Paradise Lost

I suppose this would not be everyone’s definition of Paradise – and in another context, it would not even be my definition of Paradise, but in the context of someone who’s just returned to work after a two-year stint of doing nothing but managing the house…

See, there’s a lot of work in managing a house. Way more than anyone who hasn’t done it can conceive. It’s
even more if it’s the only thing you’re doing. I don’t know why (and I might well have opportunity to reconsider this statement). But one thing we can all agree on is that housework, like gas, expands to fill all the space/time/energy resources available. It expands infinitely. If you clean, it gets dirty again. If you wash, it gets used. If you cook, it gets eaten (and then requires washing). If you shop, it gets consumed. It’s never ending.

So I realized that it was simply impossible for me to keep a handle on all of that in addition to a full-time job. If I tried, I would spend all my awake-at-home hours doing nothing else. And I suspect that the kids (not to mention the other half) would not take kindly to that. But why blame others? I would not myself take kindly to it.

Enter Shaba-Aunty.

Actually, she can’t enter, because she’s been onstage all along, albeit usually not in the spotlight. I’ve already written quite a bit about how indispensable she has become; now that I’ve gone back to work, she’s more indispensable than ever. Like the elves in the shoe-maker story, she comes in when nobody is around, does all the work, and silently goes away leaving the place neat, clean, and fully functional. In addition to just cleaning the house and washing the breakfast dishes and folding nightclothes and bedclothes that have been flung all over the place in the mad rush to evacuate the house before 8 a.m., she also:
• Puts out the laundry
• Picks up the laundry and folds it up neatly in separate stacks
• Mends the kids’ clothes, which frequently have buttons and things falling off, and also often need to be tightened an inch or two; today I even left her a teddy bear who is in serious need of stitches after various operations carried out by the twins on several parts of his anatomy; in fact, he is in imminent danger of losing an arm and a lot of his intestines (stuffing)
• Irons the kids’ clothes
• Buys veggies and bread and milk and suchlike
• Cooks, when required – and does a better job of it than her sister, the cook
• Baby-sits, when required – and I really like the way she interacts with the kids, she is extremely gentle and patient, but can also remonstrate gently

Yesterday she earned herself some serious brownie points by taking the initiative of buying, apart from those items I’d requested, a bottle of some floor-cleaning potion and scrubbing the dining room floor with it. I really appreciate people who take initiative.

Without her, I really don’t know how I’d keep the household running from day to day, now that it is no longer my primary occupation.

So, in this context, Shaba-Aunty is Paradise. Now comes Part II – Lost.

Despite our best efforts at placing our two jobs and the kids’ daycare all in a 10-minute driving-radius, and despite leaving office really early (5 p.m. is really early in Bangalore; I know people who come in to office at that hour!), we still have to endure a one-and-a-half hour commute from office to home each day. Times four. Actually, for the kids, it is around an hour, sometimes a little more, while for the person picking up the kids it can exceed 90 minutes. We don’t combine our commute – Amit and I drive separate cars to office. It is criminal in a way, considering we go from the same home to the same office complex. But car-pooling wouldn’t work for several reasons. First, we alternate tennis days, so we have different schedules in the morning. Aldo, we can’t always be sure that we can leave office at the same time in the evening.

And, even if we could co-ordinate all that, for both of us to be in the car that drops the kids to school in the morning and again for both of us to be there to pick them up from daycare in the evening is sheer luxury, complete self-indulgence. The person who’s not driving would be better employed doing one of a million other things that need to be done; or even just enjoying half-an-hour of quiet time at home. True there’s much to be said for the environmental benefits of car-pooling, and even more to be said for the social benefits of quality family time spent strapped into your car enduring endless traffic jams together… but it’s clearly not the best solution for us.

Yet the one-and-a-half hour commute, which Amit has been enduring silently for the past two years, suddenly seems too much now that all four of us have to go through it every day. It’s especially hard on the kids, being forced to sit still in the car for one whole hour just when they’ve just woken up from their afternoon nap and are itching to run around and play. They get cranky, and we feel bad for them.

Clearly, the only thing to do is to move to a place closer to our workplace and daycare. So we’ve been looking around for a place to rent and seem to have found something. All going well, we will be moving in January.

Which means… no more Shaba-Aunty.

