Modern Parenting

I've wanted to write about this for a long time, but did not get the time to do it. Finally, with some time on my hands after escaping from work early, I thought I'd at least do something that I've wanted to in a long time. And that my readers, is share my thoughts with you.

Today's topic that I have decided to write about is one that frustrates me to no extent to see the kind of spoilt ingrates being churned out by society. A child's life today is over-protected. As we steer more to the western school of thought and the fact that hurting a child can lead to terrible consequences, the percentage of unsuccessful, low on esteem, frightful, and often queer folks has increased multifold.

There used to be a time when parents would wield a stick, teach a child discipline, and let the child fend for himself in difficult situations. This would be the norm and the done thing. However now, the times - they are a changin'.

Today's parents are into 'child worship'. This excessive devotion to children is just mind-numbing. Today's professional parents are constantly overscheduling and overmanaging their children, and are robbing them of their childhood. Even the simple act of playing has been taken away from them. Something that is supposed to be spontaneous and free has become rigid and overtly planned. Nowadays, a 4-year old should not be playing outside in the sun. He should be inside studying and cramming hard for his Kindergarten entrance exams. All this is for noone else, but for his parents pride and egos.

Children today aren't allowed to play the ever so famous 'chor police', because it includes "victimization". They aren't allowed to play 'tag' because it includes 'exclusion'. Instead, they are encouraged to play indoor games involving strategy, games involving intelligence. Where has all the fun gone? These are not droids that we want to churn out. Humans are what we are and humans are what we are expected to produce.

Having said that, when the child finally gets to play - whatever game he/she is allowed to play, the child will never lose, because in today's world, no child ever loses...everybody wins and noone is a loser. Everyone gets a trophy. No child today ever gets to hear those all-important character building words "You lost". Instead, these kids are told "You're the last winner". Often, these kids don't hear the right words right up until their twenties, when their bosses tell them to their faces, "You're a loser!". And then, this 20-year old child crumbles, goes into depression, and then the psychiatrics take over.

Turn off the internet, the idiot box, the CD ROMS, computer games and let your kids stare at a tree for a couple of hours. Every now and then they will actually come up with one of their own ideas. You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them alone.

Children these days are overrated and overvalued. They've become little cult objects. Today's parents have a child fetish and that's not a great thing. Often, you'll get to hear "I love my children". Well - everyone loves their children...it doesn't make the person who's saying it any more special or what they're saying more believable. Stop praising your kids in front of others (or even in front of the kids themselves). Noone whom you're telling these things to wants to know, because noone cares. What is this mindless rambling, the neurotic fixation that suggests that somehow everything has to revolve around the life of your child?

What is it with mobile phones and kids these days? How can parents give a 7-year old a cellphone and encourage him/her to talk using that phone? Calling them up in the middle of the day and asking them "Did you eat? Did you go to the loo? When are you coming home? Where are you now? Who are you with? Don't play with boy 'X' because he is a mean boy ". No wonder kids these days run far away from their parents as soon as they are able to. I don't blame the parents for asking these questions too much, but what I am objecting to is this obsession of not being able to leave their kids alone to fend for themselves and make decisions on their own. So what if it's the wrong one? They'll make the mistake and learn. It's not the end of the world. At least you end up teaching your child one of the most important things in life - being bold enough to take a decision.

Kids love showing off shiny, new things. I remember I used to take pride in a pencil-box my parents once bought me. I would go around showing it off to everyone I knew in school. Often, if I would get good grades, I would tell my friends that it's because of the lucky pencil/eraser I bought the other day. That is innocence personified. Not like today's kids, who go around showing off their mobile phones letting other kids  know that they have GPRS and can watch videos on their phones. This then forces the jealous kids to make demands of their weak parents, who, for the sake of showing their kids how much they love them, go and buy these kids a better phone than the one they initially demanded....and the cycle goes on.

Do parents really need to "show" their love to their kids? I mean - isn't it obvious? They bring you into this world, they live together, they feed the kids, they take care of them, they get mad at them as well. Is that not good enough? Why do parents have to buy their kids things, tolerate misbehaviour and indiscipline to show their kids how much they love them? It just makes the kid weaker and more insecure than ever before, not to mention spoilt.

