lets watch it together

The Olympics. It’s been a deep desire of mine to one day witness a live Olympic event. See a few races yourself, live. Sigh… someday. I will be rich enough or retired enough to see one. I want to play a game of cricket in England, watch Wimbledon, and catch a test match in Australia. And ofcourse watch the 100 meter sprint at the Olympics. Now thanks to Jispa we have started watching swimming and understanding it. It’s a completely different experience.

We have a TV now at home but we still don’t have cable. So we still can’t watch the Olympics. Getting the cable just for this is quite a pathetic chore. So we were lucky to be at friends place to catch the finals of the 400m individual medley, which had the legend Phelps finishing a poor fourth. Jispa was excited and we all watched eagerly. It was fun watching a sporting event with Jispa. I have always wanted to watch sports and play sports with Jispa. It’s awesome fun. Full on bonding. At the other swimming races, there was considerable excitement as well. Our friends also caught our infection as we cheered for the swimmers. Normally the swimming would have become a bit boring if not for the introduction of the World record line. They show the line (superimposed for TV) at which the swimmer must be to beat the world record. So it quite visible if the swimmer is ahead or behind the record. It makes for an exciting race.

So we were cheering and very excited towards the end when you see how fast the swimmers are going and if there are in line to beat the record.

The next day I tried to catch a few swim races with Jasmine and Jispa on the cell phone on YouTube. There we saw the race and then tried to analyse and learn from the swimmers. We were discussing how the hand is stretched just for that little bit before it pulls the water back. This is quite clear from the underwater shots. Then we were looking and rewinding and forwarding to see how the relay guys are ready to jump and have taken off just as the swimmer approaches. It’s timed to perfection. They begin their jump and only the toe is touching while their compatriot is reaching for the touchpad. Lovely. At that level you save every half second. Finally a sport that our whole family can watch and not just watch, we get technical about it. Wow. That’s one dream come true.

Normally when we watch cricket I struggle to show Jasmine that see – see the ball pitch and turn. There.. Can you see it, the ball is swinging in the air. In the middle, I used to try and predict the googly from Anil Kumble hand while he was bowling. All that was lost. Now we all can look forward to see one sport. I am thrilled. And all the angles and the innovation make for a very engrossing viewing.

A dad's gotta do what a dad's gotta do

This is a really tough one. Jispa doesn’t like her school taekwondo teacher. He is a bit tough on the kids and the kids seem to hate that. Before him there was this fun teacher who taught them and made them play games while teaching them taekwondo. Last to last year I remember that just before the annual play off while practicing Jispa hit leg against the wall and got a sore foot. Her teacher then still motivated her and Jispa fought despite the pain. On the other hand this year she has been trying to get off the taekwondo co-curricular class.

Taekwondo is something that I was pretty keen on. I was keen that Jispa take up some form of martial art. It would stand her in good stead when she grows up and it also builds strength and discipline. The kicking in taekwondo also helps build legs, that possibly has a rub off effect on her swimming muscles. So it’s a good thing. Till the new teacher came in Jispa loved taekwondo and is now proficient enough to kick the wooden board that they use and break it in one clean swipe.  She was doing pretty well.

The problem is now that the teacher is one tough guy from the old school of hard knocks. He makes the kids practice hard and bores them to death by getting them to kick in the entire class. Then sometimes he denies them loo breaks or water breaks. I don’t know – what would happen if you don’t drink a bit of water in one hour. Then he scolds them if they get it wrong. Then he takes one kid aside and teaches him extra stuff. Then once when Jispa took a loo break he got another kid to teach her stuff she missed as opposed to teaching it himself.

When I heard this I was wondering. Where’s the issue. This sounds like the school I went to. My teachers were like this and the ones not like these were the exception rather than the norm. We all got screamed at, scolded and stopped from loo and water breaks. He seems like any of my PE teachers. Only a bit better. I remember getting whacked on the bum with a hockey stick as well. Ouch.

