Day Care: Do They Care?

So we had decided on this daycare for the kids. You know the one – big, fancy, expensive, dead convenient, being in the same campus as both our offices… We bought ourselves a three-day trial period. Well, I still have only a verbal offer and the entry load at this daycare was coming to something over 80 k for the twins, so a trial period definitely makes sense, right?

Right.

The kids clearly liked the place. It’s large, well set up, clean, has nice child-sized toilets (clean) and places to climb and things to jump off of. Oh and there were these toy car things they could drive that they fell in love with. They didn’t talk to anybody much there, but as long as I was giving them lunch and they could play with the toy cars or climb and jump off things, they were ok.

Amit and I weren’t so easily impressed. Though the place appeared very professional and everything, I felt it was run like a factory. There was nothing really bad about it (apart from the food; I’ll come to that later) but there were small, niggling things that weren’t quite right. One or two of the attendants didn’t seem to be the kind cut out to be working with little children. One attendant had her own child there and this skewed things. She could not give her daughter sufficient attention, but neither could she treat her like just another child there.

There was a general one-size-fits-all kind of approach there that I felt was not exactly suited for kids of this age. One day, they twins were all happy and excited and showed no signs of wanting to sleep after lunch. The attendant’s response? “Oh no, they have to sleep, or they will disturb all the other kids here.”

I mean, yeah, she has a point, but shouldn’t there be some other solution? Like giving them something to do, or taking them to another area where they can play?

I heard a couple of the other attendants threatening the kids with “if you don’t fall asleep right now, spider will come.” If there’s one thing I want to protect my kids from, it’s from this kind of pointless threatening and fear-phobia approach.

The kids were all put to sleep on mattresses spread out on the ground. For a place as large (and expensive) as this one, you’d think they’d have sufficient mattresses. They didn’t – the kids were crammed together about five on a mattress. They could hardly move.

And then there’s the food. These folks actually discouraged us from sending food for the kids because (one size fits all) they provide food. We saw the menu, and I wasn’t impressed. Kids need proper meals – fruit, veggies, dahi (curd/yoghurt), in addition to the staple dal-rice. They need fibre in their cereal – unpolished rice or whole wheat, not just white rice. Still, I thought, maybe they do actually give all that on the side, they just mention the main dish on the menu. After all, they can’t be giving only rice and sambhar, or only paratha and curd. Our girls are used to five-course lunches. We even give them non-veg – or at least egg – once or twice a week. But no, they said, you can’t send any non-veg. Ok, I thought, let’s see what their food looks like. Maybe it looks really healthy, with lots of veggies hidden in the sambhar or in the raita.

No such luck. The food on the plate looked a lot worse than it looked on the menu. Pulao and raita (rice with mixed veggies and curd with raw veggies like onion) looked to me like white rice, plain (thin) curd, and a few green peas tossed in for colour. Sambhar-rice looked like rice with thin, colourless dal.

What’s worse, on our first day there, they gave the same food for lunch and for the tea-time snack! On our second day there, lunch was the same as on the first day. There was a five-year-old at our table who commented on it… so at least we know that they don’t actually usually give the same food every blessed day. But hullo! How about adding some nutrition to this food? These guys are supposed to be in the child care business.

Afternoon snack was also horrifying. One day it was biscuits, another day it was rice kheer (rice pudding). Refined sugar, polished cereal. How about a little fruit? Or at least good old bread-n-jam, which is at least better than biscuit, especially if you make a real effort and get wheat bread.

I had thought that since they provide food, I could just send the fruit and veggies to supplement, but after seeing what their food looked like, I realized I just couldn’t.

So anyway, I packed them lunch every day. Only, the food is cooked the evening before, refrigerated overnight, and packed when I go to pick them up from school around 11.15 a.m. So it’s still quite cold when they are ready to eat around 1 p.m. So, heat it, right? We have this useful little box called a microwave, which is killing the environment but we all use it just the same, right?

On the second day at lunch time, their attendant told me very firmly that, sorry to say, we need the microwave to heat the food for the infants. So could you please send their food at a ready-to-eat temperature? Thank you very much.

When you’re giving a place 80 grand, you’d think the least they could do is to buy a second microwave, right? Yeah, right.

