The Bhagavadgita by Gandhi

Understanding Buddhism by Malcolm David Eckel

The Holy Science by Swami Sri Yukteswar

Anthology of World Scriptures by Van Voorst

And, No, that doesn’t mean anything about me, it’s just that I thought it’s time that I start doing something that I’ve wanted to do almost 10 years back, trying to understand religion. This is one of the topics I want to complete before I die. I thought I’d rather give it some priority now.

The past one year is one of the fastest years of my life, where the rest of the fastest years came only after you were born. You set an example right in front of our eyes about how fast a person can evolve. At the same time, the fact that you are reaching 3 is putting more pressure on me. First 3 years in a person’s life is supposed to be the most important. This is when your brain is supposed to grow most and your learning is at it’s peak. And I don’t mean learning alphabets, numbers, poems, mathematical and chemical formulae. In fact I didn’t consciously teach you any alphabets and numbers. Whatever you know, you learnt from your daily 1 hour of TV time and the songs that I sang to keep your attention.

What I’m really thinking about is what kind of mother I have been in the past couple of years? Have I taught you basic life skills? Have I taught you how to think? how to respect people? how to understand time and money? how not to waste food and resources? and to make the best out of it?

It may not be realistic to teach you everything that I know in my age, but I believe the foundation is supposed to be set right now. I think I have done a pretty good job and I believe in improving and to give you the best experiences in the coming months.

Even though I see you all the time, sometimes you really surprise me. The other day you came to me saying “Let me see what’s in the fridge. Oh, I want cheese. I’m a mouse”. Another day we were looking at a picture of a boy doing something and you were making your own story about what the boy was doing. The truth is, you were right. Out of pride I exclaimed “Is there something that you don’t know?” You promptly replied “I don’t know this boy”.

You seem to be a little choosy about things. Of course all kids are choosy but you seem to be little too choosy about people. Most of the time, you behave like a normal child being shy with some people but at times, you surprise everyone with your outspoken-ness and ‘public speaking’ so to say. You don’t even mind ‘performing’ in front of strangers if need be.

One of these days you went to the library with grandma and demanded an elephant book. Your grandma didn’t know where it was so she asked you to wait. You didn’t want to wait, so you approached the librarian and after making sure you had her attention, said “I want ‘eleshant’ book. Where’s ‘eleshant‘ book?” Obviously the librarian didn’t understand ‘eleshant‘ (That’s how you say elephant, you still pronounce ‘f ‘ as ‘sh‘). Knowing that she didn’t understand, you showed her a wall hanging picture with lots of animals, pointed to the elephant and said “That is Eleshant. I want eleshant book”. The lady was a little taken aback, she laughed and spent a good amount of time going through the colored picture books to find one for you.

About 3 months back, when you were at a book stall, you started browsing some of the books there. You finally chose one and walked to the shop keeper. Your grandpa was watching you converse with her. You walked back to your grandpa and said “I want 1 dollar”. He handed you a dollar, just out of curiosity to see what you were planning to do. You took it and walked back to the shop keeper,handing her the dollar. She promptly wrapped the book and placed it in your hand. Well, being a little 2.5 year old I should say, you surprised us.

And did I tell you that this book was a story about a little elephant named Ellie. That brings me to your craze about elephants. To say that you love elephants would be an understatement. It started more than an year back when you favored elephants over other animals in the zoo. But the craze set it’s own stage when your grand parents came here for a long visit. Your favorite game turned out to be playing elephant, not just riding on their back pretending to be the mahout (an impact of the elephant show at zoo), but then changing yourself into a little elephant having a blast with the bigger ones. At times I really thank God for having my parents here with me because it ain’t always fun to be on all fours pretending to be an elephant, at least so in my age. May be when I’m past 50, it will become fun. You spend atleast an hour every day playing ‘elephants’.

During the rest of your waking hours, you pretend play other things. You include your 2 good friends in your imaginary play buying them ice creams and acting out every little detail of the incidents that you make up. You don’t even forget to put the imaginary change that you got from the imaginary ice cream vendor after paying the imaginary money inside your imaginary ‘pant pocket’ before you attend to your imaginary ice cream. Sometimes the whole family is involved imagining a story like the jungle book, a movie that you love to watch and also a book you love to read. You assign a character to everyone at home and ask us to play our part. You observe things that we do and often reenact the show at the most unexpected time.

