The wonder years

Most of us or atleast all the people who've spent their summer vacations in their grandparents' place would relate to it...we used to wait for our holidays so that we would rush to my granparents' village, Buchanally which was hardly 40 kms away. And what did we do there???

My grand parents didn't have a TV
There was an old radio which only my grandpa was supposed to handle :)
There were no books, no comics..not even a newspaper..
There was no music system...
Forget computer games and all the luxaries today's kids have ....

All my cousins used to come there..we would roam around the village..play some stupid games like collecting seeds of a tree that was in the backyard. We would dig the ground and keep them under the ground. We used to call it Khazana :) [Thanks to fairy tale influence] and we used hope that next time when we come for our holidays, we would find our khazana safe in the same place. Unfortunately we never found it :)

We used to collect neem leaves, flowers and seeds and make different designs on the ground... and call all the people to showcase our talent. We would make temporaray "chulha" and put some weard leaves and flowers and seeds and make what we used to call "sambar".

We used to play "Ramayan". That was the most popular tv serial those days and as I was the only girl, I had to play "Seeta" as well as "Shurpanakha" :)

We used to play Antakshari..there was no end to this game and we used fight later debating who's the winner.

We used to play "shooting shooting" [too much of hindi movies influence which hasn't faded even now!] where used act as if a movie shooting is going on. I remember shooting for "Ram Lakhan" so well. Again, I was to play all female characters.:)

All the boys used to play cricket and I would sit and watch them or just be a scorer :)

We used to play cards and we had a great fun with my grandpa against whom we used to gang up to defeat all the time. Now when I look back, I am certain that my grandpa knew we were cheating on him and he would willingly lose just not to dissappoint us!

There was a huge tree in the frontyard of the house where all of us would sit on different branches and that was our train journey and we used to go to Bombay, Delhi and all over India sitting right there. We would sit there and eat "Jawar Roti and pickle"

We would force my nanaji to tell us stories, he used to get bugged by us but we would never leave him until he narrated us the same stories again and again and somehow we never used to get bored of them:). I remember "Gaon ka maamu", "Sabse bada thhan thhan paal" "Kaagakka Gubbakka" even now :) My granny on the other hand was very co-operative :) She used to have so much of household work, but at the end of the day she had to tell us stories:) and how can I forget the fights we used to have? All of us wanted to sleep next to my naani :)

And the most cherished memory that I have is my grandfather shouting at us, he used to scold us for every naughty thing we did. He used to tie the jhhoola for us even before we would go there and he used to shout at us as we would spoil the floor [they had mud flooring those days]

My grand father would keep all the sacks containing grains piled up in a room. We would all climp up those sacks and jump down and get scoldings once again as the sacks would tear up making the grain fall on the ground :)

We had "Gobar gas" at home and we used to get shoutings as we would go and sit on it..he would even scold us for the stick he used for mixing "gobar" as we would throw it away. How can I forget "Siddamma"? There was this lady who was our neighbour and she had a huge guava tree which had branches over our terrace. We would go and pluck those fruits which were not yet ripe. She would come running and we would hide from her. Unfortunately my naanaji had to face her and we would get scoldings from him on her behalf :) We used to get and amazing kick by just plucking her guavas and could never eat them as they were never ripe :). She used to scold us as the ball invariably went to her house everytime we played :) After all these fights and scoldings we would ultimately go and spend our afternoons in her house as the summer there used to be too hot and for some reason the front portion of her house [which is called "bunk" in north karnataka" ] used to really cold and soothing.

And whenever my grandfather used to go to Zaheerabad [which is the nearest town] we used to wait for him eagerly for that mouth watering fruit bread which we would get only there :) I don't know if they still make it there.

Then We would go to the fields along with my grandpa to get "bhutta" , "hariboot", sugar cane etc, We would pluck it feash from the soil and eat them fresh too. The freshness in the air and the aroma of those green fields is still fresh in my memory. Then we used relish those mangoes. There used to be big room where they would put mangoes to ripe and we would go grab a few and eat them to the content.
We would make fire outside and roast fresh ground nut and sweet potatoes. That was so yummy!!

Today's kids have a lot of toys and a lot more exposure than we had. They have access to so much technology. They know how to operate a computer and the internet and get connected to the whole world, they have pizzas and burgers for lunch and dinner :) We had none of those, but our childhood was filled with so much enthusiasm, so much fun, frolic, innocence and excitement. When I look back, the most memorable time of my life was spent at my grandparents place. As I type this I remember this famous ghazal rendered by Jagjit Singh "Woh masoom chahat ki tasweer apni, woh Khwabon khilonon ki jaageer apni, na duniya ka gham tha, na rishton ke bandhan, badi khoobsoorat thi woh zindagani"

DPS agony !!

How does a parent decide which school is the best for his/her child?

Well..we have been running around for the admission of my nephew for nursery. He is 2yrs and 10 months old and he will be going to nursery next year...that is for the academic year 2008-2009. As all the other parents do, we collected forms from various schools..i wonder how much these schools will be making by selling the forms!! There were atleast 300 kids aspiring admission at DPS for nursery in that particular slot of 9.00 am to 9.30 am. We were one among them. They asked us tio sit in a room and took my nephew away to the basement. Imagine a 2.5 yr old kid being taken away for an interview!! There was chaos all over with kids howling and crying and sometimes parents being called as the kids were difficult to manage. And we were anxiously waiting..he went inside holding the lady's hand witout crying. And came in after 20 minutes crying loudly with a lollypop in his hand :) When asked why was he crying the answer was simple "you left me alone and I though you'll leave me and go" simple that was!!! How can you test a two year old? On what basis do you test a child? His answers and his behavious will depend on various aspects. He may just not be in a mood to answer you. They asked him to draw. He may have felt like playing 'hide and seek' at that time :) Or he may have just got scared of starngers staring at him :) It was utter rubbish!! But than we finished and came out. They said they'll call us in 10-12 days time. Well 2 weeks were over, but still no call from DPS!! When I called to find out whats the status thay simply said if we haven't received a call that means our child is not selected!! and we were denied an appointment with the principal in this regard. Well, when it comes to calling the children for the interview they put up the list on their website, but not when it comes to the selected children!! The reason is simple: They cant assess a small child of 2 yrs. The supreme court rule clearly states that a child ahould have no admission tests. The criteria for the selection should be on the basis of the distance of the school from home, a sibling of studying in the same school and one of the parent being an alumni of the school!! If these are the criteria why would you assess a child???

You will gwt into DPS if:
YOU ARE READY TO SPEND A LAKH PLUS and then that's not enough you need to have proper connections !!! You need to have either political pull or you need to know somebody at the management personally and I've also there are brokers who help you negotiate the deal. :)

The funniest part is that my nephew was denied admission at DPS as he didn't paint when they gave him crayons and the other day he won the first prize at the painting competition at his play school:) Isn't it very clear from the above why he didn't get admission at DPS?


Admission in a so called prestigious school like DPS....is it really worth it?

Aarush and colours

Aaree recognises all the colours now. The focus of the month[september then] at his pre school was to identify and name colours. I was trying to teach him colours for such a long time but they were able to do it so fast at school:) Was it montessori training or collective learning?