When I told Amit this, he was disgusted. It was Friday afternoon by this time, so we spent the weekend and Monday morning phoning around, and on Monday afternoon I dropped the kids at this daycare, then drove off to inspect another one nearby. It was a much smaller affair, homely – not actually a home, though it was based out of what was originally intended as a house – far from perfect in terms of the infrastructure, but somehow cosy and warm. Because it was a house in design, there was a small outdoors area with a small sandpit; the big, plush daycare had no outdoor area at all, so this was better than nothing. The toilets were adult sized, fitted with child seats. The dining table was in the kitchen. There was a fridge and a microwave, and the woman in charge had no reservations about using either. There were about ten kids, and three caregivers. They didn’t provide food, for which, after our first experience, I was thankful, and they had no problem with us sending non-veg for the kids. The woman also assured me that I needn’t send any fruit as she always had fruit available for the kids. This, of course, put this place way up there at the top of the list as far as I was concerned.

So today I dropped the kids off at this new place and sweated it out in the car outside all afternoon. The woman was very keen that I not hang around for long, as she said it made it more difficult for kids to get settled in. Tara was somewhat upset when I left, but by all accounts she quickly settled down, ate lunch, and proceeded to play the entire afternoon. This was not a problem – the sleeping kids slept in another room with the door closed and were not disturbed. When I went back in some time around 4.30, she was completely happy and at-home there, and didn’t bother too much about me.

So, all in all, this place seems more convincing than the other. Amit and I both really liked the person in charge (while we found it difficult to like any of the women at the first place). It is a ten minute drive away from our office complex, unfortunately, but perhaps that is a small price to pay?

And there is a smaller price to pay in a very literal sense as well – this place costs less than half of the other on a monthly basis, and has none of the entry barriers that amount to 80 k in the other place. So it makes sense to go with it for a while and see if it works, don’t you think? After all, the place with only one microwave and plenty of attitude isn’t going anywhere and we can always go back there later on if we wish.

The kids have put up a sterling performance in all this. They’ve been almost unmitigatedly cheerful and easy-going. Despite being left alone this afternoon at this new place (and Tara being a little upset by it) they were all ready to go back to the first place at the end of the afternoon, just so they could play with some of the toys over there!

I still feel a little selfish for wanting to go back to work… but I think that eventually the girls will begin to love day care (as they already love school) and that it will do them no harm in the long run. Or at least that’s what I want to believe right now. I just hope we’re doing the right thing and choosing the right daycare. It is so hard to trust our little girls to somebody else’s care.

Restaurant Experience: Completely Avoidable

Amit decided that it was time we went on another ‘date’, so S&S were called in to babysit last weekend. We planned to watch a movie, but the only one that looked interesting didn’t run at a suitable hour at the movie hall nearest home, so we decided to just do dinner instead. A long, leisurely dinner with drinks, appetizers, main course, and dessert, stretching over three hours or so, we thought, would be nice. So we thought.

I’d never been to Sahib, Sindh and Sulran before, and since it was quite nearby, we decided to go there.

As soon as we walked in, I didn’t like the place. It was dark, crowded, and noisy. There was a row of tables down each side of the hall, and a row of two-seaters squeezed in between. We, naturally, were in the squeezed-in row. The table was so small that once the excessively large plates were in place, there was no space left for the food. Every time they brought a dish, they took away something else. First they took away the complimentary bread platter before we were done with it, and later they actually removed my un-used side plate prior to serving the main course! Maybe they just should have removed the dinner plates altogether and let us eat straight out of the serving dishes. They were keen enough to do so, whipping them away before the last bite had gone down. And I do mean ‘before’ – they almost succeeded in removing my appetizer before I was done with it. Some nifty wrist work on my part saved the day that time, but the bread rolls we really did lose.

Service was so good it was bad. There seemed to be an excess of waiters who were all very quick and eager. Apart from whipping your food away from under your nose, they flourished the menu before you were quite seated, brought each dish almost before you’d ordered it, and generally managed to courteously and efficiently rush you through your meal, apparently in an effort to free up the table for the next taker. And takers, strangely enough, there were plenty of.

The drinks we ordered – Bloody Mary for me and something exotic with vodka for Amit, were completely lacking in alcohol. Amit’s, in fact, seemed to be coloured sugar-syrup. He took a sip, I took a sip, and we both rejected it absolutely and totally. Mine I drank for the tomato juice – though it was an outrageously expensive glass of tomato juice.

The food was ok – not bad, but not good enough for the price tag. Other equally pricey restaurants, and even some less expensive ones, manage to dish up more subtle and exciting flavours in their food. At half the cost, the food could have been conssidered decent.

