Sonth Laddoos

When there is a new birth in the family, some recipes are traditionally prepared in order to celebrate as well as to improve and maintain a healthy mother and new born. I think, grand mothers all across India give something or the other special health and lactation food to the new mother. A few such food items are not only mastered by my mother in law, they are almost patented in her name, like her famous 'Sonth Laddoo'. For relatives with new born babies, she always sends a box of these amazing sonth laddoos. When my son was born, she used to keep a constant supply of these to me and when I was fed-up (pun intended), I had to ask her repeatedly to stop making them for me.

For the diet conscious, these old-world laddoos can wreak a havoc on the waistline, but they are certainly great for lactating mothers, especially those who have a premature baby to nurse to health, like I had.

They are easy to prepare, but maybe a little time consuming. To prepare laddoos, you will need:

1. Atta/whole wheat flour- 4 cups

2. Dry fruits- raisins, makhana(Lotus seed), cashews-finely chopped, thinly sliced dry coconut- 1 cup

3. Edible gum-1/4 cup

4. Ginger powder-2 tsp

5. Turmeric powder-2 tsp

6. Desi ghee- 5 tbsp + for binding

7. Sugar- 1 cup

8. Tikhur-Indian arrowroot (can be found at stores selling ayurvedic plant products)-1/2 cup

All measurements are approximate values. It is after all just a sweet and ingredients can be increased/decreased/added/deleted according to personal preference. My mother in law puts less sugar in my laddoos and a lot more in others', and the amount of ghee that goes in is way more than 5 tbsp mentioned above.

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Watch What Kids Are Watching

Enjoying the show from front row!

Cartoon channels meant for kids are now changing their menus to include whole families. It sounds absurd since channels meant for kids barely fulfill the needs of their conventional audience. Should not they be doing justice to their names and paying more attention to their core job rather than expanding into vague areas?

It was a moment of truth when my hitherto unspoiled-by-TV-cartoons two-and-a-half year old son came home after playing with a neighbor's kid and demanded to watch Doraemon. I huffed with disappointment at this sudden turn of events. I had always carefully kept him away from such cartoons to serve multiple purposes. I had seen homes turned upside down by TV (cartoon) watching habits of kids, before having a child of my own, and had formed a sort of pledge in my mind to keep a check on it whenever such time came. On the suggestion of a friend, I used to show him BabyTV when my son showed interest in watching TV. Initially his TV viewing duration was small, but it grew bigger with the baby.

As I tried my best to decrease this time, in order to keep it healthy and refreshing, somehow he found out that there were more appealing, louder and naughtier cartoon characters than his usual tame, nursery-rhyme-singing, A-B-C chanting, obedient characters from BabyTV. Just the other day, I saw my husband's cartoon lover cousin standing in front of TV, surfing through the cartoon channels, and as he stopped at a certain channel for a few minutes, I was flabbergasted after hearing the cartoon characters talk to each other in Bollywood actors' voices.

Obviously, it was dubbed in Hindi, using voices from mimicry artists. But it was definitely not meant for kids. It sounded weird and almost profane, something that I would not want my kid to watch at this highly impressionable age, especially after him proving his parroting skills of the highest degree. He not only repeats what he hears verbatim, he can also recall it with miraculous precision weeks later. I know deep within that what sounds cute now might be very undesirable in future. Speaking like an actor, using heavy vocabulary, being rude and irreverent to everyone around and sounding way older than their innocent childhood years are some of the characteristics that I routinely find in kids these days and this premature departure of childhood just breaks my heart.

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Get Out! Literally..

When I was a little girl, I used to spend my holidays on a farm in a village where I had plenty of playmates and equally wide range of outdoor activities. For us, practically anything could be used as a playground: fields, orchards, cowshed, cows' feed tubs, tractors, trolleys, bullock carts... When I came back home all slathered in mud or grease, stinking, my mother would inevitably chase me with a bowl of 'ubtan' to rub out the grease, with a crease on her forehead on seeing her hardwork of bathing me and putting a clean frock on me all gone to waste.

But this meant a childhood full of fun and happy memories for me. Also the fact that I know my dals (pulses) by their actual names instead of calling them 'yellow dal' or 'black dal' is largely attributed to the fact that I have seen them growing in the fields. In school, whether I was taught about crop cycles or Mendel's genetic experiments with peas, I could relate to them with a view. 

Coco playing in the dug up lawn

Slowly technology crept into our lives and took over every aspect of the simple lives that we had. Kids nowadays do not see a lot of outdoor space, they do not get to play with mud or climb trees. Keeping with the times, they play with latest gadgets, mostly indoors, their eyes glued to some or the other screen. In the era of apartment living, at the most they might be forced to go to a nearby park where they might not find anyone to play with. They might understand complicated menus but they might not be able to tell between a mango tree and a margosa tree if they see one. Watching a fruit tree laden with fruits is a pleasure greater than eating the fruit, and this, they might not know. They will not understand the joys of picking flowers, watching birds and catching butterflies and ladybugs.

I have always wanted my child to see nature up close and understand it like I did or even better. But playing outdoors is not only useful in that aspect. A few days ago I was talking to one of my friends who is a play school teacher and has trained on new methods of learning. She suggested that I make a sand pit for my son in the space available in the lawn outside. She told me that kids learn a lot by simply playing in the natural environment. Learning to jump in the sand means that they are learning to control their movements in coordination, using both their feet simultaneously, Give them a bucket, a mug and a shovel and just watch them filling and emptying vessels. Even this simple activity develops their gross motor skills and fine motor skills as well.
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Kids' music: Is There Such A Thing?!

.Scene 1. I was doing something in the kitchen of my first floor apartment in Delhi, when I heard a group of little girls (in the age group of 5-6 years i guessed) singing 'chikni chameli' downstairs, possibly they were dancing also, their sweet voices totally off key, completely immersed in this activity, with nothing whatsoever to do with the world. An unintentional smile crossed my face. I remembered how we as little schoolgirls used to present 'ek-do-teen' or 'nau nau choodiyan' whenever the opportunity came. I am absolutely sure that they did not understand the literal or otherwise meaning of the song. They also did not know what 'Pauwa' means or what are the implications of coming alone, stealthily. They were only spilling out the words with great enthusiasm, oblivious to the fact that adults were listening from windows above and drawing meanings, other than the little girls intended to.

Scene 2. Years ago, I went to this hip-hop dance class held in my office in Hyderabad, where one of my senior colleagues used to come with his wife and two preteen kids. As the trainer switched on the music on the first day, and the song blared across the hall ' I wanna f*** you', the colleague's wife mouthed a big 'no' with a crinkled forehead, but rest of us were already taking positions, trying to gyrate like the trainer from Shiamak Davar academy. I do not know what the family did, as I had to discontinue the classes for some reason. The trainer, however stuck to this song for the final performance as I came to know from my colleagues later.

Scene 3.  Last week, on the dance floor of a party, I stopped dancing suddenly and looked around at the crowd going crazy, which was a mix of young and old alike. What stopped me? The lyrics of the song which first appealed to children by saying 'I am a Superman' and then suddenly descended to the level where the protagonist claimed 'kar dunga maa-behen'. 'Is it only me?' was my precise thought, because no one seemed to care, and from toddlers who had just learnt to walk, to officers on the verge of retirement, everybody was busy dancing. While I was standing there, in the middle of the dance floor, like a dead duck in thunderstorm, wondering what is wrong with everybody's ears! Read more on World of Moms...