I’m here after a very very long time. A lot of things have happened since the last post. We have named our baby Rajat. It means Silver in Sanskrit. Also, I have since moved to Chennai. I left Samsung after 7 years, and joined Cisco at their Set Top Box division in Chennai.
(On a tangential note: I had written a big blog about my experiences in Samsung. Unfortunately, my PC – Windows 7 – crashed, and took the C drive data with it… I was lucky to recover my E and F drives. Those contained all my photos, songs, and other very very important stuff!)
Leaving Bangalore after 7 years, that too after I bought my own apartment was a very tough decision. I doubt I would’ve changed the city had it been just any other company. But lure of Cisco was too great (So was the lure of the lucre). So now I’m in Chennai. Its April, and the summer has started in all earnest.
Ok, enough of that! I meant this post to be about parenting. If any of you are expecting any tips, then you have come to the wrong place… I still am blundering along, learning new things every day.
Rajat is close to 1 year now (will be an year old on 20th April 2011). He has started making those cute baby sounds, crawling, tearing up any paper that he can lay his tiny hands on, stuffing his mouth with everything that he should not, trying to stand up, crawling out the front door on his own, climbing upon the tables, making a mess in the house, peeing and shitting all over the place, falling down and crying and doing the same thing again! In short, he’s trying his level best to be as much trouble as Rupali and I can handle together!
Each day is an adventure for him. As much as it is for us. I feel that a baby should be allowed to explore as much as he can on his own. I let him go behind the table, near the TV, near the telephone, open the almirahs, remove various objects like boxes, containers, tubes, packets, etc… from them. For Rajat, everything is an interesting object worth scrutinizing. He observes it from the top, then bottom, in one hand and then the other, from the left, from the right, then smells it, tastes it, listens to its sound, feels its complete texture, then finally when he’s done with that, tries to eat it. If he can get some part of it in his mouth comfortably, then its his favorite object. Here is a note to baby toys manufacturers – all toys should have one part that a baby can safely stuff in his mouth and preferably that part should taste like cherries (or orange, or mango. I’m not too particular about it!) Then see that toy fly off the shelves before you can sing “Twinkle Twinkle little star”.
And now for something completely different…
I remember a fable (a Chinese one I think) I read long back, but not the entire story, just the gist:
A man was walking in a garden one day, when he came across a caterpillar cocoon. As he was watching, the cocoon started shaking. Then it broke from one end, and a butterfly started to come out. The butterfly was struggling, trying to break free from its silky prison. The man watched it struggle for a long time. Finally he took pity on the butterfly and decided to help it. He cut the cocoon so that the butterfly could come out.
The butterfly spread its wings, and started to fly. But soon, it collapsed and fell down. The wings of the butterfly weren’t strong enough for the butterfly to sustain it.
There is a reason why butterflies must struggle to come out of its cocoon. The struggle makes the wings strong, so that they can flutter tirelessly from flower to flower, collecting the nectar. In helping the butterfly and cutting the cocoon for it, the man denied that struggle to the butterfly, thus weakening its wings.
That is the rule of Nature. We all must struggle so that our wings become strong.
Rupali and I are facing the dilemma now – how much struggle is enough to make him strong.