But the problem is that Jispa hates it. She positively hates it and I guess the class hates it as well. They seem to be bitching about the teacher within themselves a lot. The words that Jispa speaks has stuff that I would never have thought of her noticing. Its sounds like kids bitching together and coming to a conclusion that the teacher is bad.  Whatever the truth – Jispa hates the class. So today morning I had a longish chat with her. I understood and I then explained to her – “understand kid, this is similar to what I had in school. If the sir hits you then it’s bad, if he is partial all the time, then it’s bad. He took a kid aside and taught him extra because he must have seen something more. Remember he took you aside from your friends and made you kick the board and not let your friends do it. That time you did not complain. Don’t complain now. I think the issue was that your sir did not speak properly. He needs to talk sweetly to you guys. Or at least less harsh. Think again that seems to be the issue.” Jispa replied in affirmative. I guess she understood. I explained that its ok if someone screams. Let them scream as much as they want. It allright. What you want is for them to teach you. As long as he does that, its ok. As long as he doesn’t hit it ok. Rest we will manage. “but still” I added, I think I need to speak to him. I need to tell him that I think the kids are a little scared of you and don’t like being scolded. Can you please be a little more soft or little less hard on them. If I call him and do that, will that be enough”. Jispa nodded again.

So today was a test. To do something good for her while it being bad in the short term. Its tough really tough. I love my daughter. I surely don’t want her to have bad irritating teachers but also that is reality around you. People scream and speak rudely all the time. Get used to it. You can run from it. Especially if you are getting stuff that is good for you.

On Jispa’s guitar class, Jispa doesn’t have the will to practice every time. I also recognize that Jispa can’t do it. Just no time. With one full time sport it’s impossible to have one more hobby. Taekwondo is school is enough extra, on which we top up with swimming. Sorry man. I had to be the bad guy and say – fine Jispa. No guitar class anymore. She was a bit relieved as well. We can’t make her a super kid. I don’t want that. I wanted a simple kid, and yes a few great achievements would be nice. State swimming is good enough. To push her for more is sheer torture. And as parents I did not want to punish her anymore and quite frankly I thought the family was falling apart thanks to the hectic pace. I am most worried about Jasmine. Somehow being the super mom she is, I don’t think she knows what the pace was exacting upon her and her mind. Yes. I thought I had to be the final bad or tough guy. The guy taking all the decisions, especially if they are tough to be taken.

So I took the taekwondo decision and will take it to its logical conclusion and I have taken the guitar one as well. It’s best given the circumstances.

So anyone want a second hand guitar?

a new scrap everyday

After all these years some things never change. The stress of education is always there on the child and add to that – the greatest stress ever – the stress of homework not done or homework incomplete.

Yesterday was Jispa’s last day of the vacation. Till the fourth standard – every year in the vacation they have to write a scrap book of the stuff they did in the vacation. This for us is the most painful thing. You have to think of stuff we did, print pictures and decorate the scrap book. The most tiresome of them all – get Jispa to write in the scrap book. Get behind here. It’s like getting her to write 20 essays. Arrgghh. We have to be real mean parents if are to get her to finish on time. Things don’t help when the highlight of your holidays which is the vacation we took is towards the end of the holidays. We even took the dam bloody scrap book to Udaipur and made her write in her vacations. Whenever we had free time, we would goad her into writing. She would curse us, curse the dam book but she had no option but to write. After she writes, we can choose the pictures and print them accordingly. Jasmine had been telling her to write a few pages of Hindi as well. Jispa maintained that it was optional. Yesterday, on the last day, Jasmine read the circular that explained quite clearly that a few notes in Hindi are expected. But since getting Jispa to do the scrap is so bloody stressful, we let it be. Don’t bother.

At around 8 pm, when we are all ready to sleep and Jasmine is so tired that she even falls asleep, Jispa suddenly sees something that every school going kid sees. The consequences of not doing what you have been told to. Till now the school and the home work seemed far away. Hindi pages – sure – it’s optional. Its not required. But now, she was suddenly convinced it is not optional. It is required.  She comes to me with an upset face. What am I to do? Nothing, chill I tell her. We will figure. Now have your bath. After her bath also, she comes to me. Now really upset and almost in tears “what will happen tomorrow?”. “arey” I tell her “you enjoyed your summer vacation, nah? Why regret? Don’t worry. You said it was optional and what can your teacher do? She will only scold nah? Don’t worry”. “no” Jispa cried, “she can mess with my grades”. I wanted to tell her, chill man. Shit happens. It’s not the end of the world. In school, shit always happens.