Sometimes you play tricks on us. When you want a favor, you make up a series of questions which would eventually bring us to answer the way you wanted. Sometimes you think too much.

You love to sing and to perform. You got that quality from me. By singing one of your favorite songs, I can really change your mood and get you to behave like an angel.

And you are so flexible. You got that quality from your dad. You almost know the value for your tears. Almost. Sometimes you do throw worse fits, but that’s when you know that what you want is so reachable and it didn’t harm anyone, like watching your favorite video, or putting on your favorite shirt again or even wearing that uncomfortable pair of shoes anyway. But you perfectly understand when things are different, things that were not going to come even if you cry, things that are dangerous or inappropriate. It always breaks my heart to see you swallow your tears trying to act like a big guy and announcing “I big boy. I very happy’ on the way to school after 2 months holiday or when your dad and I leave for another business appointment without you.

He uses real time vessels to make dosas in his imagination (actually he does all the steps involved in making dosa perfectly). He then serves it in a plate and tells us to taste it. And then he fills up a bowl with sambhar from another big vessel to eat with the dosa. With all the cuteness involved in this process, this dosa-sambhar combo must be the best in the world, if only it was real.

He relates things from his book and sometimes let his imagination flow. One of his books have a big picture of a milk bottle and on the opposite page is a hobby horse. A couple of months back, he saw those pictures before closing the book, thought for a moment and then immediately opened it again and said that the horse drank milk from the bottle. One day after many weeks of not seeing the book (we went to India in between) he found a similar hobby horse in a shop and said that horse wants milk and acted as if giving a bottle in the horse’s mouth and made a sucking sound. After that every time he views that page, he keeps doing the same action.

He stands on his walker (actually he climbs on it reminding me he is too old for a walker), holding onto it’s handles and says that he is driving an auto. It’s an experience he got 2 months back in India and he still remembers how they drove it.

The other day, he found a large circle in a book he reads everyday but this time it reminded him of a steering wheel. He said he was driving, steering with his hands, making a car engine sound and occasionally using one of his hands to change gears. The driving went on for some time and then he recognized it as a circle and moved on to the other pages of the book.

He reached the height of pretending the other morning when he woke us up from sleep and announced his dad’s name is one of our friends’ name. And then he fished out the name of this friend’s wife and said that’s mom’s name. Hubby and I were surprised and hubby asked “Then who are you?”. And he announced he was baby A, who is the son of the same couple.

We ended up laughing out loud even though we were so surprised not only by the extent of his imagination and pretend play, but also that he understands the concept of family very well.

I try so hard to remember the incidents from this period of his life, but he keeps doing and saying things all day long and in the process, I keep forgetting what had happened in the morning. While I wish I had recorded everything, still I’m so happy and feel blessed for what’s happening right now and for what tomorrow has in store.

Yes, that’s what we did last night. Oh wait, but a flood in singapore? In a high rise building? It wasn’t even in the news? It could not have been. Here goes the story.

I rushed out of the house last evening in a hurry carrying my son and a huge bag (which I always do) because I was getting late for a business conference which was across the city. I briefly stopped before leaving to check the gas stove if it’s off because leaving the gas stove on while going out is my worst nightmare that had been cooking up in my mind among all other ‘what if’s.

When we returned back after midnight, all we wanted to do was sleep. As we approached the door, we noticed water seeping out of our front door. Actually it was quite a lot of water. I let out a curse word, and another and another. I haven’t used curse words in the past 3-4 years. Then I immediately set to action. One of my ‘what if’s kept flashing in my mind. What if I leave the tap open?

Leaving the tap open is common but what if I leave it open when the drain is blocked? The drain was blocked 2 days back but we didn’t have proper equipment so we put the work off for the weekend.

I opened the door to find more than an inch of water everywhere. Luckily there wasn’t much stuff lying on the floor except for my electronic weighing scale and the internet modem. And it was pretty evident that so much more water had drained well out of the door. Hubby and I started working before we knew what we were doing. Our 2 yr old son refused to get down on the floor and spent some time in his high chair watching all the action. Later we sent him to bed when we realised that we’d have situation under control soon. Two hours and exchange of some hot and angry words later, Hubby and I had drained most water out and went to bed with a thin sheet of water in the living room but all of the 3 bed rooms were clean.

