Maa ki Mamta, Pyaar Pita ka

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Equal Parenting'?
Hell, yessssss!

Image source:  श्री Google देवाय नमः।

Men carrying babies through the second half of pregnancy. Wooo hooooooo!
Men being scrutinized, poked, prodded and groped by so many medical 'professionals' for monthly exams. Ouch! Oh, you'll get used to it.
Men breastfeeding on alternate nights. Woot! Woot!
Men being made to wear ridiculous scarves over their ears and socks post delivery, even if it is sweltering Mumbai summers.
Men being fed *healthy*,obnoxious, ghee-laden gloop by well-meaning family members because what they eat is what the baby gets! And then being judged for not losing the pregnancy weight and advised about paternity shapewear.
Men being judged when their kids throw tantrums, fall ill or generally behave anything less than perfect model citizens of Planet Earth. तुम्हारे बाप ने कुछ सिखाया भी है या नहीं?


You betcha! I am all for and most certainly in favour of 'Equal Parenting'. Sadly, that doesn't look like it is happening in this lifetime of mine.

So, a lot of my feminist friends... And I am a feminist too! Not the bra-burning type, though. Good lingerie are works of art and marvels of technology. And I do appreciate both art and technology. So, coming back to my feminist friends- they believe in sharing responsibilities as equal parenting after the kid is born. I totally agree.

My problems, however, begin with how to quantify it? Parenting, as I see in the ideal, civil world that I appear to live in, is the direct consequence of love (the unprotected, 'with utter, absolute abandon' kind). So how do I quantify it and then divide by two for Equal Parenting?

Is changing 50% of the nappies sharing of responsibilities? Is picking and dropping the kid to school for exactly half the number of days sharing of responsibilities? Is preparing and feeding exactly half the food, the answer? That seems to me, like the equivalent of saying apartheid could be done away with, if everyone strived to achieve a universally agreed-upon shade of brown skin.
Ideal. And absurd.
As we've heard all too often पांचों उंग़लियाँ कभी भी बराबर नहीं होती।

No, I do not think that the माँ की ममता, or for that matter, ममता की माँ is the pefect picture of Equal Parenting either. 'That mothers cook and dads earn', I should love to believe we've evolved beyond that, although some school texts still continue to defiantly taunt me with their outdatedness. My husband enjoys cooking more than I do (that does not, however, mean that he cooks as a duty, or that he cleans up after cooking. And given that we live in a joint family, his culinary adventures are a rare phenomenon that occurs only during the prolonged absence of the elders). And I am certainly better with reading, studies and paperwork, social management and communications, than he is.

Equal parenting is about being happy around your child and consequently the child being comfortable around both parents. Both parents have personalities of their own, apart from from the masks of maturity that society (traditional or contemporary) would have us wear.

So, when I expect him to share responsibility, I expect him to nurture in her those traits that she has inherited from him. Taste-buds, for instance. A love for swimming and movies. A certain languid approach to life, unlike my tendency to take on too many things at the same time. I expect him to pamper her (not spoil her) when I am strict. To be strict with her in departments where I tend to slack (you are very naive indeed, if you think I am disclosing *those shortcomings* in this very public post that I am writing for a contest #ItTakes2ToParent hosted by First Moms Club and Himalaya Baby Care ).

Equal parenting is perhaps about achieving a balance. With all the dexterity of a double Ph.D-holding chemist working to equalise the precise micro-grammage required to create that super secret, omnipotent formula that will be sweet revenge on the rest of the world that labelled him a nerd and a geek.

And when that 'Sooper-Faarmoola' is ready, it will, expectedly, behave in the most unpredictable manner and blow up in the chemist's face. KABOOMMM!
That is how *any* sort of parenting will end up. Just wait and watch as the kid steps into the glorious teens :)

Parenting is only one (albeit, a very important) aspect that will affect your child's behaviour in the 'nurture+nature= personality' equation. Equal parenting can only help nurture what is inherently the child's nature. And the best approach to equal parenting is to help the child with what both parents are individually good at and comfortable with. And allow the child to parent you with what he or she is good at. We often allow the pressures of perfection and the burden of responsibility to take away from us the joys of life.