Finally, when the kids turn out all wrong and the parents catch the kid smoking one day at the shop around the corner, they're going to be ignorant of the fact that they didn't teach their kids the right things (and expected their schools to do it for them - after all, they spent all their money on that fancy air-conditioned school without uniforms and books, that allowed their children to move around in AC buses, fed them during the day with 5-star category food, allowed them to take a nap, and didn't give them homework since it was considered as too much pressure for the child). Instead, they blame the tobacco companies, advertisements, the Western world, movies, filmstars, and even believe that the camel in sunglasses asked them to smoke. Today's parents are responsible for today's generation and they have failed to make their kids understand right from wrong, good from evil, and even truth from dare.

Children are the most beautiful and innocent things that were ever created. Parents end up spoiling them by imposing their beliefs and views, being overprotective, scheduling their time for them, succumbing to their kids' whims and fancies, letting the child take control of them instead of the other way round. At the end of it, these same parents end up demanding respect from their children. They forget that respect cannot be demanded - it must be earned....and we all end up blaming none other than "the kids these days...."

Expedition to Dilli Haat

Sunday afternoon and what better way to spend it than go to Dilli Haat? No - that's not my idea of fun at all. A long drive, hot, crowded, and walking around aimlessly is not exactly my idea of a relaxed Sunday. I had to go - don't ask me why. I can't talk about it here, in fear of a certain someone learning how to find my blog and read about it, and then ask me about it, and then...just too many risks involved here.

Anyhow, getting back on topic. I had assumed that it being a Sunday, the roads would be free of traffic, I could reach Dilli Haat, sip on a cool Thums Up, and spend the rest of the afternoon near the Food Village, trying out cuisines belonging to different states. I was totally off my mark. Here's an account of what happened:

• The roads were extremely busy, thanks to some road being repaired because of the Metro construction.
• I had to struggle to park because of the complete lack of parking facilities.
• I forgot to carry any money on me and my ego forbid me to borrow money from anyone else.
• The ATM wouldn't accept my Citibank debit card and kept spitting it out, while telling me to come back after 24 hours if I still wanted to withdraw any money.
• I eventually had to walk a kilometer in the sun to find another ATM and discovered that there was another one not more than 100 meters from the first one (in the opposite direction though).
• I bought the tickets after standing in a queue for 20 minutes behind Punjabi mundas fighting with the lady at the ticket counter to let a child in for free (who obviously didn't qualify for it according to the rules).
• Shopping happened. I was tired just standing there watching all the haggling that was going on. My company (wife and her mum) gleamed at every 5 rupees they saved, while I hoped against hope that there would be an air-conditioned stall somewhere around that I could go to and pretend to be interested in the stuff that they were selling.
• I finally got to the Food Village and ordered Veg Chow and Aloo Dum with Thums Up (of course), only to be told that all orders would take at least 45 minutes.
• I was attacked by a colony of ants and flies who were hellbent on polishing off the remnants of fish 'bhetki'. I am a vegetarian.
• The food took exactly an hour to reach me. I had finished two 500ml bottles of Thums Up by then. Bye bye diet.
• We got up to the sounds of the band playing 'Pukarta Chala Hoon Main', which was the highlight of my visit to a place that I had grown to abhor. Here's the video
• On our way out, concerned about how late we were getting, we spent another hour looking at bedcovers and cushion covers.
• When we reached the parking lot, my wife discovered that she had lost the parking ticket and the guy there wouldn't let me leave without paying him an additional 20 to 30 INR for 'chai paani'.
• Before leaving, it was decided that we would have to return there before the 5th as there was just so much (more) to get.

I passed out.

