Pandemic Parenting

 Pandemic Parenting. When each word in itself is alarming, one can only imagine how dangerous the combined effect could be.

People knew 2020 is going to be a special year, even back in 2000s. Most policymakers were enthralled by the number and its distance from 2000. Almost every country I know of came up with a Vision 2020. They spoke of Mars missions and robot maids. Now that 2020 is finally here, we have now learnt to wash our hands properly, forget flying cars.

Whilst all of us have been cooped up at home, living through a limbo; those trapped with their children are the real victims. As the neurotic mother who traced the journey of this virus right from Wuhan to where it is today, I kept my daughter under house arrest long before the actual lockdown began; only to realize as to who was really under arrest.

The first few days were lovely and long like the first days of holidays. We slept in, woke up together, played games in bed and generally just lounged around. Then came the cooking phase when we ate exotic brunches and dinners interspersed with cholesterol spiking snacks. Two months in, mornings began at 9.00 am when “Ammaa, TV!” became my daughter’s way of wishing me a good morning. Nay sayers were treated with a bout of crying or ‘angapradakshan’ and on those days when one wakes up on the wrong side of the bed – a combination of both. For the Uninitiated, ‘angapradakshan’ is an extreme Indian bribe that a devotee offers if the deity grants his wish. Roll about on the floor, after the deed is done. Over here, my daughter does it in advance. And truth be told, it does work.   

After a healthy breakfast of toast with cookie spread, she would sprawl on the sofa to watch Peppa Pig, Ben and Holly, Finnie the shark, Paw Patrol, Hatchimals, Super Simple Songs,… let me take a breath; PJ Mask and when all else bores, Alex and Gaby. Alex and Gaby is a brother-sister duo in the UK that speak terrible English and play with sponsored toys, Swarovski crystals, Mercedes Benz play models. Ira is a sport. Although she dislikes playing with any toys, she does love to see these kids play with theirs’.

All in all, she spends about 6 hours glued on to screens of various kinds and the rest of the time is dedicated to demanding my attention or eating junk. Those days when I have some patience and inspiration, I can get her to practice alphabets and numbers. Upon trying ignite her creativity, I presented her with various paints and brushes. She ended up exceeding my expectation by mixing colors and decorating our dining chairs with a disgusting brownish-yellow color. After that, we quite lost our appetites and stopped using the dining table until we bought new chairs.

Outside, the number of Covid cases increased sharply and fell again. Inside, my patience mimicked the graph, it rose in the beginning and fell steeply. Ask the dented pots and broken pans, the know the story. The daughter of mine started to lose interest in screens and began to attach herself to my back. A trip to the toilet started to feel like a luxury. Her pre-school teachers kept our letterbox full of activity sheets and coloring pages. So now, we were also importing paper waste. Ira wouldn’t look twice at them and when forced she took a single black crayon and scratched the faces of Minnie and Mickey, declaring them burnt.

The next activity I chose was gardening. It was Ira’s task to sow seeds and tend to them. This meant that I would get asked every 20 minutes if they have grown and that ‘waiting is booooooring.’ She did learn about plant life but decided that she is a ‘clever clogs’ and knows everything already. Next was the playdough experiment. No big surprises. All clays mixed and flushed down the toilet.

The home office added to the misery. With continuous client calls, team meetings, business calls, escalation meetings and video conferences, one needs to keep Ira away from the room, keep her from yelling or making noise, talk in hushed tones and not switch on the blender. Despite my best efforts, she  managed to slip into some of her father’s meetings to give her precious opinion and ask pertinent questions like “who is that grown up boy? Can you blow bubbles? Why are you saying ‘shh’?”

Calls made to family and friends to keep tabs on their welfare became indirect pleas of ‘save me!’ But what could anyone do if everyone is stuck indoors doing the same things as me? Yet there were a few who continued to call despite the risk of boring conversations and my crankiness. Like someone said, friends are those who know that you are talking crap, tell you so and continue to listen to your  crap.

It has been five long months doing the above in permutations and combination. The only change I see is in myself. Five more kilograms and a double chin later I started to fill the entire mirror with my image. Ira though was just as scrawny as ever despite being a couch potato. Soon people started wondering if I was feeding only myself. Tired of them and the person in the mirror, I started venturing outside.

It was a whole new world. I felt like a long-time prisoner who had been released. The air smelled purer and the fragrance of flowers wafted all around. Each trip to the opposite shop felt like salvation. Every visit to the park was an excursion. That is, until Ira started to get bored of it. And then it was always a customary visit before moving on to other parks. So, I went prepared with a bag full of snacks, water and of course, a truck load of hand sanitizer. We took long walks in pursuit of other parks, discovered new lanes and hidden beauty spots all around the neighborhood.

With half the year gone already and other kids hanging on to online learning sessions, it is the four-year-olds that are caught doing nothing (unless eating their parents’ heads counts.) It is a difficult predicament for everyone. Schedules have gone haywire, both theirs’ and ours’. After a long day of irritating each other, when she finally goes to sleep, I smile in contentment, glad that there is no morning rush, glad for this unprecedented break before she begins the long journey of schooling. Despite all my fears and paranoia, this little dent in time will only remind me of those long walks, laugh-till-cry moments, star struck eyes, pigging away and the sheer relief that we don’t need to be bound by time as yet.
Children grow up too fast, but this period feels like a momentary pause.