The only good thing I can say about the place is that, when Amit rejected his drink, some senior person, presumably from the bar counter, was sent over to enquire as to the nature of the complaint. He didn’t react to the charge of their being no alcohol in either of the drinks, but offered Amit some other drink, which he refused. They had the good grace not to bill us for the rejected drink, though, so that was decent of them. Only trouble being, if we had wanted not to be billed for a drink, we wouldn’t have bothered to order it.

In the end, what with the high decibel levels and the too-small table and the over-eager waiters, we skipped the dessert and were out of there in about an hour. So much for our long, leisurely dinner.

So, if you’re considering dinner out at Sahib, Sindh, and Sultan, my advice to you would be: don’t even bother.

What’s In A School, Anyway?

Before we started doing the rounds of the schools trying to get the twins in, I wasn’t very concerned about school. I didn’t believe it was necessary to get them into the “best” school. As far as I was concerned, any school that was middle of the range would do. What did “best” mean, anyway?

To me, when it comes to schools, “best” would probably mean a large school, with enormous grounds, good sports facilities, and generally excellent infrastructure. That means clean toilets, well-equipped science labs, plenty of extra-curricular activities which are given sufficient priority. And, very importantly, well-paid staff. I’d expect teachers to like their subjects, enjoy teaching, and to encourage curiosity and questioning in students. In my experience as a student, it is difficult, but not impossible, to find teachers like that.

I didn’t aspire, necessarily, to the “best” school for my children. I don’t quite know why. Perhaps because these schools tend to be expensive, and hence elitist. I would want my kids to know and mix with people from different economic and cultural backgrounds, to realize that every birthday doesn’t have to be celebrated at McDonald’s, or, worse, TGIF.

Perhaps because I don’t really believe that it is important to always get the “best” for your children; rather it’s important to get them what is good enough, so that they are not brought up in an altogether exalted environment. They should be able to deal with everyday realities like things breaking – literally or figuratively.

I also felt that, even if they weren’t in the “best” school, they’d learn enough at school to be going on with. Whatever they didn’t learn in school, in terms of values, communication skills, social graces and the like, I was willing to risk betting that we could teach them at home. And in terms of just academics, I wasn’t too concerned. As long as I can teach them to be regular, disciplined, conscientious, and, hopefully, interested, the rest would follow. Besides, I’m not worried about them coming first or second in class – as long as they genuinely learn and have fun. What I’d rather see them doing in school, is making friends, learning to interact, learning to play, learning to question and find answers, learning to win and lose and laugh and cry. In other words, learning to live.

For that, I figured, a good enough school would be good enough.

But then we got caught up in the usual rat race of admission and hearing from others about how great this, that, or the other school was. And suddenly “best” became whatever everyone else was talking about. In fact, from what I could make out, “best” came to mean “most difficult to get in to”.

By that definition, our kids have gotten into one of the “best” schools. This school is so “best” that people either swoon over it, or have never heard of it. You know the type – like the restaurants you can only go to by invitation: you’re either dying to get in there (because it is so damn difficult to actually get invited), or you’ve never heard of it. Only a privileged handful have ever actually been inside.

On the inside, though, I’m not sure that it’s really very different. It’s a school, it has classrooms, teachers, students. This school does not have the facilities that would make it rate as “best” by my definition. The main playground, for instance, is a public playground shared with another school and, in theory, open for strangers to walk in to.

All the same, I have no real complaints with their new school right now. I liked the interaction, as I mentioned earlier, and I vehemently disliked the interaction at another school which had the most impressive facilities. (For the record, no, the twins didn’t actually get in there. But, also for the record, I was railing against their admission process right at the time it happened, and we didn’t find out until much later that they hadn’t gotten in, so it wasn’t a matter of sour grapes.) I like the Montessori set up here, to whatever extent I’ve seen so far, and the kids’ teachers seem to be nice. I’ve watched the older kids at Assembly when I go to drop the kids in the morning, and I really like the way they do Assembly too. But, judging by the number of kids at Assembly, this really is a small school. So no – by my definition, this school would rate as decent, pretty good, but not in the “best” category. Probably not worth paying over-the-top fees for, nor commuting 40 minutes each way for. I’d want to keep those burdens for one of the more stereotypical convent schools in the heart of town, where acres of playground and a swimming pool are included in the school premises.

Not that I’d even dream of changing their school now that they’ve started. But what I’m really wondering about is, what differentiates ok, from good, from best? Is it one’s own priorities and expectations of a school, or is it just what everyone else says about a school? And is it worth the effort of huge fees and long distances just to get your kids into a school that is on other people’s “best” list?

