Bringing Up Coco: Season 2

It feels great coming home after a loooong holiday. So long that the familiarity of home has faded. While it was a rocking holiday, not a day went without remembering my 'home' and missing it. 'Bringing Up Coco' is important to me but actually bringing up Coco is a time consuming job and I am a lazy lazy woman, and though I kept planning to return, it kept me tied up. I am good at planning, but when it comes to execution , i am a real mess.

Now, my thoughts and ideas are overflowing and seriously need an outlet. Plus a change of location (long awaited and ooohh so nice) brought some fresh air as well as a couple of free hours available. So bottom line is I am back with great plans and keeping my fingers crossed for implementing them the way I thought.

Marching ahead, regardless!

The Balance Sheet

So, little Coco has celebrated his first birthday last month and is now a big boy. His mummy too, celebrated her own birthday and a year of her 'Mummyhood'. It has been a great year for me, a year of great learnings, shocking new discoveries(!), life changing (and nappy changing) experiences. A year full of Irritation and tiredness so heavy, I would find it hard to get up in the mornings, and happiness that would make me feel lighter than air, a calm so sweet that would make me sleep like a baby, though the baby himself never slept like one! 

Coco, who began his life with somewhat difficulty and spent his entire first week in the neonatal ICU, has now become a little brat who is loved for his charming smile and feared for his tantrums with equal fervour. As soon as he fully recovered from all the issues related to his premature birth and started to look like an infant, rather than a foetus, our lives changed. Anyone, including doctors, who looked at him would say 'Ooh' rather than the earlier 'Tch, Oh!'. His blue eyes and sweet smile would attract family as well as strangers alike. I never knew people could be so friendly before I had Coco. Randomly, anyone would come and request to take a picture of him, to which, I could never muster up courage enough to say 'No'. So, right now, hundreds of his pictures are being seen across India, a few in the cellphones of Delhi Policewomen, some with the little girl who was at Mahakaleshwar Temple, Ujjain, a couple of pictures with the saleswomen at a shop in Gorakhpur, you get the drift! 'Send him on TV, he looks like J&J/Pampers baby' are the common words I keep hearing. 

 As I see him growing taller, I see myself growing wiser too! Of late, I am happy mostly about reduced use of breast-milk (from main course to snacks), a diminishing belly and vanishing stretch marks. Looking at him, even my concerns turn into something radiant, my worries become my treasures, in which I swim like Uncle Scrooge McDuck does in his wealth!

Three Little Monkeys!

 

Oh! Look Veeru Mama.......

 

No need to say thanks Mamaji, just eat!

 

Pay attention.

 

Eat well.

 

Want more? Come tomorrow.

        

Bad habit.. eating off the floor!

  

Hey wait! I have your picture....

 

On my T-shirt right here!

(Wondering about where are three monkeys? Well one is Veeru, the Monkey, second is Cheeky Little Monkey on Coco's T-shirt and third one.... Coco, my little monkey! :) )

Rain is falling chhamachham!!

 

Coco is enjoying the first rain-showers of his life at Nana's. The beauty of it all is breathtaking. Rain howls in open fields as we look at the downpour from  the balcony at the back.

 

Closer home, the drops of rain slide from the cold steel railing like pearls. Hm, it all makes him jump with surprise and joy.  

  

After a thorough wash with rains, the clear green of the fields looks like a painting, complete with a pair of Sarus Cranes playing. The rain water logged in the fields has transformed them into a pond where a variety of birds come looking for food and frolic.

And then, Nana brings home some awesome gifts of rainy season. A toothless Coco enjoys licking roasted 'Bhuttas' as he thinks that is what Nana and Mummy are doing.

We've Got Courier!

Coco's first birthday is approaching (So soon??), along with Coco's mummy's nth birthday! Gifts have started flying in. That's how 'Happy' and 'Birthday' go together! So, mummy tore open the first package to arrive while Coco was sleeping and everyone else was away! Shh...

And out spills a rainbow... red and yellow, pink and blue!