And meanwhile, go, Corona, go!

 

Birds and Bees

The last time I saw bees in India was when I was 19 years old. My engineering college like several others stood right in the middle of a God-forsaken piece of land. The wild bees built massive hives that hung off precarious edges of the college buildings, that too within a matter of hours. That’s when we saw how skilled they really are, putting civil engineers to shame.

As a child, I remember being let loose in an overgrown garden that was a haven to creepy crawlies and the (now not so) common garden sparrows. That was perhaps my first brush against Dame Nature. I spent glorious summer afternoons exploring in the shade of the lemon tree as the rest of the family snoozed. A child’s curiosity helped further by the absence of adults led to several discoveries. Wriggly earthworms that were given shelter in the sand ‘hills’, the grasshopper who jumped against his will as I gave him chase, the ants that were constantly annoyed to have their discipline disturbed, the colorful butterflies that were always eluding my fingers as they skimmed over marigolds and the angry wasp who stung me on two occasions as I dug through his hole in the coconut tree.  

Add to this the tiny sparrows that were brave enough to hop closer in the hope of finding bits of grain, green parakeets that often nicked the best guavas and the rare blue kingfisher who perched on the powerlines ever so fearlessly.

As my formative years were spent close to the ground, the next decade was spent living within the pages of several books, along the likes of Enid Blyton. I was transported to the English countryside. That was the time anything foreign was considered fancy, a time when we only saw strawberries in picture books, we could only imagine what oak and maple trees looked like. Ladybugs, beetles, water lilies, honeysuckle, hedgehogs, blackbirds, hillside cottages and snow were only alive in imagination.

Fast forward another decade and a half, my Enid Blyton dreams have come alive, albeit in Holland. While the country is grey half the year, summer is pure magic. It is almost impossible to keep life from blossoming. The empty trees now are clad in beautiful green tunics, ferns and bulbs push through the earth to smell the sweet summer air. Lush green carpets of grass sprout and tiny wildflowers bravely open their petals despite trampling feet. Even weeds that grow in cracks blossom into pretty, little flowers, all awaiting the buzz of the bees. Like this isn’t sufficient, every garden, every balcony and every windowsill overflows with flowers of every shade and shape possible.

Back home, as our cities take over forests and turn into concrete jungles, the Hague has its own artificial forest, a space filled with solitude, peace and dog poo - part of the natural experience, I suppose.  Every neighbourhood is blessed with at least a few yards of nothingness that acts as a harbor for insects which, we now understand are the beginnings of the food chain. Even as biologists worldwide clamor to revive bees, most developed as well as developing nations seem to concentrate only on reviving their economies at the expense of nature.

Holland is a happy and robust picture of healthy outdoors. The bee population alone has observed a spike of almost 45% since 2000. The efforts of the government in banning insecticides and planting native wildflowers along the highways, railway tracks and even on top of bus stops has paid off. Spotted ladybugs in red, yellow and orange hues bask in the sunshine filled gardens, grasshoppers and frogs hop about in my shady backyard, butterflies flit in and out as they deem right and the drone of bees has become a constant.

This multitude of insects brings birds to houses. People help by taking active interest in nature and gardening. Most houses sport bird houses, bird baths and insect hotels. Sparrows and tits are aplenty as are the magpies and robins. They come at dawn break to gobble sleepy little insects and present us with a lovely waking-up concert. Afternoons are reserved for blackbirds that sit just above reach in the dark shade of the trees, singing in their piercing, yet beautiful voices. As evening stretches into night, we sometimes see a mud brown bird with a brilliant teal tail, that has been nicknamed as “we-don’t-know” bird by my daughter.

Like typical NRI parents, our vacations are always in India for our daughter to spend quality time with the extended family. And it can’t be more different there. Honking has replaced calls of birds. The motor sound has driven away the buzz of bees. Every inch of available space is being scaled up to become buildings. The human presence asserts itself raucously, just about everywhere. The only insects that have learnt to live with our devious ways are mosquitoes that come in hordes at sunset, frightening the daylights out of everyone. Not to forget the midnight visitors - the cockroaches that feast on filth.

While the kids of my friends are mini scientists, I wonder if they have ever been left to discover nature the way many of us did. Do they know the feeling of running through dewy grass early in the morning? The feel of velvety moss? The flutter of butterfly wings on your nose when you get too close to it? The thrill of plucking Crossandra flowers and tasting the nectar in its bulging end? It is disheartening to think that the average city-bred toddler in India is a stranger to these sensations.

When I see Dutch children, I realize how in tune with nature they are. They run unhindered and barefooted through grass and scalding sand. They make bouquets of wildflowers. Collecting shells, pine-cones and autumn leaves are favorite activities. Feeding the obese ducks in the canals is a national pastime. Biking through photogenic cycling routes and picnicking in fields of tulips and daffodils is another adventure. These are simple pleasures of life that the Dutch children are constantly exposed to, which in turn make them respect and conserve nature as adults.

Even as most four-year-olds attend online lessons, Ira and I spend our days in the backyard or taking long walks, stopping by to smell flowers, marvel at insects and blow dandelions. Should I spend this time teaching her alphabets and numbers? Perhaps. But I prefer to make our way outdoors while the sun shines.

And then, despite the Corona virus the world still seems like a happy place.