Of course, we will get someone to cook and someone to clean… but someone like Shaba-Aunty doesn’t come along every day. It could take years to find someone like that and to give them that level of responsibility. So, while we might cut our commute time in half (hopefully), I’m probably going to end up with double my current load of housework. This equation only makes sense when you realize that getting home half an hour earlier in the evening means the kids get half an hour to go to the park and play. Right now, we get home just as it gets dark and the mosquitoes come out in the hundreds, so that’s all but ruled out, which is really a pity. So if they can get some park time and make some friends in the new neighbourhood, then it’s all worthwhile.

Still, it’s going to be hard for me to manage without my Shaba-Aunty. And the kids are going to miss her and her crying baby too. And, of course, though it’s not exactly Paradise, we’ll all miss the comfort and familiarity of a crowded and friendly neighbourhood where all the conveniences are just a short walk away. And we’ll miss our friends. And our favourite home-order eateries. You have to wonder whether it really is worthwhile for the sake of a shorter commute, but it looks like we’ve decided to take the plunge and we will find out the answer to that one soon enough.

They Totally Missed The Bus!

Kids really are amazing.

In a conversation some days ago, sup33 mentioned what her daughter’s to-be school principal had said: kids are much more hardy than parents think they are. They have more stamina, more energy, and are more adaptive than we give them credit for. My own kids have proved this to me many times already, yet they still surprise me.

When I was much younger – not a child exactly, but growing up – I was scared of being left at school. This actually happened once, when one of my parents turned up a little late to pick me up – I must have been 6 or 8, or possibly even 9 years old. But much later, even up to the age of 16 or so, I used to have anxious dreams of being left at school. In those days, I went home by school bus, and I had a constant, though mild, paranoia of missing the bus. My recurring dream on this theme lacked the intensity of a nightmare, but it was definitely a worrying and anxiety-laden dream, and one that persisted for a while even after school itself – or at least the school bus part of school – had come to an end.

We started the twins on the school van ten days ago, just before we left for Pondicherry. I went with them for two days, and left instructions with their teacher, the van driver, and the daycare attendant that from the following school day, they would come on their own, unattended.

Then, the weekend intervened.

And we went to Pondicherry.

And by the time we returned and sent the kids to school on Wednesday, something got lost in transit between the school teacher and the van driver and the kids didn’t get on to the bus (or in to the van, in this case).

It was my last day of unemployment, and I had spent the morning getting their lunch ready. I drove to their daycare with the intention of greeting them as they got off the van, to ensure that they reached safely and were not unduly worried about the commute, and also, at the same time, delivering their lunch. I had just about reached the place with a few minutes to spare, when Amit called.

“Where are you?”
“I’m almost there, at their daycare,” I said.
“Ok. You have to go to their school right away.”
Naturally, thoughts of illness, accidents, and other possible calamities flooded into my mind.
“The van didn’t pick them up.”

First I called the van driver. He was unperturbed. He had thought they were starting from tomorrow. In any case, he was already quite far from school and couldn’t possibly go back to pick them up. So I called daycare, updated them, called Amit back, updated him, and set off on the long drive to their school.

I was tense – were they very upset? Were they scared? Lonely? Crying?

I knew that their teachers would not leave them, that they would keep them engaged and do their best to allay their fears, but… Just a couple of weeks ago, Mrini had been in tears fearing I wasn’t coming to fetch her, and I wasn’t even late that day. And just this morning, Tara had said “don’t go,” and clung to me tearfully, while her teacher tugged her away and assured her that mama would come early today to pick them up. And I hadn’t turned up! What trauma they would be experiencing!

So I drove blindly, stupidly, preoccupied with these thoughts. Narrowly escaping various catastrophes, I reached school at 12.45 to find… two perfectly happy, laughing, playing, children who greeted me with “hey, what happened to the van?” (or words to that effect). Not a word of complaint or a single teardrop in sight.

Huh. So much for all that worrying. Why on earth did I think that my childhood fears, which I had forgotten all about until now, would be their fears? They were in a familiar environment, they had their teachers, their work, their friends. One of the things with Montessori is that older kids – up to 5+ – are in the same class as younger kids (3+). The older kids get to stay back for an extra hour or so, so by the time I reached, the seniors still hadn’t gone home.

And then, of course, there are the two of them. Although that more than doubles their naughtiness and all the mischief they can get up to, it also means that each of them is very rarely totally alone.