Coco's Mausi has sent some T-shirts and a football for him. No T-shirts for mummy. Not even a ping-pong ball. :( 

'Ohh, I totally forgot, your birthday is next day, otherwise I would have sent something for you too' is her explanation. Sigh!!

Though, this lady has significantly improved her capabilities of buying baby clothes and toys. After a rap on the knuckles from her mother when she first bought clothes for Coco, she became wiser and now knows that the age mentioned on baby clothes should not be taken seriously because babies of the same age may have various sizes. Not only that, she has kept comfort above fashion (wide sleeves, stretchy necks/snap openings, no collars, hoods or unnecessary parts, ). I am surprised. It is coming from someone who is a big fan of Babli from the movie 'Bunty Aur Babli' who says to her son:

'Thand ko mar goli, fashion karna seekh!' (To hell with the cold weather, learn to be fashionable.)

By the way, her gifts are fashionable too.

Great going, mausi!

The Early Morning Visitor

 

Good Morning! Who's there in Coco's Nana's balcony?

Whoa...peeping in??

 

Come closer...

...and closer!

Ohh.. it is the much talked about Veeru Mama. Nana named him so. Comes to visit Naana and Nana often. She gives him biscuits while Naana tells her to be cautious.

Looks innocent, but tore mummy's favorite track-pants! Naughty monkey!! 

Ye Saali Gaali...

How many 'Gaalis' (Expletives, abuses) do you know? What do they mean? How many of them do not speak about a woman's dignity (or lack of it)? Do you think you ever mean what you say in a gaali?

Many years ago, while we were enjoying the new freedom of  a job after studies, I used to be the flatmate of a girl who started taking pride in using abuses while talking, courtesy her new friends at work. Accustomed to the much polite Lucknowi Tehzeeb(?), I used to cringe listening to her gaalis in brash Punjabi style, which were more derogatory and hurtful to her own kind (i.e. women) rather than being amusing and uplifting. The girl refused to let go of her gaalis as she thought they made her sound cool. NOT!

Of late, Hindi movies have glorified gaalis via movies like Ishqiya and Delhi Belly. Sadly, expletives are actually ingrained in daily lingo of UP (The land of Lucknowi Tehzeeb) and Bihar as the writers/directors of these movies claim. Here, gaalis are so much a part of the tongue that two fast friends cannot meet without  addressing each other as 'Saale' which sounds casual and harmless, (but is it?).  We even have Gaali songs in weddings and other functions, and they are pure pornography in lyrics, potent enough to make one's ears bleed, mind it!

The structure and nomenclature of Hindi gaalis is such that they are almost always directed at an innocent, unsuspecting mother or sister somewhere. Gaalis from foreign lands, when used in India, become insipid in comparison to our desi abuses. Imagine calling someone an 'asshole' in Hindi. Would it be as effective and satisfying as a Hindi gaali of the nature of 'mother-sister'? Some people use one or two 'mother-sister' type abuses in every sentence that they speak. They are not bad people. I have personally heard them dish out such smelly, vulgar words without ever giving it a thought. More careful and sophisticated people avoid using expletives in front of women, but among men, they are all the same. Someone in this category, once uttered out a gaali in front of me, and as soon as he realized, he said ' Oh, so sorry!'.

The most cultured, educated men do not refrain from dishing out choicest gaalis once the matter comes to it. I am yet to come across a man who claims otherwise. What is it that urges someone to use gaalis of this nature? Is it the helplessness of not being able to harm the other person physically or in any other way that a word picture of the possible harm is created? Is it about harming a person or a woman (Mother/Sister/Daughter of the person)? Why does a person need to use crude language in order to fight? How does it help? How does committing an act of sexual nature against someone's mother or sister compensate for the loss/ harm/suffering of the abuser?  Are we not propagating 'Rape Culture'? After all, words become thoughts and thoughts become actions.

Its been probably centuries since women have been targeted in this indirect way. Is this the prize that we receive for being a good sister/mother/daughter? The icing on the cake is that we cannot even vent out our frustration by hurling a gaali because it will most likely boomerang.