When I was her age, shit happened all the time. We were three kids. Of course my mom couldn’t completely focus on all our studies. And then my dad had a heart attack when I was in fifth standard. So shit just hit the roof many times. Homework not done, answers not learnt, talking in class, all sorts of shit. Even rubbish like – paints not got for art class. And we used to sometimes get slaps, punishments, kneeling and what not. That stuff is at least banned in school these days. We used to get the dreaded remark in the diary. This had to be signed by the parent, which was a really BAD thing. So the biggest worry was not the shit hitting you. That was manageable. It was the shit hitting you once you get home. Who wanted that? School was enough. You plead with the teacher for mercy – she refuses takes your diary and then you go home and explain the shit all over again. The pain was getting home and facing crap.

At least in this – I wanted to tell Jispa – you can’t get any crap at home. I am saying ok. Shit happens. Not writing a few pages of Hindi is not exactly a bad thing that I am going to scold you about. But then how do I tell her that its ok for teachers to be angry at you, it’s a pathetic thing you shouldn’t be bothered about. I couldn’t do that. So I looked at her and said, ok let’s do something about it. I wake Jasmine up and explain the situation. We press code red. We get the papers, the ruled papers, the blank papers, the colored papers. Then we think about how to write stuff that will fill at least two sides in Hindi. Then we think of something. Tomorrow is Monday. Monday is no Hindi. Hindi subject is on Tuesday. Cool Jispa. Write the stuff now, we will decorate it tomorrow and you can tell your teacher that the Hindi pages of the scrap book are coming separate and you will get it for Hindi class. So I dictated a lot of stuff on the Hindi essay to Jispa. That itself was a crazy situation, I shouldn’t be dictating stuff. She should be writing it herself, but when you are about to sleep on a Sunday night in anticipation of a whole week ahead then you really want to get all the stuff done fast and easy. Thinking anything in Hindi is a big task for me. It ok to speak in ‘Mumbai’ Hindi but it’s another task altogether in writing decent fourth grade Hindi. Getting all the grammar right is very very stressful.

So we finished by 9 to sleep on time and Jispa was happy. “Thank you mom, thank you dad”. “ya sure” Jasmine said and the asked her “so do you enjoy working at the last moment? Would you do this again? Will you do so when I tell you?”. “yes mamma, sorry mamma.”

Sigh. All’s well that ends well. I try not to give too much stress about the education bit. I try and take all that stress on my head. If you have to learn tables, fine, let me do it along with you. If you have to do homework, ok, let me help you. It’s pretty boring getting to do all the work alone. Also being the only child, you can’t force the old “all of you sit down and do your homework together” bit. So I try and be extra sensitive. As it is, there is enough grief in a child’s life. I don’t want to contribute to it. There are many benefits of having siblings, but there are many cons as well. We took a call and had only one child. That was so that we could focus our time and energies on her. Completely. So we must focus on her. That’s the way I see it. I have no other excuses. Hence also no complains.

In the morning over breakfast she was telling me how the scrap book completely spoils her vacation and she hates it. I explained to her about a research I read. Kids who leave for the vacation end up not studying at all or reading at all. This largish break makes the child regress in his learning. So while a vacation is good for a child to play freely, it also means that the child must do small little work that keeps him up to speed with what he has already learnt. Two months a long time in child years I guess. That settled it for now. Luckily next year onwards she does do the scrap book, but I am told they have book reviews to be submitted. Hahahha. Have fun. Jasmine and I are happy that theoretically we are off the hook on those kinds of assignments. Hehehe.

a question of faith

Ever since I remember I have had this fascination for the Haji Ali Dargah off Worli sea face. The setting of the Shrine is perfect. It is around a kilometer off the mainland. The sea face is a very busy Mumbai arterial road. I remember passing through this place many times when I was a kid. Whenever we had to go to town we would pass by Worli and I would put my head out to see and admire the shrine.

Here is the satellite image. The little white thing out in the sea is the shrine.

