Nazar Proofing

If you have delivered your baby in India, chances are that you have been through the 40 days of confinement period. The tradition arose from the need to protect both mum and baby from infection and help the mother recover from the exhaustion of child birth. One of the many restrictions is that the mum and baby can’t go out of the house. Though I was not having post-partum depression, there were blues nonetheless. I was tired and frustrated sitting at home with my days (and nights) doing nothing but managing or thinking about Angel’s feed, burp, massage, bath, pee and poop. Thankfully, my MIL noticed and understood this. She is one of the rare kind in the previous generation who doesn’t believe that traditions come before individuals and thus we went for a short drive along with Angel even though the 40 days were not over yet. I came back refreshed and definitely feeling better however Angel cried a lot and we were not able to comfort her. After trying everything, MIL suggested to utaaro her nazar (warding off the evil eye) and she did that. And guess what, Angel still continued to cry! She was a colic baby and not knowing any other way to express herself at that age she used to cry. We later sat and discussed that if she has a problem she will cry whether or not she has been out or seen by anyone.

That day I decided that I will never do this ritual again for my daughter! I have heard phrases like “nazar lag gai” or “nazar utaro iski” n number of times from well-wishers, friends and even my mother but I have stood my ground. I have convinced some of my friends to let go of this practice while some of my friends think that this definitley help their children. I most certainly want them to discard it but I don’t judge them as there is nothing call “bad parenting”. All parents want the best for their children and they do certain things as they believe that is the best for their child.

Now I have utmost respect for our ancestors and genuinely believe that they were way more knowledgeable than we give them credit for. Take for example our age old home remedies, they are much better than any medicines and antibiotics. Whatever rules they had, made great sense at their time, like not cutting the nails in dark. At that time there was no electricity and it made sense to not cut the nails in dark lest they find their way in food, however it doesn’t hold water now when we can see clearly during the night time as well. Similarly, this confinement practice must have been made to ensure that the mother is well rested and gets enough bonding time with the baby.

However, our generation has to take some initiative to stop the age old rituals if it doesn’t agree with that little thing called “logic” and make sure that we don’t pass them on to our future generations and instead take care of their health and immunity, help them learn the life skills and make them independent and confident!

Tid-Bits

**Me and Angel are suffering from cold since quite some days now. Mine is better though, for Angel its fluctuating. She feels better, then the temprature drops and the phlegm increases or she might be catching it from her day care. The doctor says, it's bound to happen as it's our first winter here and we will be better next year onwards. I hope so.

 

** Here there is a government rule that unless the temperature is not below -15 degrees Celsius, they have to take the children outdoor and so she goes outdoor twice, for an hour each. Apparently, it helps in building the immunity. I am skeptical of this rule!

 

**The doctors don’t prefer to give any medicines, not even cough syrups as according to them, it has a lot of side effects. In India, we survive on cough syrups! Not sure about the side effects, it does give a psychological effect that I will feel better as I had the medicine. They give antibiotics here if the situation is too bad. Nothing otherwise. In a way, its good, the body will produce antibodies to fight the infection.

**We are trying ice-skating on weekends and are getting better each week.

That’s our skating rink, and no, we are not there

 

**The lowest temperature we have experienced here is -16 and the feels like temperature was -26 degrees Celsius. There is a forecast of -22 degrees for the coming Saturday *Shudder*

**I like the snow, while it’s snowing. It's beautiful. Angel says its crunchy. Later it turns into hard and slippery ice which melts gradually, making everything wet which I dislike.

**I like the ecosystem they have created to tackle and face the adverse weather. Every building, car, bus, train, train station, bus station is insulated. You get some amazing winter gear which makes you feel heavy but warm, so the life goes on, no matter what the temperature is.

 

 

**I am desperately waiting for summers now, tired of winter and flu already.

**While they say that this year the winter is very mild and they don’t get to see the brown patches on the earth and this year it has hardly snowed. I hope the delay of snow doesn’t delay the onset of summer.

**We visited the Gurudwara and missed the langar as we somehow reached the hall which was serving the snacks and sweets first and thought this was it and ate it. Later saw the hall which was serving the actual langar and we were full. Got a reason to visit again!

 

 

 

Not great clicks, as it was raining

 

 

**We visited the Swaminarayan Temple here. The temple is beautiful, I was disappointed that it doesn’t have the food court like we have in Gandhinagar. Acharya Khichdi was sorely missed! No pictures of the temple on my phone, as you might have guessed, I am in office.

 

**I finally met my friend from college, K who had a baby boy last month. He is adorable and Angel was fascinated with him. She has not seen any baby that small in recent times and has no memory of seeing one when she was young. It felt good to meet K and her family.


** We also tried a Gujarati Thali restaurant suggested by K and found it amazing. We are not foodies as such, however we do like to try new stuff (and revisit the old stuff) once in a while and that once in a while happens when I am too tired of cooking and just cannot cook anymore.

** We found a Patanjali store here. People who know me will know that I am a huge fan of Patanjali products. We don't get everything here we get in India and its expensive too, however something is better than nothing!

