Lesson on love from a five year old (you-know-who).

J surprises me. Oh well, what's new. His latest comments, delivered with all the wisdom a five year can muster.
We were talking about friends and he says "How can my buddy Josh know that I love cars?"
"Because you're friends and friends know what their friends like and dislike."
"But how?"
"Because you love each other and you know each other."
Now this friend is so dear to J that the other day he came home, dropped his backpack and announced that he need to make a note for Josh.I handed him the paper and pencil and he wrote "Dear Josh, I am your best friend. I love you. By J."
I thought it was cute that he should say "I am your best friend" instead of "You are my best friend." An assumption that only a kindergartner can make, of how important he is to another kid. Vanity, yes, but of the purest variety.
But today, he said,
"I love Josh even though he's sometimes bad to me."
"Well, friends aren't supposed to treat you badly. nobody should. and you must say so -- you don't have to play with Josh if he's being mean."
"No mom, I'm his best friend. So even if he's mean, I'm his friend. Thats the promise I made and gave him. For him to keep, always." And J went back to driving his Lego car. I was so amazed. How early in life J has understood what the act of 'loving' really entails. And even though he's so young, he recognizes it and is willing not just to love his friend, faults and all (though I intend to talk to him about not letting anyone take him for granted or be rude to him) but also to recognize that this is part of his promise. He meant it when he said, "I am your best friend." This is his gift to Josh; vanity would have been for J to appropriate Josh and say, "You are my best friend." Instead, he simply gave his promise. And the vanity I identified? Any vanity came from my personal store of it, and certainly it caused confusion. J is the one who has it figured out.

Secularism in India/Secularism in the US: worlds apart

Just wanted to put down a thought -- in my last few years in bloomington, I got to see what secularism means in this country versus India. The USA is indeed a melting pot, with all the religions thrown in with each other. But thousands of years versus a few hundred make a difference, because in India, instead of the melting pot, we have an all embracing tradition where ideas and practices, both religious and cultural, intertwine and actually produce changes in previously existing practices and beliefs. The melting pot is just everything roasting in the same pot, thrown in after crossing the checkpoints on Ellis Island. But in India, RSS and fundamentalist Islam and firebrand evangelistic Christianity apart--and all of these are more modern developments--you find Sufism, HIndus visiting the shrine of Pirs, and Christians tying the mangalsutra during wedding ceremonies. And, I think, this has lots to do with the nature of Hinduism as a religion. Unlike the Abrahamic religions, it has no conceit. Its people are neither the chosen ones, nor the ones who will receive salvation. Its followers do not feel obliged to be fruitful and multiply. For all these reasons and more that I am sure i will be able to provide, Hinduism never felt threatened by foreign religions--except under the likes of Aurangzeb--and thus allowed for coexistence. How else could India be the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism (though their main deities and gurus were all Hindus to begin with, so there are common cultural roots), but also provide sanctuary to Zoroastrians and Jews? Not to mention,Christians, who settled in Kerala long before the Catholic Church was established in Rome.

Secularism in the US means the irrelevance and removal of religion. But in India, where religion is really a way of life, secularism means the recognition of and inclusion of *all* religions. How wonderful that is. How wonderful that we Indians do not suffer from the cultural and religious anxiety that so many intelligent, educated and very likable, decent Americans I know, do. Whether I am lighting candles for Diwali or an impromptu Sabbath celebration in my non-Hindu, non-Jewish home, I know I enjoy both activities and see the beauty and meaning in each, without being threatened by performing them. This is unlike the non-Christian American folk I know who worry about sending their kids on an Easter Egg hunt. Or my non-Hindu Indian acquaintances who will not eat Prasad at their Hindu friends' homes. Why? What are you scared of? For the-name-your-own-God's sake, relax.

I had an epiphany today, of sorts. A spiritual experience that is truly satisfying is always an unconscious goal. I go to church, dabble in all sorts of religious thought, and have occasionally visited the empty chapel hoping that away from the noise and ritual of regular services, i might find something. this has worked, but very rarely. But today during yoga, i realized, as I struck a pose (we go through them all, crane, crow, dog, cow etc.), that yoga, with a good instructor, is a spiritual experience. Almost more than a physical experience. I was an archer, and the instructor talked about visualizing the melting away of obstacles, the realization of one's goal for the day, all while moving into different poses within the archer--stringing the bow, taking aim. It was so healing. And far more spiritually fulfilling than any recent church visit. Engaging the physical body is so crucial to disengaging the mind from its usual preoccupations. that's what 'flow' is, and, generalizing a bit, that is what happens when one is absorbed in one's work. Everything else fades. I think i got a peep through the keyhole today, into what it might be like to truly experience and know yoga. Yoga can open and expand the mind, by focussing the body. How fabulous!

