Bend Before Strong Winds

Failure is vastly under-rated. It is probably the most important of all the lessons we should teach our children. Unfortunately it is the rare parent who takes the child's 'failure' casually or normally. So our kids grow up thinking they have to shine, no matter what. 

In my day to day life I face so many failures. Each day when I get up I make a mental list of things I've got to do. And invariably each night there are a few things left over. There was a time when this used to trouble me a lot. I would lie awake wondering why I hadn't had the will power to do that one last thing on my list….. Now I've realized that guilt, that sick feeling was because I never really prioritized things. And like most women, agonized over one or two undone things rather than feeling great about the ten things I'd achieved. 

It's not for nothing that one comes across sayings like 'failure is the stepping stone to success' when growing up. But it's true that one never takes it seriously. Right from the Bournvita kid who wins the race and pumps his elbow with a 'yes!' to the 96% student who is idolized, only 'achievers' are the favourites today. What happened to the bright but easy going tribe of students who were well read, creative, thinking young individuals? Well, some of them are trying to keep afloat in a sea of 'packages' all marked with someone else's names and some , unfortunately, have given up. 

It's very necessary that children should grow up with the realization that living a life fully doesn't mean only great marks and golden stars and an all A+ report card. The priority is to live well, sensibly and happily, with concern and consideration for self and the people around us; and for this to happen, one has to face failures, too. If a spider can go on making a web time and again, can't we, the evolved species, pick up the pieces and put them together again and again? 

If I had my way, I would abolish all exams till class V, not grade any student, and make only one thing compulsory – reading books. But I would definitely not do away with the Board exams. Why not teach kids not to attach too much importance to marks rather than remove the exam itself? Handling that pressure is important. One's daily life is filled with tensions – learning to handle tension is important, and not doing away with the tension itself. How many tense situations can I remove from my child's life? Facing problems makes one stronger and isn't it a fact that the mighty survive the onslaughts of life while the weak ones perish unknown?  

Am human, will fail. Am human, will learn from it. Let's keep it simple.

My Best Photographs

Some of my best photographs are the ones I've missed taking. Top among these is one of N--small frame, all of 5 years old, in jeans  and a thick blue pullover, shoulder length hair and normally pleasant expression replaced by obstinate lines as she looked at me defiantly--arms folded over 4 plump puppies hugged to her heart, trying not to let go as they wriggled. Then slowly the dawn of a sheepish smile, and all the while the utter bliss in the eyes.

As a dog lover, I did understand her feelings and was glad too to see her love for animals; but these were street dogs(pups) and I had been worried that their mother may bite N. So when I didn't allow her to go out, she had quietly slipped out and......

Fifteen years down the line, God knows where and how those dogs are, but in my mind they are still snuggled in my 5 turned 22 year old's arms.

Early morning in Hyderabad, 24 years ago, we were walking back to our hotel when we spotted four men getting off their cycles. Lungis folded knee length, large towels tied like baskets on their heads....Even as we watched they swarmed up to a bill board and loosening it, brought it down on the road. Intrigued we stopped to watch. And how we rued our camera less state as those men swung the huge board onto their towel wrapped heads, gracefully climbed onto their cycles and pedalled away calmly on that empty road, quite unaware that their beautifully synchronised act would forever live in my mind.

Going back from Ooty to Coimbatore, our car turned a corner and we suddenly came across the most ramshackle dwelling with an old man sitting in the warm sunlight, surrounded by the most amazing roses on bushes around him...and then we were gone.

A long summer road and heavily laden gul-mohur trees on either side, making a canopy for us as we sped by....A surreal effect, as if we were in a painting.

The alarm on my little one's tiny face when served a cauliflower subzi. She had confused it with  the mogra which grew abundantly in my mother's garden!!

Another missed photograph-- the astonishment on our pup's face as the ice-cube he was chasing suddenly melted, and his frantic searching.

And how can I ever forget the hailstones that burst over Bhilwara, covering terraces and roads almost instantaneously with their sago white roundness? Our normally dreary brown landscape was transformed into a fairy tale. And our 4 year old enjoyed  ' climbing the mountain' of hailstones on the terrace until it melted a few days later.

Not a single photograph in the album but all of them stored in my mind, forever.

In my own little way I have always been a story teller. But I have never consciously worked at the art of story-telling. Besides, I have never come across anyone who is a professional story teller, as in America. Maybe it's because practically every other house has a grandmother who has a fund of stories, generally mythological. I grew up in such a household, with a maternal grandmother who knew hundreds of stories, of kings and queens, of gods and goddesses, not to forget the stories about my mother's childhood, which seemed more fantastic to me than all the others!

Being a shy child, I never did any sort of public speaking. But my parents and friends always enjoyed my descriptions of people, incidents etc. and called it vivid and entertaining. Having inherited some of my father's great sense of humour, I could make people (read friends and relatives) laugh. All through my life I have read voraciously and I also loved writing letters. My enjoyment of language was, however, largely limited to the written word.

Then, in my 20s, two things happened that changed my life. I started teaching English to 15-17 year olds, whose usage of English was limited to the classroom. To get them interested in the texts I unconsciously started relying on facial expressions and gestures. Soon I realised that both the children and I were enjoying our English classes.

The 2nd change came about with the arrival of my daughter. When she was 2, she enjoyed my reading to her, but she actually screamed with laughter and her eyes went round in astonishment as I told her stories cooked up on the spur of the moment. From repetitive stories (of a little girl going to school with her father, facing obstacles like a big black dog, sudden rain etc. )we progressed to the universally loved The lion and the mouse, the hare and the tortoise, the Pied Piper(it was such fun to do the various rats!) and soon  moved on to stories of topical interest--The girl who didn't like combing her hair, the girl who got ready for school by herself (need I say more?!). As she grew a little older, I found this story telling grew more and more interactive, with my daughter supplying a lot of the twists and turns.

Somewhere around this time Subbu came into our lives--a lion cub glove puppet that enriched our lives beyond all expectations. Subbu could be naughty one moment, sad the other; he could cajole and coax; whisper, whimper, talk and roar-- storytelling with Subbu opened up a whole new world of sounds, voice modulation, even movements as I experimented with Subbu scratching his head, cocking his ear, twitching his tail--all by moving my fingers. The reward was my daughter's delighted squeals. She enjoyed it so much that Subbu, to her, was a real cub with a life of his own, not at all connected to my fingers!

These were private storytelling sessions where both my daughter and I were completely unselfconscious and often used a mixture of 3-4 languages, and where creativity led us into hysterically funny situations.

My storytelling sessions in school, however, were different. For one, they were always more controlled and I was conscious of the time I had at my disposal. I used only English, because improving their language was my focus. I generally chose stories with a message, but took good care to wrap up that message in layers of interesting situations. I often told them bits from the classics and was delighted when some read the whole book. I have always been interested in folk tales and enjoyed telling them to my students. Many of those students, now themselves parents, tell me that their interest in English started with those stories in class.

When I started telling stories to my students and my daughter, I did not realise that I would be enriching our lives so much. Along with the enjoyment we shared, there was the bonus of improving our language skills, gaining confidence, developing a sense of humour and definitely becoming more good-tempered.

What else could one need in life?! Those memories are the warmth of winter evenings. As I write this Subbu's presence on my now 22 year old's table assures me of the next storytelling session 8-10 years down the line, this time with grand-children!