Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Diwali Preparations

As Diwali approaches, the usual preparations have begun! Starting with shopping of course :) Now both I and M don't like shopping and its the biggest biggest chore for us. With less than 4 days to go, its still not complete. This year we will not be able to go to our hometown in Odisha for Diwali celebrations. We are going to be in Pune and Shaurya will have his elder brother Sanskar to help in bursting crackers. (This will be the first Diwali that Sanskar will be away from bhaiya bhabhi, mummyji, papaji, dadi and Archi; I hope that he has fun and doesn't miss them too much! ). 

M and I are no longer into bursting crackers and had totally stopped it. However post Shaurya's birth, we usually get  a few so that he gets to enjoy this part of the festivity as well. Till last year, even Shaurya was happy with bursting few crackers on the main Diwali day. Everything changed last year, he has learnt the joy of bursting crackers. In our hometown, kids start bursting crackers a week before Diwali which continues till a week after Diwali. Shaurya had loads of fun last year bursting crackers at his maternal and paternal grandparents home. Even this year, he was looking forward to bursting crackers however last Friday he came home from school and told me that he has promised his ma'am that he will not be bursting crackers. Seems his class teachers have told the kids about Noise and Air pollution and how crackers are not good for our environment (Bless them!). Not sure if Shaurya will be strong enough to keep his promise... some moments he tells "I will not burst any".. and some moment he tells "I will burst only 3 - 1 chakri, 1 anar and 1 phuljhadi".. I guess his heart and mind are still fighting over it. Lets see what the kiddo finally does! :-) 

I generally start preparing sweets and savories 2 days before and do it each day post dinner. Now that I work 3 days a week, I am hoping to start it tomorrow when my weekend officially starts.. yayyyyyyyyy!! :-) All the men in my in-laws side are big time into sweets; Shaurya specially loves Gulab Jamun and this is something that I make even if I am not able to make anything else. So with my weekend beginning tomorrow and Diwali falling on Sunday, I have a super hectic long weekend planned. Along with all the cooking, I will also be taking out all the decoration items (candles, LED lights, torans,etc) from previous years. We will also be making trips to the local market to buy fresh ingredients and flowers, clay diyas, puja essentials & gold jewelry for Dhanteras. Even though the festival turns out to be super hectic, it has a beautiful madness to it. You remain in a 'happy' zone during this time. Looking forward to making Rangoli outside my home, lighting beautiful diyas and eating to my heart's content! Not to forget, bursting crackers with Shaurya, Sanskar & M :-)

Happy Diwali!

Tuesday, October 04, 2016

Kids and Gender equality

This post is a result of an incident involving my son that happened today evening.. We live in a small residential society where we are blessed in having majority of neighbours who are in similar boat as us - In their early to late thirties with one or two young kids/toddlers. This ensures that my 5 year old has lot of playmates. (Touchwood!) (Note - there are some cons as well but then what doesn't :-) ). Today evening he was playing with the daughter of my front door neighbour in their house; all well till it was just the 2 of them. Then one of her other girl friend joined in. After some time, my son came back home. Since its rare that he comes back on his own, I asked him what happened. It seems they told him you are a girl since he was playing with them (2 girls). This is not the first time it has happened and luckily this time he didn't come back crying (it has happened in the past when he was told to go play with boys!)

I get annoyed when I see kids not involving others of the opposite gender in their games. I am sure boys do the same and I am seeing my son learning to differentiate based on such experiences. As kids, boys and girls play in their own different ways and I have seen that by nature they make play groups based on their commonality. But they should be able to play as they want - In our society, I see 1 girl playing with 3 boys and she is not told to go play with the girls. But if it's 1 boy playing with 3 girls, he is told to go and play with the other boys - and I am not just talking about the kids telling each other here (kids are kids and their behavior is sometimes mean.. they fight, they cry and they forget & makeup), even we as parents support and unknowingly perpetuate this bias. Girls playing with cars doesn't raise eyebrows but boys playing with dolls does. A boy in a pink trouser is pointed at but not a girl in a blue dress. Equality should not be just about giving equal opportunity to girls, it should include boys too. I believe we need to move from gender equality to gender neutrality. Since the seed of bias is planted since childhood, it just grows slowly and steadily along with them. The repercussions of such bias by our earlier generation is already there for all of us to see.

In this era when we talk of equal pay and equal opportunity, we can't really wish away this inequality if we start to differentiate between boys and girls since childhood and tell them that they should things appropriate for their gender. Kids are like wet clay who get molded into adults based on what they learn from their surroundings; the little natural gender based difference that they have increases based on the gender based stereotype that they see around them. There are lots of boys more sensitive and caring than girls and lots of girls more successful and hard working than boys.. no one is better than the other,  Just different. We should just give them an open hand so that they can remain equal with their differences.  And we should avoid making boys the victim as we fight for equality of our girls!