Nirali at 2 and 4 months : she tells me at night, there are your "houljers". i say, "what?"
"your houljers".
"where are your houljers?"
she places her fingers on her shoulders.
I begin to laugh.
"why are you laughing, amma?" with the seriousness of an 8 year old examining a little animal.
on another occasion, she holds a little hotel shampoo travel pack. its her cell phone.
"amma, do you want happy baby face, sad baby face, or jongers or bongers?"
"i want jongers"
"ok, " she taps the shampoo bottle. "Click, click, checking...okay amma, here are jongers."
upon which jayanth comes up and says, " i dont want jongers, give me an e-card."

technology -- it insinuated its way into these kids' brains. its far more pervasive than i imagined!

hope obama is safe during his mid east trip. god bless him. we need him if not for anything else as a symbol of the thinking, global citizen he is...he looks like ALL of us. now aint that great, for one.

wish the middle east characters would work out their situation once and for all. isnt everyone sick of this? yes to a two state solution. stop settlements. and ahmadijenad, stop touting nonsense about the holocaust. stop spewing your hate, Hamas. open your eyes world, Israel open your eyes. is everyone burying their heads in the desert sand?
to all -- so what if you all have gods. i like mine with a pinch of salt. does'nt everything taste better that way? try yours like that for a change.

slumdog kids - so their houses werent demolished. seeing photos of those children who got a taste of glory at the oscars, now lying sprawled in makeshift beds in their tenements...how do they deal with it? will they grow up hating the people who showed them what life could be, but is not? may they never hate themselves. may life be kind to them again. who am i wishing this for? after all, even god comes salty, not sweet. a school for slum kids. could i go back and do that? someone must have tried, surely. i am a fake. sitting here and typing but doing nothing.

goodbye gan shalom, hello Summer Camp i dont like you.

jayanth graduated. for two weeks i would tear up in front of my computer screen thinking of how he was finally leaving his baby years behind. its a big day, a huge leap. the wide world beckons and i am not ready to let go. and all he's doing is joining kindergarten. i will never forget the sight of him sitting on the stage in the beth shalom temple sanctuary on a little chair with a balloon tied to it. and his dear dear teacher Regina's face flooding with emotion as each little 5 year old walked up to her and quietly handed her a bright, blooming peony and whispered "thank you".

basketball camp at the Y is truly daunting for J. "the ball keeps running away from me," he sobbed as he clung to me, arms wrapped tight around my hips, his little black head pressed into my body. Losing...not being as good as another...these are things jayanth cannot stand. he is acutely sensitive to any such indication and being of non athletic, average-build stock, the odds are not in his favor. but -- even kindergarten has not begun...life perches before him like a pliant flower, waiting for him to unfold its petals, one by one, and breathe the fragrance within. we all must envy our children their childhood, and they will surely envy their own children. Toward us, they will have pity or sympathy...reminders of what lies ahead and how much more beautiful and thrilling that must be than us, and all the other things they must one day leave behind. but, for now, i have my children to watch and learn and love -- and, going by their behaviour ('spirited' is a mild word) at home-- be thoroughly infuriated by!
when he is not in time out or being yelled at by me, he says i love you a hundred times, reminding me of how i don't say it enough. drinking milk the other day he said -- "this milk tastes beautiful, just like my amma. i give you my love amma." my mom says hes going to have lots of girlfriends. i think that is true, if not anything else, he knows to turn on the charm. his first real female friend is our little neighbor Mitzi. J's favorite things to do with her are (i) dance with the volume turned all the way up, to Alvin and the Chipmunks!
(ii) pretend to fall down and bang his head or some other body part while she watches and laughs. Hes a clown! he loves making his classmates laugh too. he heckled me when i read a story to his class. hes going to be standing outside the classroom when he does the same to Mr. or Mrs.Whoever

and his sister?....her update is coming soon! she's a bubbling little spring with the sweetest voice and skyrocketing vocab. all still in baby language - she might as well be speaking English, she sounds so believable. and when she roars, or lunges forward to scratch or bite or head-bang, shes a bear. (cue...the nuns and maria in "she 's an angel, she's a demon, she's a girl!!!" (or something like that).