~ Hef

The Return of Hef - II

Called this post 'The Return of Hef - II', because wasn't sure whether I had already made my return in an earlier blogpost. With the advent of Twitter, I have realized a couple of things:

a) Writing long blog posts is not for me. In other words, it is not in vogue any more. 140 characters seems good enough for me to express my opinion, chide someone, criticize/praise a product/thought/person, etc. However, given the same limit, sometimes my views don't come out in their entirety and intent. Hence, my return to blogging. It remains to be seen though, whether this will continue for long and for how long.

b) Just like writing long posts became a difficult issue to deal with, reading long posts was even worse. Once again, with the advent of the 140-character wonder, the fact is that in those 140 characters, the point is made, conveyed, and bares itself to the reader in its full glory. Interpretation depends on the intelligence of the reader though.

Although the concept of limited character space has caught on fabulously, I feel that one's complete viewpoint on different things can only be expressed in space that is determined by oneself. Hence, this blog post.

I shall try and frequent this space more often, albeit on random topics and shorter ones at that too, but I can say this for sure - this is definitely the Return of Hef - I, II, or otherwise.

More soon.

~ H

From the archives - Time

Since I was recently harping about how it is time to get out of 'The Comfort Zone', this is an old post that I thought I would cross-post here.  There's no connection, but just felt how much we talk about having 'no time' to do anything.

TIME

Of the three types of input that every activity needs, material goods, skills, and time, I've come to feel that perhaps the least understood is time. In conventional economics, it is treated as a commodity to be bought and sold at will, and therefore needing no special consideration. Yet experience suggests that the economics of time is not quite so simple.

We need time to work, to eat, to sleep, and to accomplish all the daily chores of living. We also need time to know and understand our partner, our children, and our friends. Most of our relationships, in fact, require more time than we have, and it is difficult to avoid the feeling that we could never have enough. Nor is our list of demands on our time complete. We have ignored the time we need to be alone, a necessary but invariably short- changed period.

I know many people, myself included, who often feel "time poor" and who bemoan this limitation. Perhaps this attitude is a great mistake. Perhaps if we were to embrace the limitations of time, to celebrate them and explore their implications, we would find that they hold an essential key to the fundamental attitudes and experiences we will need in a humane sustainable culture.

The Guns of Gurgaon

I don't even want to utter a word...

A direct post from the indiatimes website.

Managing Gurgaon traffic at gun point

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Managing-Gurgaon-traffic-at-gun-point/articleshow/4866579.cms

7 Aug 2009, 1215 hrs IST, Ranjan Roy, TNN

GURGAON: I invariably approach the Delhi-Gurgaon toll gate on the expressway prepared for the worst. But I wasn't quite ready for what I saw on
Gun on Gurgaon streets "I wasn't quite ready for what I saw on Wednesday night," says Roy.

As I navigated my car towards one of the tag-users lane, trying to avoid trucks and cabs muscling in from all angles and squeeze through thin spaces between the multiple lines, I was cut off by a light commercial vehicle that barrelled down from the right.

The LCV nudged me out a bit but I stood my ground. It then moved forward and tried to growl its way in. I rolled down my window to give the driver a piece of my mind. The driver of the car in front of me, who was seated at the back while his owner drove, got off and tried to reason with the trucker to back off. But the truck driver
wasn't listening.

That's when I saw the artillery come out. A young man, wearing jeans and tee, leapt out of the driver's seat and rushed to the truck. He whipped out a revolver and held it against the LCV driver's neck and asked him for his licence. The ashen-faced driver, his bravado now drained by the black barrel pressed to his adam's apple, meekly complied.

I almost cheered! If this wasn't a dangerous act of vigilantism, the young man could deserve a medal for bringing some order to the toll gate chaos. With traffic billowing around the chicken necks that the tag lanes have turned into, I regularly see tempers fray and people routinely roll down their windows and curse and even get off and thump bonnets of cars that try to nose in from the sides into the lanes. But guns being pulled out was a new one.

As I watched the young man hold the LCV driver at bay, some other cars and cabs tried to sneak into the lane and blocked his car again. Having crossed the LCV, the gunman now strode ahead to take on smaller prey. Brandishing what looked like a heavy-calibre revolver, the kind cops are armed with, the man yanked out the ignition key from one car and threatened a few others that were seeking to muscle in.