So Long, Unicorn, And Thanks For All The Fun

The world consists of two kinds of people, as I’ve had occasion to note before: two-wheeler riders, and others. The others might be car drivers, auto drivers, truck drivers, bus drivers, pushcart drivers, even pedestrians; but if they don’t have a passion for two-wheelers, they are ‘others’.

I’ve been a happy two-wheeler-ist since I was 18. My parents did me the favour of teaching me to drive a car, and then scraped together their savings and dipped in to my education fund to buy me the best automatic (I mean, gearless) two wheeler available in those days: a bright red Kinetic Honda. I practically taught myself to ride, and in a week, I was driving myself from Panchkula to college in Chandigarh, much to my delight. (Now that I think of it, my parents must have been incredibly brave to let me do this.) Back then, I remember, 3 litres of petrol cost Rs 50 and lasted me a week. The good ol’ days…

That Kinie came all the way to Bangalore with me after marriage and saw us through a few adventures here before I was forced to sell it. It broke my heart to see it go, but, back then, we were moving to the US, possibly for good (which, in those heady days, meant anything from one year to one generation or more).

When we returned from the US, I bought a Scooty. This trusty steed served me well for many years, and I finally sold it only in 2006, when I already had my new bike and didn’t need it any more. It wasn’t working too well by then, but the colleague I sold it to was so delighted to finally get her own set of wheels, she didn’t mind. Besides, I practically gave it to her.

The new bike, a Honda Unicorn, was a motorcycle, something I’d been dying to ride ever since I went shopping for my first two-wheeler at the tender age of 18. So I was over 30 when I finally got it. So what? I loved it the more for having had to wait so long. (I’ve written lots about it already, so I’ll try to keep this short.)

While I was working, I rode the bike to office and back – about 20 km return every day. That was fantastic. Looking back, and looking at traffic the way it is now, I’d have to admit that it might not have been very safe (my ever-present helmet notwithstanding). But at the time I didn’t see anything risky about it.

When I stopped working, and after the kids came, opportunities to ride the bike were few and far-between. Too many times, I had to take it out just to take it out and keep it running. Then, maintenance became an issue: vehicles hate to be kept standing and deteriorate alarmingly quickly. I should have sold it months ago, before it entirely stopped working, but it’s difficult to listen to good sense when your heart isn’t in it.

And now I really don’t have a choice. Most of my driving will now revolve around the kids and Amit is adamant that they will not sit on a two-wheeler until they are 18 – at least. So the bike hardly ever gets to go out. Now the battery has died completely, which makes taking it out a real chore, having to kick-start it everywhere.

So I finally did what I should have done long ago: I put it up for sale. At the same time, I took it for servicing: it might as well be in working condition when it goes. Buyers are coming to look at it over the weekend. I still don’t want to part with it, but now I really, really should.

By Monday morning, I expect, it will be gone. And then, I will no-longer be a two-wheeler-ist – ever again; I’ll always be just one of the ‘others’.

Quest For The Holy Grail (Well, Almost)

It’s true I haven’t mentioned it here for a while, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten all about my quest for a khata. Over the past couple of weeks, I went and applied for – and got! – the Encumbrance Certificate. I can’t tell you what it actually certifies, because it’s in Kannada, but at least I have it. It wasn’t difficult at all to get. One day I went and filled out a form (nothing complicated compared to the Property Tax form) and paid some money (for which I got a receipt). That took all of 20 minutes. I went back on the appointed date a week later to pick up the certificate. It was ready and waiting. That took all of five minutes. No waiting, no pestering, no hidden charges. Fantastic.

I ordered the draft for payment of the Khata fees and worked on the Khata application form – also not too daunting to an experienced form-filler like I was by now. Then last week I went back to the Ward office to submit the application. On my first attempt, Mr M wasn’t there, and B told me to come back the next day. On my second attempt, Mr M was there; he took one look at my papers and told me it had to be submitted at the dreaded Mayo Hall. If you’ve already read about my recent experience at Mayo Hall, you’ll know I was not thrilled to get this news.

However, what cannot be cured must be endured; or, to put it another way, if rape is inevitable, better sigh and get to it. So off I went today, application, supporting documents, and bank draft in hand, prepared for another “from-pillar-to-post” ordeal at Mayo Hall. To my surprise, it wasn’t too bad. Or perhaps I’ve now managed to adjust my expectations to more realistic levels.

