Chronicle of my life, times, this n that

So it was Little V’s first diwali and our first diwali as parents too Being a parent means bringing that little extra bit to the festivities, it meant receiving extra wishes it being little V’s first, hogging on yummy gulabjamuns ( I went crazy this time..thanks to bf and bursting crackers to please the little one more than oneself. I drew some rangoli, which I always do by the way and we all wore new clothes and changed over again for pooja which we do not always do by the way. Little V’s dad wore a nice kurta for the first time on diwali. It has been adorning the almirah since a good one year now. Little V wore new dresses all day and was in dhoti kurta post pooja and until late diwali night. Little boys look so cute in dhotis! Fortunately or unfortunately Little V slept early and we didn’t get to burst a single cracker! Fortunate since it was too noisy and smokey outside to take him out and unfortunate since we were so excited to show him some crackers. Having a few months old baby means – thinking everytime you do something – oh! he must have never seen this, never been there..and there are so many firsts and you are so excited about these things, no matter how big or small. So the night after diwali we showed him all the crackers we had bought, I can say gladly that he wasn’t scared a bit and infact dozed off in the middle of all the pataka bursting!! I tell you that stuff is too boring for a bustling 4.5 month old!! hehehe. Few years from now, I am sure little V will be asking us to save the environment and banish child labour by staying away from crackers, which I am eagerly and excitedly ready learn from him!

Little V has been enjoying his cerelac quite a bit I must say. He can recognise his red bowl and blue spoon. He moves his hands and legs in excitement on spotting them. He started out with half a scoop of cerelac and is already having about 2 scoops (mixed with equal scoops of NAN1). When he’s done eating with this, he is always asking for more. I want him to increase his intake gradually and taste a variety of food. I also started out on mashed banana with few scoops of NAN1 with him. He doesn’t take any formula milk right now, so this will be a good idea to start him on its taste. I have to confess that he loves his banana more than his cerelac and it makes me nothing short of ecstatic, I am now too inspired by Ceekay and Priyanka who did/are doing so much of the homemade food bit for their little ones.

And now the big news, I got promoted to the next level!! yippeee!! while I am still on leave. I was actually due sometime in march/april this year but wasn’t promoted since I was expecting my baby and was about to go on leave(I wasn’t obviously told the fact straightaway but ofcourse it was sugar coated with ‘do little extra’ ‘take initiative’ blah blah reasons). About which I raised much noise. However, now I do feel my organisation is a women friendly one. I am planning to join sometime soon, I am yet to decide on the exact date. Unfortunately, our company is going to do some lay offs pretty soon and I am hoping I wouldn’t be one of those. So, I have been exchanging emails with some fellow bloggers and ideas with friends and hope to find for little V a good daycare, which is definitely worthy of another post.

So much has been happening in my life and in the world!! Time is just flying by us! Little V was just a thought once, I can’t imagine myself back to work as a mommy now leaving a bit of my flesh at a daycare. Hope it doesn’t make me feel too guilt ridden! I want to be a good mommy you see!!

It is the 10th of the navratra today and it marks the culmination of the 10 days for worship/fasting and celebration in North India. It is also called dussera and signifies the day when Lord Ram defeated Ravan. We all read in schools about how this day denotes the victory of good over evil.

As it is the first time I am with my son on dussera it brought me memories of past few years and also took me back to my childhood days. Last year there was a big gathering about 500 metres from our place and the ravan effigy was burnt and the event celebrated with much pomp and fair. The king of dialogues yaani Katruganh Kinha was the Chief Guest. So we couldn’t hear a bit of the ramlila being enacted since the guy was stressing his vocal cords for his own political agenda there but overall it was a grand event and it did make me feel like it was some festival.

My childhood dussera’s were really looked forward to. The day marked the start of the preparations of diwali for me. My Dad used to buy me crackers, in the form of those pistols for small children and I would buy refills until it was diwali and then I could buy a whole lot of crackers. Our teachers at school reminded us of the significance of this day. I remember several superstitions that people associated with Ravan like storing the burnt ravan’s ashes would prevent one’s house from thefts. And then there was this one time I missed dussera since I was travelling to my cousin’s place. I particularly remember having missed watching the ravan effigy being burned alongwith kumbhkaran and megnath.

However, today was different. We went to the same place as last year, but what did we see? We saw this bunch of youngsters holding saffron flags and shouting Jai Shree Ram and staging a short scene from Ramayan and setting to fire a ravan with a placard that said ‘ kalyug ka ravan amar singh’ because of certain words he said  (by the way i don’t live in Punjab, this is just the news item I could lay my hands on). It was ridiculous and stupid act to say the least. From the people who consider themselves the crusader of all things sacred, claiming to preserve our culture and espousing the ‘hindutva’ agenda. What a way to celebrate such a day?!

The reason I visited the same place was that though my son is just about little less than 4 months old, I still ‘talked’ to him about this whole dussera festival and what it meant. I am just keen that he knows about such days as much as he would know about flower day, friendship day, valentine’s day and mom/dad/sister/brother and such other days we have now started to celebrate. I am infact not against but much in support of such days too besides of course the importance of our kids knowing about cultural festivals like dussera. But the crusaders of sacredness just spoiled the show for us.

After the recent blasts in Delhi, I was quite wary of letting my son and my husband be anywhere close to crowds or any form of cracker bursting. So anyways me and my husband after watching the drama staged by those guys, drove around our sub city looking for some place where an effigy was put up and managed to see the black man standing still and saw him come to ashes safely through the rolled up windows of our car. And I can say little V is peacefully sleeping now having celebrated his first Dussera, recollecting vividly what mamma told him about the day in his dreams. Happy Dussera to you all!!