I greeted them unconcernedly, as though my turning up was just a special bonus for the day, and we drove to daycare, and they were somewhat late for lunch but none the worse for it – despite the fact that they’d returned from a hectic trip out of town and had an extremely interrupted sleep last night. They both slept in the afternoon (thank goodness!) and were in top form that evening.

One good thing that came out of this entire experience was that something that would doubtless have worried me eventually – the prospect of the twins missing the bus – happened even before it had occurred to me to be worried about it. And once the worst has happened and has been handled, it loses its fear factor. I know now that if they ever miss the bus in future, their teachers will call us, and either of us, wherever we are and whatever we’re doing then, will drop everything and rush to pick them up. And until we get there, they will be in their school, with their teachers and friends, and they will be fine.

Still, overall, they are just amazing in how adaptable they are. They’ve just been two weeks in daycare, and that’s been interrupted by a change in daycare, and a trip out of town; but they’ve settled down with a minimum of fuss and are absolutely cheerful and positive about the whole thing. Tara had taken to fussing a bit when we dropped her off at school in the morning, but today she told me with great determination that she was going to go “quickly” into class, and she did – she waved to me and went off smiling!

I still have twinges of guilt at how much time I’m going to be spending away from them… but it’s worse when they make it so easy for you.

Daycare Blues

Today I left my daughters at day care and walked away.

Walked away, because I had gone with them in the school van, and, having dropped them there, I now had to find means to get home.

Tara still tugs at me when I drop them, and says, “No, don’t go,” in a piteous and desperate manner.

I go anyway.

It feels cruel. I don’t know how she feels. The teacher there says she is fine as soon as I leave. I hope she is. I don’t know what she thinks of us for leaving her there; or what Mrini, who goes smilingly, thinks; but I feel terrible. They will never know what it costs me to tear them away from me and leave. And I will never know what it costs them. I only hope that in the long term this is the right thing to do.

At times, I know it is. I know that I was never cut out to be a stay at home mom for good. It’s so not me. I’ve enjoyed most of it, most of this time, but… if I keep doing it and start hating it, resenting it, or just plain vegetating at it… then I’m not doing anyone any favours. Anger, frustration, boredom, depression… These are not pretty emotions to be around, not even, or especially not, in a mom. That’s not the kind of mom I want to be, and it’s certainly not the kind of mom they’ll want to have around.

I know that I must go back to work. I also know that I want the girls to have a working mom. As they grow up seeing me work, their ideas of gender roles, equality, independence, the value of money, time, hard work, and discipline, their sense of personal identity – all will be shaped by this. I know mine were, just by seeing my mother teach for the first few years of my life.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with kids seeing their moms stay home and work at keeping the house running… there are lots of good values for them to learn there too. I’m just saying that that’s not me, and that’s not what I want my kids to grow up with.

So I think I know I am doing the right thing. But is it the right time? Again, i think so. They are over three, they are completely settled at school, and I’ve given just over two years of myself exclusively to them – more than I ever thought I would. For me, it was the right time to go back to work about year ago, so I’ve stretched it by six months more than six months. I mean I’ve stretched it and stretched it again. Any more and I might tear it. It will not only become more difficult to remain employable, it will also become more difficult to believe in my own employability. And that’s a vicious cycle. So no, I can’t wit another couple of years, that would be professional suicide… or close to it.

And yet… Only three years old and I’ve already left them in daycare. Next week they will go, unaccompanied, in a school van, directly from school to daycare. They’ll talk to the daycare teacher about school and to their school teacher about daycare. They’ll wake up in the afternoon and stumble sleepily to the daycare teacher and raise their arms to her to be picked up. I’ll be just this other woman who drives them home and spends the evening with them.

I know it will work out. I shouldn’t make too much of it. I know they are not the first kids in the world to go to daycare at the age of three. I know kids are more adaptable and hardier than parents think. I know they’ll soon enjoy daycare with the same enthusiasm they have for school. I know they know we’re their parents and we love them and they’ll love us back. I know, or at least I think I know, or at least I hope that they won’t hold anything against us…

And I know there will be other separations – when they start to go out without us; when they go on a school vacation with friends; when they move out of home to study or work or to get married. But those are so unimaginably far away right now. Right now, I just have to tell myself that it is not wrong to do something for myself, that it is not bad to have a career, and that I can spend “just” evenings and weekends with my kids and they will be ok, they will still know me and love me.