my latest article - a short travel piece on harvard square

http://www.hindu.com/mp/2009/02/16/stories/2009021650210500.htm

The city of Boston, unlike most American cities, is visibly historic. The North End teems with Italian restaurants and little red brick houses stacked against each other like squatters on either side of narrow roads. The row houses on Commonwealth Av enue bring to mind the gilded age and old family money.

Throw in Boston’s various landmarks as the centre of the American struggle for independence and a hurried tourist could very well overlook its little twin — the city of Cambridge — were it not for the college it houses: Harvard.

The first time I rode the subway system that connects Boston, it was by chance that I got off at Harvard Square. The station is situated in a circle of sorts, right in the middle of the square with Harvard College behind it, the Harvard Coop in front, and streets and shops shooting off from the remaining corners.

I returned to it after three years and remembered how the busy criss-crossing streets, plied by buses and cars and SUVs, seem to bear a historical grudge against motorised transport.

The cars that ply Harvard Square appear to be squeezing themselves between its only rightful occupants — the pedestrians.

A 10-minute walk from the station’s brick landing is the home of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was here that George Washington took command of the army during the American Revolution.

The square’s unassuming 300-year-old Christ Church has bullet holes in it (safely, respectfully preserved), bringing to the fore the comparison that our old forts have too many bullet holes to preserve; the American independence struggle was a blink compared to ours. But above this short story of rebellion towers Harvard and it’s many offshoots in the Square.

One is The Grolier Poetry Book Shop, which, since 1927 has been frequented by the likes of T.S Eliot and Conrad Aiken. You can linger, if only to re-imagine what might have passed here between the greatest American poets of the twentieth century: which collection did Elizabeth Bishop pick up and where did e.e.cummings hang his art.

The Harvard Coop — short for cooperative — was formed, like most Harvard related groups, more than a 100 years ago in 1882 by students needing a place to buy books, wood and fuel for hearth fires. Today, its heavy, old wooden doors swing the visitor into an American college book and apparel store like any other.

Here, I met with a group of poets that gathered on Sundays at The Coop under the guidance of an old gentleman with a long beard and long coat who appeared to have modelled himself upon Boston’s grand old men of American letters.

Poetry, however, is not all that grows around Harvard. Punks and Goths in Mohawks, black attire and belly-piercings love the square too. A group of them once accompanied our every poem recitation with a squeeze of the Fart Cushion, an aptly named piece that emits the sound each time you sit on it.

Across the street from the Coop, bound in the curving belt of Massachusetts Avenue, is Harvard yard. Rising above it is the blue and white bell tower of Lowell Hall, former home of the Danilov bells.

They were purchased and brought to Harvard to save them from the Stalinists in 1929 and returned in 2008 to their home in the Danilov monastery in Russia.

Harvard college itself was established in 1636, only 16 years after the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth; it was named after a young minister named John Harvard who bequeathed half his estate and library to the fledgling college.

Entering Harvard yard through the tall wrought iron gates, one is immediately taken by the simple red brick buildings, the college’s deep democratic convictions that play out in faculty and students working and living alongside; the office of the President of Harvard in Massachusetts Hall is a few floors above a freshman dormitory.

Not here the heft and eternity of Cambridge University’s tall, silent spires.

Where Cambridge’s Trinity College stands grandly against a vast, uninterrupted green, Harvard’s halls are smaller; they ‘assemble’ around a crowded yard. But here too, there are Widener Library’s marbled pillars and the ornate, cathedral-like Memorial hall where Harvard undergraduates dine in the diffuse light of stained-glass windows from Tiffany.

Though its buildings might not, nomenclature at Harvard bespeaks tradition. The school of education stands on a street named ‘The Appian Way’ and an undergraduate social club named the ‘Porcellian’ is so exclusive as to make Harvardians crave.

Even Franklin D. Roosevelt was not invited to join! But exclusivity and excellence are bylines for Harvard. The closed-door libraries and unseen celebrities remain silent; no matter, for in Harvard Square, it’s awe that talks.