Don't let your child waste summer vacation!!

Just how annoying a summer camp advertisement can get! As a parent I keep getting this advertisement all the time. All kinds of camps are present to cater to all kinds of parents. Focused summer camps to teach children specific things right from acting, dance, sports till robotics. Generic camps to have kids spend time on crafty things. The advertisements are all over, newspapers, special fliers, Facebook, school circulars, whatsapp, in conversations with other parents. All it does is at least gets me ponder over if my kids are wasting their summer vacation...



I do not remember my parents worrying about summer camps. It was not fashionable then. My brother and I would go to our grand parents place in summers. We would have a gala time playing a lot of games with our society friends all day and night.

But it was different for me. I was worried about whether my kids may waste their summer vacation doing nothing. There was a time when my son was pretty young and started going to play group. That summer was the first time I had sent him for a summer camp for 15 days, 2 hours each day. I did that for some more years including sending my daughter as well there. The idea was exactly this, what are they going to do at home anyways, how can I keep them engaged most of the times in some or the other activities. Whether my child will be left behind if other kids are learning something new during summers. How much learning comes out of that, and whether the kids really wanted to go or not was not thought about.



After a while I started thinking about whether as a parent I have become obsessed with what my child does all the time and whether the time spent is a quality time or not. I also read about empty mind and free time for kids. As they started growing in their school activities during the academic year I felt that they probably need time that's not planned by us for something, something they can plan for themselves.

This summer was a lot of fun for them and for me. My kids did 10 hours of craft club, 3.5 days of TCS Maitree Summer smiles, and the rest of the time was spent on meeting relatives, having a great time with cousins and friends. Most of the time they were not at home, either at their grand parents' or at our native place or visiting different places they always wanted to or playing downstairs with their friends. I am really hoping that they learnt some social skills by doing it I e how to deal with people, how to have an empty mind,decide what to do for themselves.



I think I am coming to terms to come out of the compulsive need to manage my kids' time "more effectively and more quality'. I know I can do better than this. I am just hoping that kids could de-stress and enjoy themselves. -and are feeling fresh to start school again!

Empathy, apathy, and being human

Empathy - Empathy is the capacity to understand what another person is experiencing from within the other person's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's shoes.

Apathy (also called perfunctoriness) is a lack of feeling, emotion, interest, and concern. Apathy is a state of indifference, or the suppression of emotions such as concern, excitement, motivation, and/or passion. An apathetic individual has an absence of interest in or concern about emotional, social, spiritual, philosophical and/or physical life and the world.

Thinking of 2 deaths that we read about this week one showing empathy and other apathy

Everyone knows about Aruna's case. The empathy and kindness she received from the KEM nurses after she suffered from the brutal horrifying crime is truly commendable. It was an absolutely noble display of empathy towards other human being.

Just then read about sad death of a fellow colleague of mine. This young lady of 22 years who just joined our organization got hit while crossing the road at night. It was a busy western express highway at 8:00 pm, not an isolated deserted place. The driver who had hit her placed her on footpath, left at someone else's mercy while she was bleeding.  All she got was apathy from people passing by. No one thought of stopping and helping her. After 20 mins or so someone just called police and ran away, by the time police came and took her to the hospital, it was too late, the young energetic lady had left this world!

All this happened when the organization completed one year of its safety initiative. Of course we need to keep safety in mind all the time or rather make it a habit. It's always convenient for all of us to blame the victim, the lady should not have slept in the Uber cab, or the last should not have crossed the highway like that. But in our busy life we do not wish to be little more empathetic towards other human beings and help them! All we think of is the inconvenience it may bring to us if we get involved in the police case, we wish to stay away from all that, be in our comfortable routine. The news hurt even more after recent verdict of hit and run case for Salman.

A little empathy could have saved her, probably even a fraction of what the nurses showered on Aruna. Just wondering when we can start becoming a little more human. May the innocent souls rest in peace.

Excellence, creative dissatisfaction and parenting

Scene 1: I am at a conference with theme of "excellence 101" and the panel discussion starts. One of the senior executive states to him excellence means creative dissatisfaction. He goes on to talk about how Indian parents specially in urban areas are obsessed about their child scoring full marks in maths! He says the urge for excellence probably starts there.