I reached just after 10.30. The office I’d been told to visit had one person already seated at his desk, meticulously drawing ruled lines on bits of paper and occasionally in a ledger or notebook. (By the way, ‘Khata’ literally translates to ledger or notebook, and also to the accounts kept in one – I think. In Karnataka, it is an all-important document which doesn’t actually prove ownership of a property, but which everyone treats as though it does.)

In a few minutes, a woman appeared. She was quite helpful and told me, in English, to wait for a certain other gentleman who had access to the stamp that was required. Meanwhile, she checked my papers and asked me to get them notarised. By this time, I’d been waiting for half an hour or so already, and the required gentleman was expected any minute now. So I went to the appropriate section of Mayo Hall at top speed, nodded at the first tout who approached me, and showed him my papers.

“Eleven pages,” he said.
“It’s three documents,” I replied indignantly. “How does number of pages matter?”
He nodded readily and said “Rs 300.”
“Rs 100,” I countered, firmly.
“Rs 200, special discount for you,” he said, without flinching.
“Look. There are hundreds of others who will notarise this for me. Rs 100.”‘
“Rs 150, last offer,” he said.
“Done.”
“Wait here,” he said, taking my papers and walking off.

Nothing doing! I followed him to his desk, where, in ten minutes the eleven pages were signed, sealed, and stamped.

“Do you have the originals?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said, nodding to my document case. I didn’t offer to show them to him and he didn’t ask.

I returned to the former office and waited another half hour. The lady took pity on me and offered to sign the receipt for me without stamping it. I hesitated, and the offer was quickly but graciously withdrawn. Damn. Maybe I should have taken her up on it.

After I’d completed about an hour waiting, one of the other officers came over to me and asked what I was waiting for. I told him. “Oh, I’m the case officer for that, I’ll do it,” he said promptly. And five minutes later, I was done.

Of course, I should have been pissed off that I was made to wait for some mythical person who apparently was not required for my work… but I was just happy that my futile waiting had been only about half an hour or so. If you can go to a government office, get your work done, and get out in an hour, I guess you should count yourself lucky.

The next step is to follow up with a name and a number written on the receipt. How long will it take to get the khata? I don’t know – I was only told that there was a backlog of files pending from February, due to work having been held up because of election duties. So I wasn’t given a date or anything – just a name and a mobile number.

If the kids hadn’t already done their utmost to teach me patience, I don’t think I could have made it this far.

This quest is something like a treasure hunt in the mist: you don’t know where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, or what you’re going to find there, and you can see only one step ahead at each stage; but you believe there’s some treasure at the end of the road, whenever and wherever that might be.

Property Taxed

Friday was a busy day. I went to the BBMP office in the morning to follow up on the property tax saga. I had actually been once on Wednesday, when I was given the usual run-around: Go there to pay arrears, then go to the other room for the current year’s payment.” “Sorry, I can’t find your property in the system. Oh, you haven’t ever paid? Then you can’t pay here, go there.” Over there they said, “You’ll need Mr M. He hasn’t come today, try tomorrow.”

In other words, the usual run-around. This office looked smaller, cleaner and more efficient and helpful than Mayo Hall, though, so I was cautiously optimistic that if I hung around and did the rounds patiently enough, I might actually get somewhere.

On Friday morning I called Mr M’s young, helpful, English-speaking flunky, B. He said Mr M would be available around 12.30, so accordingly, I landed up there at 12.30. Mr M took one look at my document, heard my story, and told me to come back with a copy of the registered sale deed, encumbrance certificate and possession certificate. I went home and checked, found I didn’t have the EC and PC, and immediately called B again. He checked with Mr M, who said, just bring the sale deed. So, at 3.30 I left home and returned to the BBMP office, sale deed photocopy in hand. From 4 till 6 p.m., I sat there, and waited with bated breath. First, Mr M’s room was locked. This was annoying, because I had specifically checked with Mr M if 4 p.m. would be convenient, and he had said parvagilla (which, in this context means ok).

I called B, who said they had gone to Mayo Hall and were on their way back, could I wait 15 minutes or so?

I waited. It was hot, but there were some magnificent trees outside the office and it was a surprisingly peaceful area, tucked away in-between two crowded, noisy roads.

When Mr M & Co arrived, they streamed in on about half a dozen two-wheelers. The locked office was opened, and I followed them in. To his credit, Mr M got to work on my papers right away. He took a scrap of waste paper and scribbled two columns of figures. One, I guessed, was the tax unpaid, the other was the penalty. He totalled them, and it came to a shocking figure.

