Think for a while and you will actually realise, like I did, that the children behave far better and probably more maturely than us adults in many such circumstances.

Have you ever watched a child? There is a lot that an adult can learn from a child. As adults, it is easy to let everyday occurrences dictate how we feel. We tend to hang on to the emotion of the event we have experienced. Say for instance, you and a friend are going to lunch. As you are going to park your car someone pulls in and steals your spot. This really makes you angry so you decide to say something to the person as they get out of the car. Basically, the other person doesn't really care that they have caused you to get angry and they laugh it off. Now you are just infuriated! The whole event is stuck in your head throughout the entire lunch. When you get home, you realize you are still mad and to top it off you didn't enjoy your time with your friend because you held on to the incident in the parking lot.

Now let's take a child. They are in the park and they are playing in the sandbox. They have a bucket filled with sand and they are building a sandcastle. They pour the sand out and run off to go get a toy to add to their creation. You watch and notice they are intent on creating the BEST sandcastle of all time. They walk over to refill the bucket and another kid comes up and takes the bucket. The child who had it first grabs it out of the other kid's hands and boom, a fight breaks out. Both children get in trouble and neither one of them can play with the bucket. Do they let that stop them? No, they find something else to do. A few minutes later you see them playing with the very child they were in a fight with moment before. What does this tell us? How can we learn from the children?

We can learn a lot of things simply by watching the kids around us. Children are the perfect little teachers. Some of the things that I have learned from them are as follows:

1.       Go with the flow. Whatever is present in your life is perfect right now and that if you allow for it, you will enjoy the experience much more. Never linger on to the past or focus too much on the future. Carpe diem. Seize the day. Adopt this attitude and you will move through conflict faster and see better things appear than you wouldn't have seen otherwise. Also, allow others to be where they are in their lives without any judgment or interference in their path. The example above is a perfect scenario. See, children feel the feeling they are having. They express what they feel and then they let it go. They don't focus on the past or hold a grudge for the future. They just go with the flow! It is a wonderful lesson to learn as an adult. If the parking lot incident could have been different, the emotions and the following events could have been much more pleasant.

2.       Enjoy the beauty all around you. Have you ever noticed that kids see the beauty in everything and delight in it? I have quoted this earlier on numerous occasions and I will quote this again that "there are no seven wonders in the eyes of a child. There are seven million." They find something exciting and beautiful in everything they see. The bug in the garden gets them all excited. Sitting in a Tuk-tuk is an experience to cherish. I can get up in the morning with the worst bed hair ever, eyeliner smeared from the night before, pyjamas with cooking stains hardened onto them, and my 7-year-old daughter will say, "Mommy, you are so beautiful." She'll really mean it. No judging, no kidding. Likewise, there may be an abandoned house down the street with a yard filled with dandelions. I see weeds. She sees a field of beautiful yellow flowers, and she dances in them. Why can't we be more like that? Why can't we see beauty more, judge others less - or ourselves for that matter - and learn to dance in the dandelions? We should. While we're at it, we could learn to dance in the rain, too.

3.       Let go of your inhibitions. I love the fact that children are not afraid to strip down to nothing and run through the neighbourhood without a care in the world. Now, I am not saying that this is what we should do as adults. In most countries, this could get a person arrested. I am saying we should stop trying to be so darn perfect all of the time. Stop worrying about what the neighbours think and just be yourself. So what if your clothes aren't the latest fashion, or your lawn is not the brightest shade of green. If people judge you based on those things, that is their loss, not yours. Who would want friends that are always bringing you down, anyway? If we could take this lecture from our children's lesson book, we would all be a happier people. Don't forget to remind yourself that nobody is perfect, not even your neighbour.

4.       Keep the enthusiasm. Ever watched an infant discover a new thing, say, the fact that if he falls down on the bed in on his back, he won't get hurt. It becomes a new game for him because he enjoys his new discovery. It is his favourite thing until he discovers something new. He will keep doing it for hours and his enthusiasm will not die down. As we grow older, we start "getting bored" with one thing. The enthusiasm dies down after a while and we lose interest in something that excited us exorbitantly a while ago. We should learn to keep the enthusiasm alive. We should learn to keep monotony at bay. Remember, your dreams have no expiry date. You only need to keep up at it until you fulfil it and move on to the next 'new' dream.

5.       It's OK to believe in magic. There is a reason that when we think of hope, we think of children. It is because children aren't afraid to dream. They believe that anything is possible. As long as they keep believing, anything can be. It is when we become adults that we start letting fears and doubts creep in that limit us from doing truly impossible things. Fear kills more dreams than failure ever does. Fear actually does not even let us embark on the journey to fulfil our dreams. It doesn't allow us to 'Believe'. Children ask Santa for a gift absolutely believing they will receive it. As adults, we know the truth about Santa, but do we know the truth about God? I know God is real, do you? If you do, when was the last time you asked God for a gift and truly believed you would receive it? With God, all things are possible.

6.       It's OK to play. Children have the most amazing ability to be carefree and live life with no regrets. They play hard and love life as they are doing it. Amid our busy schedules and meetings, shuffling the kids here and there, cleaning the house, fixing meals, and running errands remember that those things that are most important will only be around for a short time. Then, they will be grown-up and gone. Loosen up and enjoy life a little. The dishes will be there tomorrow, and so will the errands. Meetings can be rescheduled or missed, and dinner can be leftovers. Live life with no regrets, especially when it comes to spending time with your family. Your children will only be children and living in your home a few years. Every year, time goes by faster and faster. Do the things that you need to do, then play hard with your children. I promise you will love life as you are doing it.

So, the next time you are out walking or in a restaurant, watch a child. See how they interact with the environment, their families, and other people to get what they want. They are brilliant little souls to learn from.