Scene 2: I am going by auto to my kids' school to collect their final result. The auto driver sees other autos with school kids, he asks me if the school is still open. I tell him it's the 'result day' and he has an advice for me. "Whatever is the result, please do not scold your kids. Now-a-days even good students fail!!." I actually did not say anything negative to my kids after the results. I think I will remember this auto guy for a long time!

Scene 3: I am watching a TV serial based on real events that shows how parental pressure on a child participating in a reality dance show led to her nervous breakdown. It also advised parents not to thrust their dreams or ambitions on their kids.

Now questions in mind relating all of these events and many more together. All of us mothers and fathers n uncles n aunts and grandparents take pride in bragging about our kids being all-rounders, isn't it? How much should we push our children into excelling in everything.

I have read about Chinese parenting concept of tiger mothers who believe in being less appreciative, but more vigilant about what their child does at every step, and pushing them to do better (including rewriting funeral speeches till perfection).



I have read about more liberal western culture where children get ample choices right from early childhood, more focus is making them independent, letting them choose what they wish to do and so on.

And I have heard Indian parenting being called as helicopter parenting. We are hovering over our children all the time :)



This is what I think as of now, there is no right way, no single method of parenting that's the best. Because after all it's about dealing with human beings. Known for our unpredictable behavior, unique thinking powers !

The only thing we can pursue with our kids is probably that they aspire to become good human beings when they grow up, thinking of doing things better today than yesterday. That's what will probably bring that urge to excel some day?

My life, my choice... My thoughts

So after the video that Vogue released starring Deepika, and all good and bad comments about which choices should we really exercise et all, I thought of penning down something about choices.

While what Deepika (or anyone else for that matter) wants to choose in their personal life is a matter of their own lives, whether we feel it is right ot wrong about those choices, the fact remains that everyone has a choice in their lives.

Life is all about choices, choice to choose what we want to do every next moment. Some choices we make turn out to be wonderful, some turn out to be wrong. But we all learn from our experiences, and get ready to make our next choice. When it comes to individual's empowerment, among other things I feel its surely related to being able to make choices of their lives. I have been very lucky to be raised in an empowered environment where I was able to make choice about my education, my career and a lot of other things. Most of those have been right and helped me so far.

Some time back when I did my Seven habit's course from Stefen Covey's institute, I guess it was emphasized that Life is really like a multiple choice question at any point of time. We almost always have a choice. When one feels that there is no choice, that's definitely a feeling of being helpless, less empowered.

Here is a quote from my '7 habits' course by Steven covey, that has stuck with me for years

"The key to being proactive is remembering that between stimulus and response there is a space. That space represents our choice— how we will choose to respond to any given situation, person, thought or event. Imagine a pause button between stimulus and response—a button you can engage to pause and think about what is the principle-based response to your given situation. Listen to what your conscience tells you. Listen for what is wise and the principle-based thing to do, and then act."

Many a times we all go in for an easy choice, route of least efforts, blaming someone else for not leaving us with no choice. That feeling of being a victim is the easiest of the choices, however those are the most harmful for our lives. Even when those are not particularly harmful, those do us no good as well. Remember the 80-20 story or how 80% of our everyday life is affected by the choices made 20% of the time. We always have a choice to respond in a constructive manner vs react to unpleasant circumstances.

All successful and great people we see in the world, have made the hard choices. Choice to make a difference. Malala could have chosen to be silent and suffer like other suppressed girls around her, but she chose to stand for what she believed.
Life is all about choices, wrong choices, right choices, but those are always there. The more empowerment you have, more choices it brings. And more choices make you feel more empowered.

The women's empowerment program at waze (http://www.wow-tcs-maitree.org/) I am associated with offers a choice to the rural ladies to work and earn with dignity, supporting their families. This surely empowers them as you can tell from their smiles.