**  I took Angel to Ripley’s Aquarium when J* was working. She was spell bound with the upside down jelly fishes and stingray fishes amongst the other water bodies.

Stingray Fishes

The Sharks & Stingrays Co-Existed

                                                                      

Up and Close with Jelly Fishes

 

Upside Down Jelly Fishes

 

Clown Fish a.k.a. Nemo

 

 

**This was the fun part we did in last couple of months. Having said and done that, life here is exhausting. Everything is to be done ourselves. The weekend is gone in a split second doing laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping and Angel’s ballet and swimming lessons which she started going to recently.

 

**There are no maids and as I have said before, I now appreciate them and their work much more. After the whole day in office/day care and the commute, going back and cooking (me), doing the dishes (J*) and doing n other things (us) is back breaking.
 

**I don’t know how to end this post, so I will leave it at this and go back to my work.

 

**Edited to Add (ETA) - The said weekend had a temprature of -27 and the feels like temprature was -39 degree, thus making it the coldest day of my life!

 

This was not taken on the said day, I just like this picture with the glint of sunshine

Just Read

Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein

                                                       

                                                      

I recently discovered that out awesome library lets us borrow the e-books as well. Though I am not a very big fan of e-books, they certainly help me overcome the occasional boredom in office. So I read this book over a number of days in my office time as and when time permitted (Hushhh...)

Here the author goes out to describe in great detail about what is wrong with the “Pink” obsession and the “Princess” culture amongst the little girls. She has given some great fact and figures about the amount of money the companies make riding on this bandwagon alone. She has touched some other topics like child beauty pageants, Miley Cyrus, toy fairs and the like. She has also mentioned her own experiences with her daughter Daisy and her friends. I didn’t even know half of the brands and characters she has listed and Google-ed them along the way. To be fair, most of my current knowledge on children’s things like cartoon characters, songs, rhymes and stories is also because of Angel. We read the story book of ‘Frozen’ and since Angel liked the story, we subsequently watched the movie because she had a lot of Frozen merchandise and we didn’t know the names of the characters. I digressed. In short, the book deals with all the issues that I have been fuming over ever since Angel was born – like early sexualization of girls, the suggestive moves and lyrics in the item songs on which the children can be seen dancing on the reality shows, the way too pink, cute but uncomfortable tutus, the separate aisles for girls and boys in the toy shops.  It showed me that the situation is worse than I anticipated. It even scared me. Does it give me any answers – No, but it does make me more aware about the whole scenario.
I would recommend it to all the parents of little girls.
 

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

 

It is a book for children and I tried it because I had heard so much about it.

This “novel in cartoons” is about a clueless middle schooler Gregory or Greg Heffley. It narrates the life of Greg from the beginning of the school term to the end of it in a diary or journal as he would like to call it, with sketches on every page. Greg is a not so popular kid who tries to create a better image of himself by being a school treasurer, cartoonist for the school paper, safety patrol member and a class clown for the year book. There were times when I cracked up, however there were other times when Greg was mean and dishonest like when he let his best friend Rowley take the blame of terrorizing the young children while in fact he had done it. Rowley again fell into his category of popularity. They got along quite well and he is always willing to do what Greg told him to. Gradually, Rowley’s stars begin to shine and their dynamics of friendship change. Other minor characters include Greg’s older brother Rodrick who never missed any opportunity to tease and make fun of Greg, his younger brother Manny who got away with anything he did and Greg’s parents.

It’s interesting how Rowley’s father reads about the violence content in each video game before letting him play it and how Greg’s mother is trying hard to raise her sons to grow up to be respectable adults.

It’s a fun book. Having said that, I don’t see myself reading any more books in the series (unless Angel pressurizes me to, that will still take some time though).

Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon

                                

I loved the writing style of the author. Its very different. The author has used a bunch of formats to tell her story including Google searches, Facebook entries, Facebook chats, texts, e-mails, Twitter and questionnaire)

This is the story of Alice Buckle who is forty four years old and probably going through the mid-life crisis with the big five-oh looming. She is a drama teacher in Kentwood Elementary School and she is not permanent there. Apparently, she has a loving family with a husband (William Buckle) and two children (Zoe who is 15 and Peter is 12), but she feels that she and her husband are growing apart. On the top of it, William loses his high paying advertising job owing to recession or his inability to keep his mouth shut. Alice suspects that her daughter has an eating disorder and Peter is gay. She then participated in and anonymous online survey about marriages called "Marriage in the 21st Cenury" which turned her life upside down.  In the survey, her psuedonymn is Wife 22 to protect identities which thus forms the title of the book. She is assigned a caseworker - Researcher 101, the questionnaire and their conversations form the essence of this book.  She also has a bunch of loving friends Nedra Rao and Kate who are a lesbian couple, Bunny who was her colleague during her initial stint at playwriting and her daughter Caroline who came to live with the family when she moved to their city in search of a job and was phenomenal in making her run again and in rekindling her friendship with Bunny with whom she had lost touch when life happened.

How her life took a 360 degree turn and whether it came back on track? To find out, read this wonderful book.

All the Images Courtesy – Google Images