My parents were largely secular. I remember whenever we came to Mumbai in the vacations from Dubai, we would have one scheduled visit to Haji Ali. So as a kid I have been there quite a few times. But after we shifted back to Mumbai for some reason it fell off our ‘to visit’ spots. I must have hardly been there once or twice since. When I was dating Jasmine I remember asking her if she had ever been there. She said that she had never been there as it was a Muslim place of worship. That’s when I first thought of it as a Muslim place. The dargah is largely Sufi which meant that its appeal would largely be open to both faiths. But I also guess it would be a question of faith and exposure. After having stayed in Dubai, I guess my family would be obviously more open to the Muslim faith. But then Jasmine also stayed close to a Muslim dominated locality. But would that have meant bringing them closer or further widening of the divide? I don’t know. It could cut both ways. Like next to Jasmine’s building was a Muslim dominated building. The problem would arise during Bakri Id. This is when they would have goats in the compound a couple of days prior to the Id and the same would be sacrificed on Id. This would happen in the open. Most vegetarians would find this highly disgusting and unbearable. Possibly this would further divide ‘us’ from ‘them’. The Moharram mourning with self-flagellation is also something that is a point of misunderstanding. But if I were to put on the opposite cap – I don’t think the Muslims would understand the 7 day fasting that Jains do or the fact that Jains don’t eat onions and garlic and other stuff that grows underground. In fact I guess the biggest grouse that anyone can have of Jains is that on religious grounds they are holier than thou and in business they just are complete blood suckers.

But this is not a blog about disparity. This is about plurality and the open embrace of Sufism. So when a friend from UK came to Mumbai and requested to see the shrine I was more than happy to her around. As timeline would have it, we only had a morning slot free. Which meant a visit to Haji Ali at 6 am. You can only go there during low tide as high tide submerges the half km entry path. 6 am is also a good thing as it meant availability of parking. In that area there is absolutely no parking available. I wonder where the pilgrims park their car during normal hours. I would guess the availability of parking would tempt many more pilgrims that what the shrine currently gets.

6 am also meant that the path was relatively free of all the beggars that normally dot the sides. No crowd to jostle with and a peacefull prayer time for my friend. When I walked to the shrine and when I walked in, I was somehow feeling a bit ‘nothing’. I don’t know. A bit let down in some sorts. Let down that I felt nearly nothing. I was expecting to feel nostalgic at the least, or even possibly feel a vibe or some thing. I was left unimaginably cold to the whole thing. Watching the Mumbai skyline also had no effect on me. Possibly the tide was way too low. A higher tide would have made for a dramatic scene with the waves lashing. But hell it was a really cold trip. Walk in walk out.

Dam me and my realism on god values. I see it nothing but an interesting monument. As of now at least I have nothing to ask from him or him to ask from god on my behalf. I think every time that this robs me of the magic that a more religious person might have felt. And this stuff is what I teach Jispa. That a temple is just a monument. God can solve your issues. You don’t need to pray to God for anything. So forget me and Jasmine, even Jispa won’t feel that magic. I felt that faith as a child growing up. It was there till about I was 21. Even after that I went through the motions till I stopped on day on the banks of the Ganga. Now it’s a cold nothingness. I am not really complaining but I wonder if that is an important part of life skills that I have not passed on. I wonder.

zoom

Last week I was in Udaipur for a personal leave. Jasmine and I have realized the value of staying put in as few places as possible during a leave. First we would go to multiple places in one leave. Like our honey moon, in which we did more than 6 places in 15 days. We covered practically the whole of  Kumaon region in Uttrakhand when we were there. Slowly slowly we were down to three places, then two and now we are at one place one week. The last two holidays have been just that. Reach, plonk yourself and if needed use that as a base to explore further. So this time, it was one week in Udaipur. This also affects the hotel choice. We end up taking a smallish but cute and clean hotel, that is typically family run. And this time for the first time, we deliberately went for a hotel with a pool in it. if you are there for eight nights and you might get a bit of hot weather, you need a pool. So we got, history, culture and relaxation – all in one vacation.