Appreciate each other for who you are and respect the child for what he or she is. Irrespective of what the world has to say about it. Take a chill pill. Enjoy parenting while it lasts. I assure you it won't be long before your kid starts finding you an interference in her life. My 6 year old already thinks her name is not good enough (It is a rare, unique, Sanskrit name that I spent *days* post a Caesarean, finalising on!) and thinks she can stay home alone because she can now climb the kitchen platform to fill water from the Aquaguard and knows what is where in the fridge. And she hasn't even watched the Home Alone movie yet.

Tickles

It was dinner time at her residence… Yet again, her father was accompanied by a group of very important looking men. Whenever he spoke at a big conference, he invited some of the key speakers home for discussion and debate over dinner. It gave him insights and ideas, he said. These dinners were always loud and noisy affairs with arguments and counter arguments traded over the dishes.

Tara found these conversations interesting. She was always invited to the table with them, despite her being only 14 years of age. Her dad made it a point to never miss dinner with her, ever since he separated from her mother nearly 8 years ago. He was the founder and CEO of IND-AI. An investor in technology and an astute man, he was blessed with the knack for being at the right place at the right time even in his younger days. As a result, he had made it big earlier than most of his peers. Investing in artificial intelligence early in the 20th century had raked in big money.

Tara had a comfortable, if lonesome upbringing. With a busy father, and a mother who lived in another part of the country, Tara’s constant companion was A.I.-Ya.

AI-Ya was a singular prototype of an early companionship robot that her father’s company had developed in its start-up days. It looked like a silly vacuum cleaner, with its wheels and a basic flat-screen display. Nothing like those fancy humanoids that caught the imagination of the market. Which was a good thing too. Tara always found it strange that humanoid robots were assigned a gender! She also found it awkward interacting with humanoid robots. They just didn’t feel *right*. A.I.-Ya was just right and completely stress-free. AI-ya was an appliance, a toy… Nothing more. Not even a doll. 

She enjoyed having AI-YA by her side. It accompanied Tara everywhere. To the bathroom, to the school, to the park. It helped her solve math problems, it helped her perfect her spins and twirls at skating by analysing her motion, it constantly fed with new information about topics that she was interested in. And helped her debate with her ownself.

A.I.-Ya could make interesting conversation. It was knowledgeable, efficient… even patient and non-judgemental. It was programmeable to a large extent. Tara loved to train it. She had taught it social etiquette, and had trained it to perceive her emotions using its infrared sensors to read changes in body temperatures, as well as her facial expressions. A.I.-Ya knew exactly when to get chatty and when to be the quiet listener depending on Tara’s moods. A.I.-Ya was a good companion. Just the kind that a teenager needed. But she wasn’t emotionally attached to it.

What Tara did find exasperating though was A.I.-Ya’s utter inability to comprehend and appreciate the absurd. Like most teenagers, she relished the quirks of everyday life. She routinely smirked, snorted, giggled and guffawed… and these were all read wrong by A.I.-Ya. To A.I.-Ya, smirking andsnorting appeared to be precursors of a sneeze, whereas giggling and guffawing were equated with happiness. Tara tried really hard. She tried programming laughter. And AI-ya obediently went ‘Ha-haaaaa-haa-haa’ on cue. But it was never able figure out the cue on its own.

She had tried feeding in jokes into A.I.-Ya’s system. A.I.-Ya understood the pattern of the Knock Knock jokes.

It understood that two unrelated words said together made a Knock knock joke. It tried making one using this logic.

Knock Knock

Who is there?

Robot

Robot who?

Robot Apple

Tara tried teaching again. “Make sure that the two unrelated words form a new word!”

AI-ya tried again.

Knock knock

Who is there?

Companion

Companion who?

Companionship

“Noooooooooooooo!” Tara told AI-ya “Unrelated words, but they should make some sense together. You know like

“Knock Knock,

Who is there?

