Saturday, April 12, 2014

Keeping in touch!!

 

How do children here in the USA, keep in touch with their grand parents in India? Each of these generations.., them, their parents, their grandparents..have come to belong to a different culture, out of sync with each other. The parents are totally confused between their western home and an eastern upbringing. The grandparents feel displaced when they come to the western home and their grand kids are caught up in the middle with the love for their grandparents totally intact, but, no way to express.

My home is a concoction of languages and the kids have taken to English and only English. They understand Hindi, Telugu and the sounds of Marathi and Kannada seem familiar too, but, don’t expect them to mouth any words from any of these languages…so what, if they have been going to Hindi Class since 3-4 years or that Mom had talked to them in Hindi until they started pre-school and changed her!

(  How can I forget the Spanish connection from School?!! )

Hubby dear calls his old parents every morning, checking on them. Grandma Palle feels the call incomplete without hearing her grand daughter, R’s voice. Now, how do 2 people with different background, different languages, accents and hearing difficulties, converse with each other?!

Well, They have found a way! The conversation hasn’t changed in years…since R was 3 years old.  It’s the same set of words they speak with each other every single day. This way each of them understands what the other is mouthing on the other side of the line. In those limited set of words…they have found a way to say

“I love you dear!!”

“I love you grandma!!”

Here is their conversation…

“Hello Aaji!”

“Hello Richa!!”

“Pata padanaa?!”  (Shall I sing to you a song?!)

“Paadu Talli!”        (Sing My Dear!!)

“Sa sings the sunflower,

Re rings out the red roses,

Ga giggles the gulmohar

Ma murmurs the marigold,

Pa pops the pretty poppies

Dha dance the Dhalia,

Ni not the Neem flower,

Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa…

Sa Ni Dha Pa Ma Ga Re Sa.”

Then R continues with a Hindustani Classical Song that she has started to sing from a year and a half back..having gotten fed up with the Twinkle Twinkle number she used to do since she was 3 years old.

Some memories are meant to be held for ever…and this is one of them.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Gotcha!

 

After years of using my creative energies to try to fool my children and Hubby dear, on this day…I'm so happy that I don't have to do that anymore...Its the time for my children to get their "gotchas" now!  Its time for redemption…

As I opened to refrigerator to heat some rotis this morning..I went into a fit of laughter when I saw this...N’s picture that I had clicked way back in 2011, maybe..advertising for the Rotis!

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As I was laughing downstairs…they left a gift for Papa upstairs…They left Poop on his potty chair!!  Well not exactly….They couldn’t have…right?!

They wet and crushed up brown construction paper to look like poop and left it on the potty chair…

I’ll save you the grosses and leave you with this picture.

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They were waiting downstairs for his reaction….and he came out and said…

“UH!!! very funny!”

And they left another gift for us…They had hoped that it would fool me..but, Papa dear took the trophy.

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He thought they were trying to play some kind of visual trick to make it appear like water inside…and he did lift the glass!!! Even the condensation..didn’t make him think. Luckily, he was quick enough to guess..that was real, and saved a ton of water from flowing out.

Well whoever picks that glass up…the cleaning is on ME, right?!

So, I guess that prank was for me, after all.  I have to think of a way to lift that glass now…without getting the water to not just spill on the counter top but….flow down into the cabinets under it!! Sad smile

I had so wanted to write that all this was a hoax…but, couldn’t deprive the PNK triplets team of their Gotchas, right?!