Another thing that we have discovered in India is the Golden Quadrilateral. The new highways of India. I have been hearing about how good. I used to try and get Jasmine to agree on driving holidays. The last time we had no option but to drive to our spot as it was pretty remote. The highways are amazing. These are segregated lanes with flower beds in the middle. And enough space to zip through. When I first drove on Indian highways, it was around 20 years ago. We had a Fiat premier padmini car. Here is a similar model. Ours was white as well.

My dad had bought it second hand. My mom had insisted on buying a car as my eldest sister was marriageable age and we must have a car to prove that we were well off. That we had two flats and that we had stayed in Dubai or whatever else was probably not too much of a show off value. So dad bought his car for around ninety five thousand rupees. A princely sum of course in those days. Must have been around in the year 1990 or thereabouts. The only thing we kids did not like about it was that it did not have an AC in it. We were keen that we have atleast an AC car. We wanted a Maruti but our conservative parents preferred this car, which we made do with. BUT NO AC? That was a bummer. But hell, we still loved that we had a car and as soon as we turned 18, we enrolled into a driving school and got our licenses. Dad actively taught our driving and soon enough we were driving on highways.

The highways. Oh the highways on a premier padmini. It had no acceleration to talk about. It was good for doing 60kmph at bets. Reaching any speeds beyond that required a large empty stretch of road and 90 would be around the best available speed. That too only if we got like a straight road with no traffic on the way. I must crossed that only once in my padimini. Add to that were the state of the highways in India. I was explaining to Jispa that the highways were just one road with one lane going up and another lane going down, with no segregation. The lanes were simply painted. So when you drive you have to be very carefull. For overtaking every time, you would have to tail the truck in front of you and then move little to the right and check for oncoming traffic. Then if you found the coast clear you would press the accelerator completely and hope to pass the truck before an oncoming vehicle came face to face with you. But that’s not enough similarly you have to constantly look for incoming vehicles that are overtaking by coming onto your lane. You would have to adjust your speed accordingly. I have been pushed off road one more than one occasions by a truck who has mistimed his overtaking. So I move off the road rather than get smashed into as pulp.

I was explaining this to Jispa and she found it quite amusing. The highway to Udaipur is around 800 km long and is one super straight drive. Only in one 50 km patch between Ahmedabad and Ghandinagar is the old style highway. I guess that is because it is the Ghandinagar bypass. If you go through the city then you get the segregated lanes all the way. This is like a shortcut. It helped to have it as it was like giving a live demo to Jispa. I talked to her while I was driving. See now I must overtake this way. Now I must look for this truck. She now found all it even funnier. All the cars waiting behind a truck and then suddenly all of them accelerating together and overtaking. Then she saw how we were stuck behind a truck at 40kmph waiting for a chance to overtake. As opposed to 100 -120 kmph on the normal highway, it felt like a hare waiting impatiently behind a tortoise waiting for an opening.

The superb highways made me think about my political leaning. The bridges in Mumbai which got much acclaim were thanks to the right winged group in power. The Golden quad highway project was a brain child of the same right winged combo in power at the center. The more secular party leans almost left and is a ‘welfarist’ at heart. While I think some of the legislation like the NREGA which guarantees employment may have much greater long term impact than what most understand, I need good roads and bridges now. No I am not talking like a spoiled brat who wants roads for a self drive vacation. But I see the benefits of good infrastructure.

Long ago in my naivety I had argued that India does not need so much infrastructure. After all we led the IT boom in spite of the no government support and in the absence of any backing. Adversity led to innovation. But I couldn’t have been more stupider. We desperately need it and the multiplier effect is for there to see. Good roads means better transport for goods and materials, we can now use large trucks on the highways, better trucks, better facilities for drivers, faster transportation. May be capital intensive in the short run but cheaper in the long run. Business comes up in and around the area and you definitely gain in terms of efficiency. It’s bloody important. So this time around if I vote right winged, it’s not that I love secular less, but that I love infrastructure more (sorry Brutus).