Before I close on the blog about choices, here is an awesome story that reminds you how one has a choice to soar like an eagle and make a difference vs quacking like a duck.
https://deepsm25.wordpress.com/2008/07/26/ducks-quack-eagles-soar/

Why Blog? My take on it

Its been a while that we have all been hearing that one should blog, express his/her personal opinions, views or thoughts in a public forum. Specially for people from open source or agile community, there is a lot of credibility that gets built around one through his/her blogs. I personally follow many blogs that get me thinking, Seth Godin's blog is one of those.

I took up blogging as my new year resolution of 2015 @ http://yashasree.blogspot.com. It's a personal blog, and I blog about everyday things in life. I have set myself a target of one blog per week i.e. to cross at least 50 blogs this year. This means that my Facebook friends would get at least those many notifications everyone I blog :)) as I shamelessly promote my blog on Facebook n twitter. It's going good so far, and I am loving it.

Here is my take on the benefits I reap out of it:

• It helps to put my thoughts together on a certain topic together when I write about it
• It's working like a diary for myself which would be a great thing to look at later point in time
• It defines my thinking, what's on my mind, so people close to me know me better
• It also gives me an online identity which is a must in today's world
• I get an opportunity to clear my thinking on certain topics important to me in my life
• It provides me another reason to re-look at various things in life
• It's an open platform, so I don't need many rounds of external reviews to publish the same
• I can flaunt it to my kids and suggest them to write
• It opens new topics to discuss when I meet people
• I get a satisfaction of creating something original when we are all in the business of forwarding what's app messages to everyone
  
  I still need to work on improving the search ability, attracting audience apart from my friends and relatives, but I hope I will get there some day.
  
  My secret ambition is to author a weekly column for a newspaper some day in my life, hope this blogging helps me get there :)
  
  All in all it has been a happy and rewarding experience for me, looking forward to continue...

What's BMC digging for!

Scene 1 - I have left for airport early morning at 4:45 am, my car comes out of the lane and the exit is closed with yellow barricades, signs of men at work. The driver and I request the workers to make space for us to go through, they oblige

Scene 2 - I come home pretty late, ~11:45 pm in an auto, the whole road leading to my lane is now closed n getting dug up. Again after persuading, they make space for me to return home.

So many years in Mumbai, literally having spent quarter of my life time on road ( or railways) I have never understood how they manage to keep digging the roads all the time. 



One of my favorite advertisements when DNA newspaper was launched was this.

What is BMC digging for?
A) Coal B) Gold C) Oil D) It's a top secret

I fell in love with this advertisement and subscribed to the newspaper, reading it for 9 years now!

I think every Mumbaikar will relate to this question. The road near to my house has been dug umpteen number of times, telephone cables, electric work, water pipes, drainage, what and what not. It was first made as a tar road, then dug out completely to use paver blocks, now it's been remade into tar road again. I am sure roads serve as a means of livelihood for so many of them, the workers, contractors, and for sure corporators.



Things have been much better in recent years though, the tar road just outside my house has provided a great opportunity to all kids to learn bicycle, all vehicles to get a great parking space, all young adults to do bike racing late night.

Now till the time this main road gets tarred, we all along with shop keepers will learn to use our scarves or masks to avoid the dust, slow down while walking to ensure the piles n heaps of stones don't trick us down and hope that the road gets done soon.

We all carry on our lives as MMRDA reminds us to "Bear with us for a better tomorrow"!!

Oh Dear National Park, A poem for you

I have been a regular morning walker at the National Park, but missed going there for last few weeks. The other day I went to National Park after a long time, I realized how much I really missed it. 



Here is a poem that I wrote for my dear national park, hope you enjoy :)

Oh National Park, I walk in and realize
How much of you did I miss

The birds chirping sweetly, a music to please
The rustic air, that's  clearly a bliss

The Hot summer and the bright flame flowers
the fragrant air that the flowers kiss



Streams without water and Trees without leaves 
The hilltop and the sunrise, with the view one sees

Summer, rainy, or winter; Shine, color or foggy
Makeover of each season, Is what really appeals


I

Is this really Mumbai? The city that never sleeps
This golden silence, This breathtaking peace!



It surely has it's own charm, it's rustic beauties
Loved by me for this same wilderness, that it is...