My mother once said that the most painful part of delivering a baby was when they pull the placenta out. I think I have a slight idea, now, of what she meant.

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.

Change…

The kids don’t know what’s in store for them. They know something is coming, but they don’t quite know what. They know I’ve been going for “job interview”s and that I want to go back to “work”. They have heard Amit and me discussing daycare, but they don’t know what daycare means. I’ve told them they’ll be going to a second school soon, it seems to have got Mrini a bit worried. Yesterday, when I went to pick them up from school, she was sobbing in the teacher’s lap – most unlike either of them to behave like that. She saw me and greeted me with an absolute flood of tears. It turned out that she had been worried that I wasn’t going to show up. I wasn’t late, really, but some of the kids had started to leave, so she got worried. Poor little thing.

Today they had a class picnic. Wow! A picnic! My kids went out with a bunch of friends and not a single parent went along! They went in a school bus for the first time, they went to a strange place (a park of some kind, I gather) and somebody else took them! I don’t know about them, but this was a big thing for me. Given the uncertainty in the air with my new job and all, I thought they (or at least Mrini) might be worried about where they were going and all that, but they came back looking ok. I was waiting on the sidelines as the school bus drove up and disgorged the kids – the twins got off separately and walked off without seeing me. Tara was fine, though a bit confused (as always); Mrini had a slightly worried expression, but when she finally saw me, she smiled. If she had been really anxious, when she saw me she would have cried. So that’s ok. They didn’t say anything to me at all about the picnic, which is sad, because I’m dying of curiosity… but I suppose it will come out slowly.

And tomorrow, they start daycare. The first few days are on a trial basis to see how they take to it. If they seem willing to settle down and enjoy it, then we’ll have to shell out a horrendous amount towards enrollment, and three months’ fees.

The saddest thing about this daycare is that by the time they get home, it will be too late and too dark for them to go to the park. They don’t know it, but the era of park outings every evening with their gang, the Famous Five, is coming to an end.

Actually, the era of the Famous Five would have ended anyway, with the two boys going off to a distant land in a couple of weeks’ time. But the twins don’t know about that yet either. They so look forward to meeting their gang every evening in the park, it is going to be sad having to explain “goodbye” to them. At least daycare will give them a new set of friends, albeit in an indoor environment. The boys who are moving away, on the other hand, will have to get used to a new home, new country, new everything. They’re a few months over two, they’ll adjust quickly. Soon, they won’t even remember their gang, the Famous Five. It’s still sad, though.

It’s going to be a tough couple of weeks, as I spend long afternoons at daycare getting the kids used to the place. It would have been easier if I didn’t also have an Archaeology assignment that needs to be completed before I start work. But I know that it’s only a matter of getting over the bump – things will get easier with time as we all settle down to the new regime. I hope.

And then, soon after, sure enough things will change again.

Excited!

I hadn’t expected job-hunting to be so energy- and time-consuming, and so tiring! But I also hadn’t expected it to be so exciting! I can’t believe how alive I have started to feel just going for interviews and talking to people about what I used to do and how good I was at it. (There’s a time and place for modesty: neither my blog, nor my job interviews are the time and place for it.) Now that I’m actually interviewing for jobs and meeting people who are in the same field as I was and who can relate to what I did professionally for years, now that I can sniff a job or two in the air, now that people are even asking me what kind of remuneration package I expect… I feel like a big weight has been lifted off my chest and I can breathe fully and deeply at last.

Of course I enjoyed my time at home with my kids. Of course I was thrilled to bits at various stages of their development. I know that I’ve written enough about them here for nobody to doubt that. But at the same time, spending all day, every day, at the intellectual level of three-year-olds… I think I was slowly degenerating. Kids are stimulating, sure, but maybe they don’t provide all the kinds of intellectual stimulation that you need, once you are used to it. After a while, the constant chatter of “what colour is that shirt” and “say hi to your car” can leave you feeling somewhat deadened. At least I’ve had my writing, my Archaeology studies, and, of course, friends and the Park Moms Inc to keep me sane, but none of that makes up for the challenges and stimulation of a working life. And that’s just not something two little girls, however entertaining they might be, can provide.