Maya

Maya. Commonly understood as illusion. The Wikipedia say thus - Maya or Māyā, in Indian religions, has multiple meanings, usually quoted as "illusion", centered on the fact that we do not experience the environment itself but rather a projection of it, created by us. While this sounds simple enough or complicated enough, depending on your world view, the followings words  are even more obscure “Māyā is the principal deity that manifests, perpetuates and governs the illusion and dream of duality in the phenomenal Universe. For some mystics, this manifestation is real. Each person, each physical object, from the perspective of eternity, is like a brief, disturbed drop of water from an unbounded ocean. The goal of enlightenment is to understand this—more precisely, to experience this: to see intuitively that the distinction between the self and the Universe is a false dichotomy. The distinction between consciousness and physical matter, between mind and body (refer bodymind), is the result of an unenlightened perspective.”

 Wow. I completely skipped that one. For me Maya is simply that there is no absolute truth. Only versions of it. Many times truth twists itself in a manner that is not known to us. I have argued this before on my blog. And I see it everyday in our lives. Most so in office.

Just yesterday I was explaining to someone the absurdity of office situations and the games we end up playing. I read somewhere that ‘a person refuses to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it. Suppose there was an instance where a particular way of showing numbers was proposed to me by my subordinate. But my job depended on not understanding it. I refused. Now one could call me the bad guy. But I knew if I start showing the numbers suddenly in a  new format, the other guys would falsely compare those with the preceding numbers and raise a false alarm. The alarm would be loud enough to set the fire itself, leaving you with another existential question – what came first – the chicken or the egg. So by that logic who is the idiot? Me for refusing to move forward, them – for refusing to see light when I show them statistics or he for not understanding this equation and putting us all in a situation where have to make a call – if we are idiots or not. Where does the buck lie? All are right and all are wrong because for the innocent bystander – YOU, you see the truth. Improve it you say. The right thing to do is always what the right thing is. But what you don’t understand is the chain of repercussions you could start of. So sitting judge on these issues, make you  dear friend, you ARE the idiot. For you haven’t understood the real issues, which are something else altogether. Possibly ‘them’ are under pressure to perform. Possibly ‘them’ see threat from ‘me’. Possibly ‘me’ has conveyed the wrong impression to ‘he’. And possibly ‘he’ is just bugging me to expose the real ‘me’. Who said what is a big question?

Yesterday I was explaining to someone that many times it is stupid to look at the truth in a matter. In office many times, people say something yet mean something else. They will come and tell you what they think they did in a situation. You will get another version from it from someone else. And then the two will conflict in your brain and you will invariably think that one has lied or has betrayed you. The truth is a lot in between. One may have just been misinterpreted or one may have tried to deflect from himself and named you but then made a comeback but the earlier version stuck. What should you do in this case? Should you try to get to the bottom of it all? What will you do digging for truth in a cesspool?  The smart thing is to know what you know and what you don’t. To live with the probabilities of what really happened. Cesspools are murky and opaque. Cleaning them doesn’t do much to anyone. It’s you who gets dirty in the process and it’s you who will get recognized as the one who throws stones in the cesspool.

I was telling Jasmine the same thing the other day. She wanted to clarify something from some other mother. I told wait. What’s it got to do with you? What they did to someone may or may not be without malice but you asking them will surely bring something out in the open. Why confront. What is the objective? What will you achieve? Quietly allowing them to think the way they do doesn’t not really harm you then why do you go for the truth? Why?

Our desire to seek out the TRUE version can only harm us. Because what we get we may not really like. Most of the time I have seen that we only seek to twist what we hear to we want to hear. I have that so many times. I used to counsel a lot of my subordinates and students. Now I don’t get too emotionally attached while doing so. People don’t want to hear the truth (at least your version of it). they want to hear their version of it.

OH DAM IT. this is getting to bloody irritating. Obviously I have seen something in office that has reinforced my belief in Maya and the power of illusions and truth. Two people said something to me. I love them both. I respect them both. The critic may argue that possibly I have no option but to respect them both. My job depends on deeply respecting them, so possibly I respect them. But I believe that both of them have been really nice to me and have helped me. So when I get two versions of truth I am forced to be philosophical. But not for long. I found myself humming this song which liked ever since I heard it. That makes me smile. Humming it to myself. Don’t you always remember the songs you listened to as a kid?

Bond

I was in the operation theatre when Jasmine delivered Jispa.  Besides obviously being happy that our child was born, I was so happy that it was a girl. We both wanted a girl. We even had the name in place. But if it were a boy, hmmm that would have been a bit of a tough one.

