Circle of life

What is it about old friends that makes you smile and melt a little inside? Especially the ones you spent your teens with, the ones who share your secret of the first crush, the first heartbreak, the first half-baked plans for life, the little beginnings of the journey of discovering who you are and what all you can become. Those friends remain in the heart always, despite the cold distance of adulthood and the self-centeredness of grown-up life.

So when one of them writes to you, remembering your birthday, or the silly laughs you had in the girls toilet, or the promises you made never ever to lose touch, it plays like a magical game of the heart before your eyes. One such dear, dear friend of the lovely years of life in school wrote today about wanting to see N, about slowly getting used to the idea of being called aunty, and about the hope that the children could now be friends and continue the circle of life. And I can't stop smiling at this miracle called friendship that transcends time, distance and all kinds of differences.

May special friends bring you moments of pure happiness and the circle of life go on and on.

Why...

...is it acceptable to say that you are not a baby/children person, but not to say that you are not a dog/pet/animal person?

And why is it nearly uncool to have children? What's with this unmentioned, unspoken of idea that if you are educated, successful and intelligent, you will, almost by default, choose not to have a baby? Why is a heartwarming welcome extended to a dog when it enters the train but a silent, disapproving turn of the head for a baby? Why do people pretend that they can't see a ready-to-pop pregnant lady standing before them - are we seriously lacking even the basic semblance of compassion towards fellow humans?

How ironic, that the proponents of liberty, of choice, are often the ones who snub others' right to choose their own path. Sometimes, all that is needed is to focus on minding one's own business and quit making value judgements about others, their lives and their decisions.

Escape to paradise

It is one thing reading about something, entirely another seeing and experiencing it.

Travel guides and websites describe Snowdonia as a beautiful escape. It is that, and much more. We have just returned from a lovely, long, luxurious break at the gorgeous national park in Wales and can't seem to stop raving about it. Suffice it to say, the prospect of returning home was heartbreaking.

Stories

We had some friends over for lunch recently. Federer and Roddick fought it out for the Wimbledon title in the background on the telly, while we chatted, fed babies, changed babies, ate and chatted some more. And in the middle of all the tennis, carrot cake and vivid descriptions of the experiences of labour, some very interesting stories emerged.

Later, as A and I cleared up, we wondered how many stories are there out there. Every one has a story for a bestselling novel. Life really is something special - even the most boring one has a brilliant story hidden in its bosom, waiting to be unravelled.

Deep down we are all children, waiting to chat with our friends, eager to listen to the tales they have to tell us, and keen to share with them some of our own stories.

And so we sing

I used to sing a great deal when I was younger. The bathroom heard many many attempts at imitating Lata Mangeshkar, Anuradha Paudwal and Alka Yagnik. And then, somehow, music became something that one listened to, and singing was a thing of the past, that reminded me of fun-filled school days.

Not anymore. Vocal chords are getting furious practice once again. Rhyme Time takes place Monday mornings at the library but we sing throughout the week. And we add new lyrics to old favorites and create new songs out of familiar tunes. We sing during bath time, we sing during play time, we sing during walk time and at bed time. And we sing and sing and sing, till the voice in my head goes:

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream,
If you see a crocodile, don't forget to scream!

Row, row, row your boat gently to the shore,

If you see a lion, don't forget to roar!

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream,

Pull the plug and watch your boat become a submarine!

The golden sun...

is upon us. Everyday, for the last week or so, has been drenched in it's yellow warmth. So we took this opportunity to take N out for his first rendez-vous with the grass below, the sky above, and the river literally a stone's throw away. And he went hyper with delight! Oh world! You do look lovely through the eyes of a baby!Actually, everything looks beautiful through the eyes of a baby. There are no unnecessary complications, from within or without. Food, play, sleep and loads of love - what more does a baby need? In fact, what more does anyone need?
Looks like all we really need is indeed love. After all these years of being a cynic, I think I am inclined to agree.

Re-thinking

The thing is this - I saw this great documentary recently which has had me thinking a lot. Trouble is, it's off the air now and I feel like kicking myself for not writing about it here earlier.

The film is called 'The trouble with working women'. It explores the various views about women, work, and what is considered women's work. In doing so, as is perhaps expected, it raised more questions than there are straight-forward answers for. Men calling women the 'inferior' specimen of the species, women refusing to hire other women of child-bearing age, and men making pregnancy and maternity-friendly policies at work, house-husbands who have consciously chosen to stay at home and look after children while the wife goes out to earn for the family, women who started support groups for battered women and now believe that there is actually some such thing as 'too much equality' which goes against the interests of women, women working 19 hour days to have it all - the family and the career. Nothing new about it, just the approach of two rational presenters investigating why things are so complicated for women.

One voice stood out for me, and that's the voice I have been thinking about since. It was the voice of one woman who fought for women's right to equality in the '70s. Having believed in radical politics for the bulk of her life, she said she thinks differently now. Why? She said she would have thought and behaved differently back then too, if she had children then.

The gravity of that statement is immense and hit me only once I got thinking. It is a fact, one thinks differently once a child is born. New life is so completely dependant, it needs someone to give up everything to care for it, with one hundred percent focus. Whether one likes it or not, that is the fact. Nature has chosen the woman to execute that role, and as far as biology is concerned, I don't see any job-sharing happening. This is the crux of the problem, and it is around this fundamental that any debate over genuine equality needs to work. Whether it is brought about biologically or socially, equality has to address the gap that child-bearing and child-rearing create in a woman's life.

As the programme headed for a heartbreakingly depressing end, the only saving grace was the supreme optimism of the presenters - and their conclusion that though women earn less than men at the workplace, their lives are 'richer'. As I was about to boo the ending down, I held myself back. I know what they mean - a man can never understand what it means to have a line joining you with your baby, the attachment that you have for your child, and no, it is not humbug - by negating emotions so intensely felt by so many women we only trivialise our experiences. Yet we have a long way to go if women's lives are to be truly rich, if not richer - and equal pay for equal work is a good place to start.

Oh for some refuge in the non-controversial, less draining and rather uplifting world of natural phenomenon! If you, like me, are feeling entirely spent by the unfairness of the gender divide, I invite you to the wonderful world of weather, or rather, the wonderful weathers of the world. A series of documentaries study the science behind weather and it's historical understanding and how it influences our social behaviour. Off to have the mystery of the hexagonal snowflake revealed!