Strangely, I never really realised the extent of my vegetation, my brain-dead-ness, until just now, when I’m finally faced with the prospect of leading a “normal” adult life again; of talking to colleagues about meetings, deadlines, products, tools and technology.

Parts of me are apprehensive about how the kids will handle it, how we all will handle it; parts of me are anxious and guilty about putting them in daycare; parts of me are worrying about how on earth we are going to keep this household running when both of us are going to be busy at work all day. But the part of me that suddenly feels awake and alive, excited and thrilled says, whatever happens, we will find a way to cope, but right now it is time, high time, that I got back to my professional life.

Job-hunting

Whoever said the only thing that’s constant is change certainly knew what they were talking about.

The economy is still down, but thanks to my friends, my resume has landed in half a dozen critical inboxes this week. I’ve been interviewed by one organisation already, where I happened to meet two erstwhile colleagues. It is nice to see familiar faces in new places; what’s even nicer is that I respect both these people as being good at their work – and that’s not something I’d say of a lot of people. A company that can retain good people – one for several years – can’t be all bad. The other thing I liked about this place was that they had an intelligent test – the kind that I enjoy doing and leaves me feeling so pleased with myself (for doing well, obviously). Most importantly, they had well-maintained and sparkling clean toilets. This, in my opinion, is a highly important and non-negotiable criterion when looking for a new workplace.

Meanwhile, another company has set up an interview with me tomorrow.

A third company, located not too far from home, closer than either of the other two, has a very interesting job description, the most exciting of those I’ve seen so far. But they haven’t even gotten in touch with me yet.

None of these three companies is one of those that has instant brand recall like, say, IBM, Intel, or Microsoft. But my resume has also found its way into some companies that do have that. Of course, I haven’t actually heard from any of them yet, but if I do, then I’ll really have some fun… Deciding which one I want most, which is most practical, which the best for my career prospects, which good from the perspective of work-life balance, which is so crucial right now… Not to mention work environment, remuneration, commute time and all that.

So in all this – what is to become of the kids? We’ve struggled and struggled with this question for months without coming to any very satisfactory answer. As of now, we’re thinking of putting them in a daycare center in the same office complex as Amit’s office and my company2. We’ve heard some good and some bad things about this daycare, but the bad things have been about other branches while the good things have been about this particular branch. This daycare does also offer to pick up the kids from their school, which will be required because their school bus does not ply on this route at this time. So this looks like what we will be doing soon. Neither of us is very happy about it – the thought of sending two small kids to daycare for the whole day, every day of the week… But there doesn’t seem to be any other option, now that I’ve decided to go back to work.

So this is going to be a big change coming up. I hope it all goes well and we all get settled into the new regime without too much difficulty. But first, I have to actually get a job.

It Must Be Bad Karma Catching Up With Me

This is the kind of morning that makes you wish… All sorts of things.

It started at the unholy hour of 4 a.m., when Tara woke us up by coming in to our room. I took her back to her room and left her there, but, though I got back in bed right away, I just couldn’t go back to sleep. My mind woke up and started doing gymnastics.

Anyway, it was just as well, because half an hour later Tara was back, wanting to do potty. This, of course, is unheard of. Who does potty at 4.30 a.m.? It turned out that the had a slightly bad stomach. Anyway, I got her pottied and, having taken off the diaper she wears at night, I threw it out because it was morning now and she was awake enough to find her way to the toilet should she need to use it. Or so I thought.

I went back to bed, then, but only for about 15 minutes, then it was time to get up anyway. It being Thursday, I rather optimistically dressed for tennis; rather too optimistically, as it turned out. It had rained yesterday evening, and when I called the coach, he said the courts were wet, so we couldn’t play. Since I was up and dressed — and really thoroughly awake instead of being half asleep as I usually am — I went for a walk. It started out nice; there aren’t too many lunatics out walking on the road in the dark at 5.30 a.m… But by 6.30 it was as crowded as the City railway station. At least it was good to see a whole sea of humanity, of which most were either older than me, or fatter than me, or both. The young, thin people were all at home, sleeping, the lucky buggers.

So I got home tired invigorated to find that Tara had managed to dirty her pants. It was just a tiny little bit, but… A tiny bit of crap is still crap and none the nicer to clean at 7 a.m.