But you know how dads can get. I always want to bond with my girl on a man to man basis. I’d like to talk to her, explain her stuff, go cycling or swimming with her. Watch action movies with her. But my girl, well she is a girl after all. She hates action movies. So no super hero movies or movies where the bad guy gets thrashed about, smashed into pulp or bullets flying. So I have never been really able to see these movies. I remember many years ago when she was around five years old and die hard part 4 was released. We went to see the movie after she was asleep. Normally I would carry her in my arms and hold her through the movie, while she was fast asleep. This time she woke up and saw some action and I distinctly remember her getting angry at us for getting her to the movie. She started getting angry in the movie hall itself “why did you get me here, why did you get me here?”

Last week, one day she asked me, “how did Spiderman become Spiderman? I heard that some spider bit him or something. Is that true?” Ah yes. I then proceeded to explain to her the legend of the Spiderman. How he was bestowed with special spider sense and then I explained the part about ‘with great power come great responsibility’. Then I asked her, if she wanted to see the part thee (or is it part four) of the movie that was releasing this Friday. “hmmm. I don’t know. But shouldn’t I see part one before”. Well it’s not like they are sequential like harry potter or something. But ya. So we borrowed the first part of the series and watched it at home. She was ok with it. nice and fun, so we went on Sunday for ‘the amazing Spiderman’. Whoops. This one was a bit dark, tough and a lot more gore (blood) in it. I guess after the Batman in the Dark Knight, Hollywood must have thought about dark, confused and complicated superheroes with blood on them would make for more compelling viewing. I mean when was the last time you saw a super hero coming home and covering his bloodied face from his aunt. This is eth first spider man who I have seen who has removed his mask so often and been so bruised. It was like an action blood movie than a superhero movie. Either their target audience has gotten older or the kids can take much more violence these days.  Its rated UA but I strongly feel that families who get their kids for a ‘wholesome’ experience would be a bit rattled by the movie. I think we need a certification that’s between UA and A for this one. I think kids need to be at least 12 to really enjoy this movie. Jispa came out ok from the movie. There were parts she did not want to see for sure. Possibly the boys in her class would be more blood hungry, but it was a bit dark and gory for a 9 year old. After the movie, she was ok. I told her I did not know this would be as bad. She was ok about the whole thing. I finally got her to see a couple of super hero movies. I enjoy them and I secretly hope to see them with my kid. Possibly when she grows up. Anything is good when you compare it to the home alone 3 that she hired to see along with Spiderman 1.

And if that bonding wasn’t enough for the week end, yesterday night, both Jispa and I couldn’t get any sleep. We tried to hit the bed by 9. Jasmine was asleep but Jispa and I struggled. So I snug into her bed and tried reading my book, while she tried sleeping. Didn’t work. So I tried reading while she was reading. Didn’t work. She drank a little milk (wonder of wonders) and I drank milk. Didn’t work. We looked at each other for around an hour and then another… still we both were awake and wondering what to do. So we decided to watch a movie. Since we have no cable and our collection of movies ain’t that big, we had little choice. She did not want to see ‘my movies’ and I surely did not want to see ‘her movies’. It then I told her fine, I think the right movie from our collection would be …. Yes. I got it. ‘do aankhen baarah haat’ (two eyes twelve hands). This is an old black and white movie, I told her. I had seen it as a kid, about your age or a couple of years older possibly. And it was a nice movie. So Jispa and I were watching this 1957 movie about a jailor who is trying to take 6 hardened criminals and reform them by giving them freedom and taking them out of a jail set up to an open ground without encumbrances.  It was nice movie and the prayer song from that movie never left me.

I had to keep explaining the story and its nuances to Jispa from time to time.  The premise of the story, why he taking them to a free place, why is he breaking the fences and that he is giving them their murder weapons as tools to work with. The music score and the over acting of the cast is worth watching and is so different from the cinema of today. Jispa found it amusing and then even remarked “these black and white movies are quite nice and fun to watch”.

So yesterday we watched around 55 minutes of the movie till I felt sleepy and it was around 12 midnight. We promised to complete it later.

This was a lot of bonding for one weekend. But yes, I am not complaining.