``Goli marega kya?'' shouted a cabbie. The young man hissed something - possibly, ``Don't tempt your luck.'' A middle age man had come out of his car to say something to the young man. His family was screaming inside, trying to tell him not to provoke the man with a gun.

By this time his car had crawled to the barrier. The young man tucked in his revolver back into his jeans and drove off, fading into the traffic.

The Comfort Zone

Sitting in one of the plush malls in Gurgaon, I was having a discussion with my wife about life in general. It is then that it became increasingly clear to me that I had become like the others...something that I had promised to myself years ago that I would not become.

The Comfort Zone as I refer to it, is the typical situation in which a working individual finds himself in. Resigned to the fact that the rest of his life is going to shuttle between his workplace and his home. The same dreary routine of waking up in the morning, rushing to work, rushing back, having dinner, and falling asleep for the major portion of his life. It's getting into this comfort zone that I have always been wary of and now I feel that I am getting into this position as each day passes.

I asked myself what is it that I have to look forward to in the next few years? The answer was not very difficult to come up with if I were to look at things from a normal human's standpoint: I now have a home loan, the liability of which forces me to work days on end, tirelessly. I will soon have commitments towards my family, which again I have to work the same way years on end, tirelessly. Life becomes similar to a million other lives in the past and possibly a billion other lives in the future.

Is this what I thought life would be? Away from friends, family, loved ones? Not being able to find joy in the smallest of things? Am I in a place where I don't want to be only because of money? Doesn't that make the meaning of life so trivial?

Well it's true that the power to change one's life lies in one's own hands and my life is not an exception to that rule. However, the willingness to do that rests on more than just one's whims and fancies. There's an inherent amount of risk that one has to take and each person's situation to take on that risk varies. My ability to take on that risk, for the sake of my family, is extremely limited.

My wife asked me, "What do you want to do, what do you want to be"? My answer, which I felt was too dreamy and non-consequential was "I want to be famous. I want to be different. I don't want to be in a situation where I get uncomfortably comfortable with life the way it is right now. I want to do something that I enjoy, that I find pleasure in. If asked what do I see myself doing 3 years from today, I can only say that I will be sitting behind some desk doing pretty much the same stuff that I am doing now. Sure, there will be salary hikes and I will still have my job till the age of 60 or thereabouts, which is precisely what I mean by being uncomfortably comfortable."

Of course, there might be unforseen situations that might make things uncomfortable, but my classification of feeling comfortable is different. It doesn't revolve around my being handicapped and unable to do anything as being classified as uncomfortable, but moreso challenging myself to do new things, following a passion and living life on my terms.

It's time to move on. It's time to take matters into one's own hands. It's time.

Selfless promotion of the only group I belong to on Facebook!

Readers,

This post is nothing but a promotion of a group that I belong to on Facebook - "We Hate Gurgaon". If you know me, interact with me, follow me on Twitter, or even remotely know who I am, this group will come as no surprise to you. Gurgaon - a village of which the lesser said, the better. Am not going to go on a rant right here - for that, there's Twitter and of course this group.

I moved to this village in NCR (National Cattle Region) about 32 months ago and have hated it with a vengeance with each passing day. In fact, what this place has done has further led me to hate all of the North, including Delhi, Punjab, and whatever else is north of Kolkata.

This group was started by a friend of mine (Arjun Kolady) and myself. I hold the title of "Chief Subversion Officer". While my friend was lucky enough to move to Bangalore 12 months from moving to Gurgaon and starting this group, I have been rotting here since December, 2006 and judging by the way things are moving in my life, am stuck here for some more time, unless an act of God or a benevolent miracle rescues me from my grief.

If you have been to this place or if you have any intentions of visiting, please do go through the content listed on this group and you will definitely understand that the so-called "Millennium City" is nothing short of a shoddy, ill-planned, ill-constructed, zero-infrastructure, zero-transport, green-less wonder of the 21st century.

Come one, come all - to the group...not to Gurgaon.

~ Hef