A short while later, Amit put a steaming cup of coffee on the table in front of me. The kids had a school holiday for some fairly abstract reason (Kanakadasa Jayanthi) and Amit had decided to take the day off as well, for an even more unbelievable reason: he wanted to finish off some vacation days before the end of the year. Before the coffee was on the table, though, he announced that he had too much work and was going to go to office after all. Poof, my holiday went up in smoke in an instant.

So, I decided to grab the opportunity while he was still around to enjoy some quality time in the bathroom. I know, I know, hot coffee on the table, weird time to go to the bathroom, but as they say, opportunity only knocks once. Besides, the coffee was really too hot to drink (I like it lukewarm)… And I’m really very quick in the bathroom… So off I went.

Whenever I leave Amit to manage the kids while I’m in the bathroom, some crisis is bound to occur. Loud voices and floods of tears are inevitable. I’ve become almost inured to it. I know something is going to get messed up, so I’ll be as quick as possible and then turn my attention to damage-control. Today, I swear I took less than three minutes. Really. And yes, I heard the shouting and the tears even in that short spell of time. I came out to be greeted by the contents of a big cup of coffee elaborately spread all over the dining table, chair, and floor. Lovely – just the way a cup of coffee should not be. After I had cleaned up the mess and Amit had made his peace with the culprit, Mrini, but before a fresh cup of coffee could be made and consumed, my dear husband had vanished out the front door and I had the whole long day ahead of me.

I hope I did something really bad to have earned a morning like this.

Health. Food.

First of all, I’m not going to crib about my diet and talk about how much I love everything that’s sinful, including food. Let’s just take that as a given.

The point is, if there’s one thing in which I don’t want the twins to end up like me, it’s my attitude to food. I want them to grow up to have a balanced and healthy attitude to food. I want them to be unfussy eaters, who will try anything once, will like most things, will have stomachs lined with lead, will thrive on bland, homemade, stale food as much as on oily, spicy, toxic street food, and through it all will achieve a balanced diet with a good proportion of dal, carb, fruit ‘n’ veg, dairy and non-veg.

And, of course, I hope they will always enjoy cakes and ice creams, but will never be cursed with an insatiable sweet tooth.

Is that too much to ask???

While the twins were at home full time, we made sure they got only healthy food. Their milk, curd, butter, and cheese came out of a packet of some kind, as did bread and cornflakes, but just about everything else they ate was fresh. They got fresh fruit and vegetables and enjoyed most of it; and fresh meat and chicken as well. They got no soups or juices out of a packet. They got no chocolates, no sweet except for what I sometimes made at home, no biscuits, no chips, practically no packaged foods at all. I did give them frozen peas, but they never liked them, though they loved fresh peas. Smart kids.

(Of course, I must clarify, to quell those rising eyebrows, that when I say ‘fresh’ food, I mean the ingredients are fresh as opposed to frozen or preserved. The food they get cannot not always be described as fresh, but I do usually impose a 48-hour limit; anything cooked more than 48 hours ago lands up in the trash can. That would be me.)

So right up until they joined ‘big’ school this June, they rarely had access to junk food like biscuits, chips, soft drinks, chocolates, toffees and the like. In playschool, they sometimes got a chocolate, but it wasn’t very often, and, back then, sometimes I just grabbed it from them and distracted them for a few minutes and they’d forget all about it (after shedding a few indignant tears).

Now, of course, it’s a different story. If they get goodies at school, they usually eat them before I get there (smart kids), but if they still have them on hand, it’s not as if I can just take them away, distract the kids and they’ll forget all about them. Oh no!

For one thing, they have my number. They don’t trust me at all when it comes to chocolate – and with good reason; if only they knew how many of the chocolates intended for them have landed up in the dustbin (me)! Now, if I tell them to put their sweets in their bags, they protest loudly, and when they finally comply, they keep a sharp eye on their bags. The whole way home, a small part of their memories are dedicated to the stored chocolate. As soon as we reach home, they start to ransack their bags looking for their chocolate. At which point, I usually take it away from them and keep it on top of the microwave – within eyesight, but, mercifully, still out of their reach. The deal is that if they eat their lunch like good girls (without throwing their food around and generally driving me crazy), then they will get chocolate. They don’t yet know that they shouldn’t have to negotiate for something that’s rightfully theirs… But that day is not far off.