We woke up in the morning to see all of the water having magically disappeared. I would have thought it was all a dream except for the super clean house and the cleaning stuff lying here and there.

Later in the morning I was singing son’s brushing song while attempting to brush his teeth. Hubby stood in front of me and laughed.

What did YOU do?

And I realized that he mentioned what I was singing. It goes like this:

And while I’m brushing my teeth and having so much fun,
I never let the water run!
I never let the water run!

One of my favorite words in the dictionary and in life is change. Looking at you, I recognize that you are the word itself. Change. I’m amazed at how much a person of your size can learn everyday. Come on, how much memory is there in your little brain? And how much processing it does everyday? every minute?

You surprise me every waking moment of your day. Sometimes I ask you questions to which you wouldn’t know the answer. But you think for some time and start guessing the answers. Most of the time, you are right. Even today morning I asked you who my parents are and you immediately identified it as your grand parents. You have a great memory for people. You precisely remember people and incidents from at least 6 months ago. I know that you didn’t get your memory genes from me. It must be from your father. He is the one who even recognizes his school mate from kindergarten after 20 years in a city that doesn’t belong to either of them. As I always keep saying, your father is intellectual. And so are you.

Actually you think a lot. When I talk with you in big people style, you absolutely understand it. I can see you trying to digest any new information I pass to you and you ask your doubts and even reaffirm what I had just told you, all in terms of single words. Your most recent book is “Being fair”. You love the book and I love it too, for it contains sentences that I keep repeating to you when you are among others. Now you have more reason to believe me!

You also know genders. You can identify whether a person (even most babies) is boy or girl and you are right all the time. And of course, if you called those tomboyish girls as boys, it’s not at all your fault.

You know all your shapes, colors and numbers. Okay, you know numbers from 1 to 10 and then lots of 2 digit numbers. One of our favorite games when we are waiting for something or someone in public (and when you are impatient) is to identify shapes in the rest of the world. When I tell you to find out a specific shape around you, you really go out of the way to find it even if it’s a tough one to crack. You have learnt to identify numbers too, you recognize many numbers when you find them even in different locations and different sequences.

Our singing and dancing is going on really well and you have started singing. You love to perform in front of known people and sometimes strangers too. You take a good place to stand and sing some of your favorite (and easy) rhymes. Your words are not clear but your keep to the exact tune of the original song. You talk quite a lot of words even though you don’t seem to be talkative. Your father’s genes, I bet. You talk when it is required. But you say it clearly and fluently. You still haven’t learnt to speak in sentences but you say words together. You communicate everything this way and these days, even outsiders are able to understand what you say, most of it.

It’s so funny to watch common words becoming a tongue twister for you. Chicken soup would become “kackan soup” and then “chinken choup” while you try to say it. And you realize it if you say it wrong and you keep trying. The cutest part is, you have to spit some saliva out while saying your tongue twisters. Don’t worry, I’ll try to keep this part a secret from your teenage friends to be. Triangle, rectangle, water melon are some of the other tongue twisters. You still don’t pronounce ‘f’. You say ‘sh’ instead. Whenever you see a McDonalds restaurant, you point out to the big M and ask for ‘shench shies’ (french fries).

You love to eat. You have favorites even though you enjoy most fruits and vegetables. It helps that I avoided biscuits and chips (even baby versions) almost completely from your diet during the initial months. (I had to do it to make sure you were eating enough fruits and veggies for snacks because you didn’t start out as a good eater. I replaced whatever little amount you ate with the healthiest options) You still take fruits for your snacks, vegetables during lunch, fish and chicken whenever they are served. I had been thinking you were a fussy eater during the first year but now your have totally changed into someone else. You even eat whole boiled eggs now and a little milk too.

Quite often you say something called ‘see-ma-pop’, as I hear it. This is the only thing in your vocabulary that I do not understand. You say it when you are happy, when you are jumping and having fun. I hope I’d find it out soon.

You understand cause and effect. Everyday I tell my mom on phone about you and one day when I was probing you with questions (like I always do) you smiled and said that I had told your grandma about it on phone. Of course, I did talk about that on phone but I thought you were playing and had not listened. That gives me an early alarm about talking about you to others, good or bad.