Yoda lady

Yoda Lady who?

Nice Yodelling!

Or

Knock Knock

Who is there?

Deja

Deja Who?

Knock Knock”

AI Ya tried again.

Knock Knock

Who is there?

Anna

Anna who?

Anaesthesia is used for inducing loss of sensation

Knock Knock

Who’s there?

Pop

Pop who?

Population!

Technically, AI Ya wasn’t wrong. But the joke was so flat and anti-climatic, that Tara fell off her chair laughing at the futility of it all.

“Oh come on, AI-ya! You could have at least said “Pop Kaun?” That would have been funny! Get it? Pop who? Pop Kaun? Pop Corn? No. You don’t get it” said Tara, while still laughing at the potential of the joke AI Ya attempted.

AI-ya appeared to think that her laughter meant the jokes were successful. It began making more jokes on similar lines. They were just never ever funny and very very hopelessly flat. Eventually, Tara instructed AI-ya to stop trying. She figured that absurdity and logic did not belong together… nor did absurdity and purpose. She made peace with the fact and life was good.

That evening the debate over dinner was more heated than on other days.

The country was, not for the first time, on the brink of war with the neighbouring country. To the outside observer, it would have appeared that the important-looking men at the table were at war with each other

Man 1: Of course, All this is political. That is how we control the populace. Nationhood! It is was binds everyone and keeps us together!

Man 2:

Tara’s dad:

Man 3:

Man 4:

Man 2:

Tara’s Dad

Man 3 and 4 together:

Tara’s dad and Man 1 together:

Tara’s dad: Robotical weapons! That is the *ONLY* solution to this war, I say.

Suddenly, Tara heard a familiar noise at her foot. ‘Ha-haaaaa-haa-haa’… ‘Ha-haaaaa-haa-haa’… ‘Ha-haaaaa-haa-haa’… ‘Ha-haaaaa-haa-haa’…

Everyone turned to look under the table

Robot-tickle… Polly tickle… Tickle Tickle... Prac-tickle Prophe-tickle Apocalyp tickle Spec tickle,

‘Ha-haaaaa-haa-haa’… ‘Ha-haaaaa-haa-haa’… ‘Ha-haaaaa-haa-haa’… ‘Ha-haaaaa-haa-haa’…

Little lost things

You know when people dream of doing BIG things- spaceships, monuments, blockbuster movies, best selling books, they often forget about the little things.

The needles, nuts, bolts, hairclips and bands, ear-buds, crayons, erasers, keys, batteries... a billion little things.  They are ever available, disposable and a dime a dozen. Mostly, they are sold cheap, no one cares much for them. There are the expensive little ones too- diamonds and precious nuggets and saffron. But the fact remains that they are 'little'. And the humans obsess over 'big'. The bigger the diamond, the better! . The little ones are still 'belittled' - insulted in the lexicon too.

Eventually, these little things got very offended, and decided to conspire. They made human lives difficult sometimes. They chose to hide, vanish, disappear when the humans needed them the most. The humans had to fumble and fall, trip and crawl. The little things asserted their presence in the most annoying ways  And when the humans found them, there was this overwhelming sense of relief! Yet, they were cursed- "Damn those 'little details' of our big plans", said the humans.

And the lost letters and photographs... they were particularly vengeful.  They hid for heartbreak to happen and then they would turn up. They made humans cry and want to tear them into a million more little pieces, and yet hold them close.  They made the humans want to become small enough to drown in them.

One day, one very dark dreary day, the devil in the details surged. A certain type of little things that cost more than most little things and go by the name of 'bullets', decided to remind humans how important the little things were in their lives. They partnered with the little seeds of hatred and went on to kill over 130 little humans. The big humans wept over the little belongings of their little ones, little tears rolled down their eyes. And yet, they kept proclaiming what a *BIG* tragedy this was.

The bullets had had enough being ignored. They would return again. Until people noticed them and the little seeds of hatred. Little was going to make human existence very miserable indeed.