One day Tara was too sleepy to gracefully complete her lunch, so I put her to bed sans chocolate. Mrini, however, said to me assertively, “I don’t want sabzi, I don’t want chicken, I don’t want dahi, I want only chocolate.” So I gave her hers.

Three hours later, Tara woke from her afternoon nap, and, still groggy and rubbing her eyes with both fists, said to me, “Mama, I want my chocolate.”

Well, I gave it to her – with Mrini looking on and saying “Taya, ha-piece-ha-piece,” as sweetly as she could. I told Tara that Mrini had already had hers, but she promptly broke her chocolate in half and gave it to Mrini regardless. It’s absolutely heart-warming to see her do that without any hesitation or prompting… especially considering that Mrini rarely returns the favour.

So distracting them and hoping they’ll forget about it just won’t work any more.

Still, they do get quite a lot of chocolate in school some days. It kills their appetite for lunch, and I doubt it does their teeth any good. And I really don’t want them to develop as much of a sweet tooth as I have. I don’t know whether not getting a lot of sweet at this age actually helps to develop a sweet tooth, or whether being denied it helps to avoid getting a sweet tooth; but it just seems like in this respect less must be better. So whenever I can, I still surreptitiously reduce the quantity of sweet that they actually get. Very sneaky and mean of me, no doubt, but that’s what parenting is all about, isn’t it?

What I really started out writing about though, is, why do all school birthday treats have to be packaged foods? I know that not all parents have time to bake up a storm like I did – and it is a lot of work – but can’t you do something simple and homemade? Or else send fruit? Or something that’s not food?

I’m a great fan of eating out and even of eating packaged food, but for these tiny tots, I still feel that the less packaged foods they get, the better. At least with homemade stuff, you have a better idea of what’s gone in it and how much of what and whether it is likely to be allergenic or not; and also, you have better control over the hygiene conditions. But most importantly, it’s the only way to minimise kids’ exposure to chemicals like preservatives, flavouring agents, and the like. Shouldn’t we be thinking of that for at least a few years?

I know – they’re three years old, I should just let go. We do the best we can at home and I should just let go of what’s beyond my control. And I will. But, when they come home with three or four different bits of chocolate and a commercially made cup-cake each, I just wonder.

Feeling Foolish

Today, after the usual rush to get out of the house on time, I drove the kids to school. I felt very pleased with myself, because I made it in a record 20 minutes. Watch out Schumacher! (Oh, that’s right, he’s retired. Well, whatever.)

Then at the gate, I was turned away by the guard. “Why?” I asked indignantly.

“It’s a holiday for Onam,” he said.

“But I didn’t get any message!” I exclaimed, even more indignantly.

“It’s in the holiday list,” he retorted.

As I walked away, I realized that there was only one other idiotic kid who had turned up at school. The parking lot was empty. The roads were surprisingly peaceful. No wonder I’d made it in record time – everyone else was blissfully asleep! Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

I felt extremely foolish when I reached home and checked the holiday list, which clearly listed today as a holiday.

The girls were quite puzzled, too. They prefer school, of course, but since they had been shuttled back home, they settled down and demolished the tiffin I had packed for them early morning – fresh, layered parathas with jam. Lucky kids.

Keeping them occupied and happy at home is no longer an easy task. Luckily, I have a good yield of toys garnered at their birthday parties, so I started doling them out with a free hand. It didn’t work – they flung everything in every direction and started fighting with each other and whining to me. The joys of having twins…

They generally do enjoy their birthday gifts, and even tend to favour clothes that they receive as gifts over clothes that I buy them. But one thing which is currently top of their list is the cycles we bought them. They’ve only taken the cycles out four or five times yet, but they’ve already got the hang of it. They know that they have to wear their helmets or they won’t be allowed on the cycles. They know that I’ll carry their cycles down one at a time, and they love to run back upstairs with me for the second trip. They know how to get on, ring the bell, turn, and brake on their cycles. Mrini also knows how to pedal…. but with Tara, it is, as ever, a different story. She only pedals half a turn forwards, half a turn backwards. Despite being shown and told how to do it, she insists on doing it her way. How will this girl ever get anywhere?

I don’t have much to do as long as they are cycling in the common area downstairs, but when they’re ready to cycle to the park nearby is when the fun will start. I can hardly wait.