You love Barney. And you love to watch TV. I love the former too, but not the TV factor. Your screen time is around 1.5 hours a day even though I try to cut it short. Not that I’m a strict mom but I just don’t want to spoil your precious physical play time. I truly believe and I do see that you tend to sit idly in front of the TV for longer periods. But I appreciate that you learn a lot from TV, why I do too. In fact many times, I use Barney’s name to get things done from you. Recently, I also discovered that singing the “clean up” Barney song will make you really really clean up the place and put your toys away with very little help. Sometimes you even claim that I sing the song and you start tidying up by yourself.

You are so confident about your common sense that you do not even need my advice. Today you were helping me putting away folded clothes and I handed you a old towel (that I wanted to use for kitchen cleaning here after) and asked you to keep it in the kitchen. When I saw you carrying  it towards the bed room, I reminded that that cloth would go to the kitchen. You looked at me with disbelief and said “towel. there!” and you proceeded to the bed room. Oh yeah, towels are supposed to be kept there and who am I thinking I should recycle old clothes. Common sense, you see? Is it time for you to learn the 3Rs of saving the environment?

You are getting increasingly friendly with strangers, and are wary with them at the same time. It depends purely on the strangers themselves. There are times when you totally get playful with one person in the train and all of a sudden you find someone else noticing you and if you don’t like them, you try to hide yourself. You either hide behind me or you tell me you want to sleep. As if, closing your eyes would make this person disappear.

You have reached a stage of independence where you are slowly moving out of the protective nest within your parents’ arms which kept out any kind of negative energy and was always feeding your mind with positive thoughts. I know this is being hard on you when a much bigger boy pushes you out of the play car and I had to take you away from there saying that you should wait for your turn and that the boy will soon try to be nice. It must be hard on you when you get smacked by another kid in the play ground. I also realize that soon you will go through similar situations in my absence and I wouldn’t even know it.

I’m not sure if you fully understand this when I say, but I say it anyway. People are sometimes unfair, why, we all are. It is forgivable. But be kind for as much as possible, because nobody likes to be bad, and nobody is. There’s good everywhere in the world, it’s only up to us to dig and find the good. And I’m sure that the sensible person that you are, you will be able to identify it!

I love you,

Mom.

Soon the lullabies were restricted to bed time and other songs and rhymes took it’s place for the rest of the day. I almost never saw him throwing a tantrum because most of the time, I was able to sweet talk him into good behavior, while at home and while running errands. Usually I’m truthful to him and reasoning works but when it doesn’t, I distract him with singing. Oh yeah remember seeing that crazy woman in the middle of the street singing and dancing to children’s song? It’s me! I don’t mind this crazy look, in order to avoid getting the ‘horrible mother’ look I got on that day when I let him cry in the food court. I’d rather sing than getting angry or upset.

In the process, I started inventing new songs. Every morning and at bed time, I sing different brushing songs to get my son to let me brush his teeth. And I sing eating songs during lunch times to get him to stay put in the high chair. What a terrible mother I should be, lunch is served only to people who sit in their high chairs. And then there are time when he wants to watch TV. Unfortunately, that’s about most of the time we stay home, about 10 to 15 times a day. And given that the maximum screen time allowed is 1 hour, I again have to distract and start singing. When I’m tired of carrying him around, I sing dancing and running songs to get him dancing and at the same time keep moving.

This morning, when he woke up, my brushing song was this:

This little puppy went to market

This little puppy went to school

And this little puppy loves…

to let mummy brush his teeth!

Son was excited to hear the puppy who always said “wee wee wee” now willing to brush his teeth. When our brushing task was over, I took him to change his diaper. Son thought for a moment and said “puppy…. diaper change?”

It was a sweet moment. Sometimes it’s worth getting a broken voice!

Me: 5 minutes. You sit and wait.

Son: Time?

Me: (Surprised) Time? It’s 9.15 now.

Son: Fifty? (Pauses to Think) Sixty. Forty. Amma, shop! (excited)

Me: Shop? What about the shop?

Son: Fifty. Dol.

Me: You mean dollars?

Son: Yes. Fifty. Dol. Shop.

Me: (Thinking) Now I know you are the son of a shopaholic.