After that, I filled up the form and wrote out two cheques, one for arrears, the other for the current year. (I had to discard both the form and the cheque I had written on my previous attempt as they were already outdated.)

After that, I waited for almost an hour. There was no electricity, so my receipt could not be generated on the computer. Inside the room, with its corrugated iron sheet for a roof, it was terribly hot and stuffy. Mr M had ordered musambi juice for everyone, and I was surprised, pleased, and mildly embarassed when one glass came my way. It was completely welcome!

I had expected Mr M and others to leave punctually at 5, but they were still around at 5.40, when electricity finally came back. My receipt was promptly printed out, and Mr M verified his calculation of arrears and reduced the amount payable by a few thousand. It took another few minutes to get the receipt for the arrears, and then I was ready to leave. As a parting gift, Mr M gave me the form for the khata application. He had told me earlier that it was available at Mayo Hall, and I wasn’t looking forward to going there, so it was very nice of him to give it to me (at cost price, nothing extra).

Overall, it had been a smooth experience, though requiring a fair degree of patience. Most of the waiting was due to the power cut. Mr M, of course spoke to me almost entirely in Kannada, while I spoke to him entirely in English. We seemed to understand each other, though B was called in as interpreter a couple of times. I don’t know how much was lost in translation, but overall I have to say that a little Kannada goes a long way.

At the end of the day, I had the two receipts in my pocket, and had been shown the way towards obtaining the khata. Next week, I will embark on that promising-looking journey. Let’s see how that turns out.

Felling 1800 Trees in Lalbagh is Criminal and Insane!

Building a metro is a good thing, I suppose. Maybe it will actually make it easier to get around in the city and reduce traffic congestion and pollution. But there must be some other way of doing it. This is just heartbreaking. Is there no voice in this whole city powerful enough to prevent this?

I have written before, long, long ago, of my own personal Garden of Eden. It was the idyllic garden of my childhood, where every conceivable kind of fruit tree stood, and none was forbidden. I must have spent at most six years of my childhood in that house, with that garden, but it defined the way I relate to trees – and by extension to nature – for good. I remember once, running a fever of 103, bundled up in my warmest sweater on a mild day, clamouring to be let out; and when I was finally let out, I headed straight for the shady depths of the litchi tree. I remember sitting under the angular, white-barked guava trees, slicing green guavas with a blunt knife and rubbing them with black salt and gobbling them up fresh, without even the benefit of a quick wash first. It was the Garden of Eden – why wash the fruit?

Trees are friendly people. Before I knew anything about photosynthesis and carbon dioxide and oxygen levels in the atmosphere, I knew that trees were good to have around. They provided a cosy, leafy, shady haven in any kind of weather; and at the right time, they provided various types of delicious, sweet, juicy, cool fruit. They were wise and cool and steady as grandparents, warm and inviting and loyal as best friends. They never disagreed with you or scolded you or laughed at you. They were, in fact, almost as valuable as the imaginary friends I shared them with.

But now I’m all grown up; and though it still feels like murder, I force myself to accept that at times it is necessary to cut down trees, in the interests of our selfish, modern, urban lives. In the usual greedy way of the human race, we need more space for our roads, our houses, our offices, our hotels. But Lalbagh is THE botanical garden of Bangalore. Is there really no other way to create our precious metro by going around it. Do we really have to take one thousand eight hundred trees down for this? With all our science, technology, creativity, and every other kind of skill available to us today, can we find no way around this small, tiny island of greenery, nature, beauty? Really?

School Admissions: The Saga Continues

So we got back from Lakshadweep this morning. I haven’t had time to download photos or write it up yet, that will be coming up in the next few days. Meanwhile, here’s a couple of posts I wrote earlier, but didn’t have time to publish.

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The search for a suitable school for the twins is still underway, and things are hotting up. A couple of weeks ago, for some reason now lost in the mists of time, we decided to apply to the Gear foundation. The website said to apply early, so we thought we’d already left it too late, but we put in our application anyway and we got a call the very next day. Could we please register before 4 p.m.today and attend the parent interaction session at 10.30 a.m. tomorrow?

We could, and we did. It seemed that getting invited for the interaction indicated that you were through. That seemed too easy to be true, but at the interaction the reasins became clearer. Gear was starting a new school and wanted the first batch of enrolments for a session starting in mid-December. Normally, the school year starts in June, though in the Montessori system kids join whenever they turn two-and-a-half. Gear, for its first batch at this new school, would take kids upto about 4 years old, try and get all the kids accustomed to the Montessori method by April, then close for the summer holidays and re-open with a fresh batch of admissions in June.

While getting into the very first batch of anything always has some problems, this particular situation had several problems over and above that. First, the only infrastructure currently in place was a large, bare room. This was situated 20 km from home and 13 km from civilisation (as defined by me, in this case a significant traffic intersection). Third, this bare room would serve for the Montessori years, up to M3, but where the primary, middle, and senior school(s) would be, or when they would be, or how, or even whether they would be… was not known.

So: send my kids 20 km down a lonely country road for the benefit of a large bare room and an uncertain future? I don’t think so.

Having said which, however, I must add that the Principal who addressed the parents in that large, bare room, was most persuasive and quite subtly so. He gave a good pitch, and he put some gentle pressure and told you how lucky you were to have this opportunity for your kids and how he could make no guarantees about being able to give you a seat even one month down the line, should you be fool enough to let this opportunity pass. By the end of it, you actually felt that you were being offered a gold mine on a platter, not a single bare room 13 km from anywhere and a dream for a future.

We actually agreed to meet the Principal 1:1 (with the kids, that is) within the next week, but we finally chickened out. A 20 km commute each way every day? Give the kids a break!

Meanwhile, we got a call from another school. This was one we had applied to first, and not having heard anything, had given up on. I will not name the school right now, but it’s a school that everyone we’ve talked to has praised very highly. And, it’s only 7 km away (seems almost walking distance, compared to some others).

The weekend after the Gear meeting, we were at this other school. It has a small and quiet building tucked away in a noisy part of town. The gate was locked and we were allowed in only after our name was verified on a list. We were made to wait outside the Principal’s office and fill up forms. The girls naturally had to use the toilet, and I have to say, it was the cleanest toilet I have ever seen – you could have eaten out of it. Yuck! But I mean, it was really clean.

We waited about 40 minutes, but we arrived about 20 minutes early, so that wasn’t too bad. It was good to see only about 3 families waiting at any given time. We let the girls run around as much as we could, so they wouldn’t be cooped up and cranky and it turned out they were in great spirits.

When our turn came, we went in and found three women at a table and a couple of chairs for us. For the kids, there was a mat on the floor with a couple of toys scattered on it. We were told that the girls were free to go and play there, if they wished. At first they stuck to us, but in a few minutes they had got their hands on the toys and were asking us for help and advice. A few minutes later, they were off doing their own thing.

We were spoken to by three women, who explained the school philosophy etc to us. I noticed that at least two of them were always obliquely observing the kids. They said nothing to the kids directly, made almost zero attempt to interact with them, but just watched them at their work.

That whole approach made the interaction so very easy. The kids were relaxed and happy and so were we. I don’t know what they were looking for in the kids, and I don’t know what they saw, but I know that whatever they saw, it was most likely what is true of the kids, not some different persona brought on by heat, stress, strangers or other environmental factors.

Overall Amit and I both liked the place, the people and the whole feeling of the school. Let’s hope it works out – we’ll know soon enough.

Meanwhile, Head Start is still pending. If, perchance, that also comes through, we’re going to have to make a tough decision.

—————–

PS: The admission at this school came through when we were in Kochi, and then we had the task of organising the fees, no small feat, while we were on the ship and without much access to the world at large. The last date for making the payment was today! Well, with some help from our friends, and some setbacks courtesy yours truly, we got everything done by lunch today, so now it’s official. The kids will be joining in June!

PPS: What’s more, this school takes a sensible approach to the matter of twins being in the same class. They let the parents decide and then see how it pans out.

Walking in the Rain

I hadn’t had an afternoon off for a while; I was supposed to get one every weekend, but it doesn’t always work out that way. So this weekend, I was determined to get away, at least for a couple of hours. Saturday didn’t work out for various complicated reasons, so it had to be Sunday.

Lunch at Eden Park is not really conducive to anything other than an afternoon snooze, but I made a Herculean effort after getting home and left before the sleep managed to ensnare me. Ostensibly, my goal was to buy a large number of ring folders so I could spend the next several weeks filing away my papers methodically and systematically, as the income tax audit had revealed that they were anything but. But that was more of an excuse than a just cause for leaving the house; the real reason, of course, was, as always, just to get a break from home and kids for a bit.

It’s just as well that I had decided that hell and high water would not deter me, because high water was descending soon enough and hell pretty much described the state of the roads as the water level rose.
Umbrella in one hand and ring folders in the other, I trudged through the downpour, without much hope of staying dry for long. I was thinking of a previous and most memorable experience of walking in the rain. That was in Ladakh.

One day, we spent about 8 hours and 15 km in a steady downpour. I would hardly describe it as beautiful; and Amit was not in good spirits, so I had a task on my hands just keeping him going; but looking back, I have to admit it was one hell of an experience. (Of course, it was a terrible year in Ladakh, with unprecedented floods, and our trek ended with Amit’s father sending out the Army and the CBI to search for us… but that’s another story, and a very long one.)

And there were other memories – of rain and slush and mud mixed with dung, calf-deep and black as night and more slippery than an oiled eel; of solitude and companionship and nights alone in my tent at high altitudes and cold places; of nights spent awake and shivering and hoping the rain would not find a leak in my tent, and knowing that even if I stayed dry, others in neighbouring tents would not be so lucky; of wet shoes and cold feet and a fresh set of warm and dry socks and a cozy sleeping bag that has somehow avoided getting soaked; and so much more.

Repeatedly, over the course of many wet treks, I came to realize how important it is to keep one’s feet and crotch dry. And how much effort one is willing to expend towards this end. And, most importantly, how life becomes so much easier and less worrying once you give up on this and resign yourself to even these all-important regions of your body being cold and wet.

Sure enough, in the brief Bangalore downpour, my shoes were soon soaked through and I stopped stepping carefully to avoid the fast-flowing streams by the edges of the road. My jeans were wet at the bottom and I could feel the dampness inching up, so I stopped worrying about the passing vehicles splashing me. My upper body was still dry, thanks to the variety of bags I had saddled and draped around me and the umbrella held low over my head. But by far the more important function of the umbrella was to hide my face from the masses of people crowding under bus stops or squeezing flat against walls in an effort to stay dry – if they had seen the broad grin plastered on my face, they might have thought that I was completely crazy.

As I turned into the apartment complex, just for a moment a complete calm descended on the universe. There was no traffic on the road, not another person in sight, the trees and buildings were absolutely still and even the dogs and birds were in hiding, so there was no movement at all except the steady falling of the rain, and no sound other than that of the falling rain. Just for a moment, I felt that wonderful sense of alone-ness and calm that’s normally so impossible to find in the city and that repeatedly lures me to the remoter parts of the Himalayas. Now, with the twins, I wonder when – or whether – I’ll ever have a chance to find those quiet places again.

Powerless (and being really stupid about it)

On Sunday, we had a power cut that started in the morning around 11 and lasted till around 5 p.m. The papers spoke of some major fault that had resulted in large areas of the city being without power on Saturday evening, and that repairs would be underway on Sunday, rendering those areas and some others powerless on Sunday.

On Monday, the papers reported how the repair work had been progressing satisfactorily, when some minor disaster had occurred and put paid to all the labours of the day. Repairs would be resumed on Monday, again resulting in prolonged power outages in various areas.

So, on Monday morning, when we lost electricity around 7.30 a.m., I put it down to the electric repairs under way, and thought nothing about it, apart from working out how it would affect my day. It turned out, it wouldn’t make much difference: the weather was pleasant enough to make life bearable without fans even in the daytime; our house is bright enough to render lights in the daytime largely unnecessary; my mobile phone battery was fully charged; the fridge was due for a defrosting anyway. And for once, there would be no loud doorbells interrupting the kids’ afternoon slumber. The only things that posed a minor inconvenience for me were that I couldn’t play the music system (I played some music on the mobile phone, but it’s not at all the same thing); the laundry would have to wait till evening; and I’d have to spend the afternoon hours reading instead of staring at the monitor – which could be considered a good thing.

The day passed off all right, and it was only around 6 p.m. when electricity still hadn’t returned that I began to get irritated. It was getting dark, and the kids and I were stuck indoors due to the rain.

Then, the street lights came on, and I sat up straight and took a long look around. It finally dawned on me that all around me there was light, current, power, electricity, bijli – whatever you choose to call it, it was there in abundance. Only our house was in darkness! Damn! And I’d been putting up with it all day!

By this time, Amit was home, and it was he who went down, did the footwork, found the burnt-out fuse and got it changed. I was too busy sitting at home in the still darkness and feeling foolish and really angry with myself.