On World book Day, love to my awesome twosome!

Reading shapes the mind, sharpens the intellect, broadens the horizons and fires the imagination of everyone who plunges into an ocean of words and typescript...

Whether we swim, paddle or float; skim the surface or go deep-sea diving is up to us...it is, (to my mind) in every manner imaginable, an immensely rewarding experience!

As a busy mum plus night-shift worker, I get an occasional rare moment to snuggle my girls into bed and have a good read with them. On WORLD BOOK DAY, today, I reflect on the lovely books we've shared together over the years and how they've caught the bug, so to speak, from a mum who reads on her shift breaks at night, and eats her dinner with her 'current read' in front!!


Today, as Rani plays 'dress up' as a Book Character at School and Shivangi tries to write her own autobiography for her Year 3 Learning Log, I wondered what other books lie undiscovered out there, and what are the kinds of books kids this age enjoy!! Over the years since they were toddlers, we've done 'tell me a story' kind of stories; the sort of tales my grandma used to tell us at bedtime. We've shared pop-up books, second-generation books , such as When Daddy Was A Little Boy (by Alexander Ruskin, impeccably preserved by my sister, Keya didi) books by Enid Blyton, (Thirteen O'Clock tales borrowed from School), and library books by Julia Donaldson, (her Room on the Broom is a great love of ours) which they both were thrilled with!

Often on Saturdays, when "...Daddy's at work", we trot to the local library and request our favourites. Once there, I browse while they share books, jokes and giggle conspiratorially, trying to decide on the ones to take back. We pick up Harry Potter and arms-full of Julia Donaldson and its a heart-warming sight when the girls insist on putting 'their' selections in their own backpacks, carrying them home. We often manage a little tumble in the park on our route back...(all the better to tire them with, my dears..Ha!Ha!HA!!)

But, I digress...I'm try to get them something to read for the weekend and its a special feeling for me with my love of books. Having ritualised bath-time, making sure they are, finally, off to bed, we read something together; or rather, I read to them (I get them to lie down, close their eyes and imagine the story) - it helps them nod off and go drifting along to la la land!!

My Shivangi has SN which makes it hard for her to read right off the bat, but she's amazing with her memory and remembers stories word for word!!! I've read the Jungle Books and we've done the audio version for Shivangi too way back when she was four which she still loves. she's quite good at doing the different voices as Tabaqui, Akela or Baloo one moment and 'gruff and grisly' Sher-Khan the next...!

As a kid, I read (and loved) Kipling, Mark Twain and Enid Blyton...when on one hand, The Famous five made me wonder what Bacon and Ham were and on the other, Malory towers romanticised Boarding Schools for years to come! Jane Austen and Little Women (in my teenage years)..were always a biggie for me, as was Jo, one of its principal characters...

Amongst Indian and other South-east Asian writers, I like Arundhati Roy's God of small things, and Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Sunsets, and The Kite Runner..but if I have to name my all-time favourite Indian writer, it has to be Munshi Premchand, for his कफ़न, दो बैलों की कथा and ईदगाह I ...R.K Narayan with his Guide and Kalidasa, that Sanskrit poet who was masterful in his imagination...(I can still recollect my mother translating the fragile, quivering, passionately imaginative and beautiful prose for my father, from Sanskrit (the ancient text of our Hindu scriptures) that Kalidasa wrote in, to hindi or gujarati...)
The way she described the smile on Uma's (goddess Parvati, before she and Shiva were united) countenance as she beheld Lord Shiva in his samadhi or narrated the writer imploring a rain-bearing cloud to carry a message to his beloved has stayed with me....made me feel fortunate beyond description, to be her daughter....

Books always were a big part of my upbringing; memories.... of Dad reading Somerset Maugham, aloud, to mum when the rains poured down, as they nursed cups of hot, steaming chai...or my Sister, Keya didi reading एक था छोटा सिपाही to us at bedtime on a cold winter's night....abound in my psyche.
On childhood holidays in Ahmedabad, India, Pappaji's( our maternal grandfather) study would be lined with whole walls of bookshelves where, amongst the thickly bound Law Journals, one could always find The Complete Works Of Shakespeare with its spine of crimson leather etched in letters of Gold..
With the ceiling fan whirring overhead, the insides of the study cooled by heavy curtains, and the outside shaded by a long, wide verandah, I must have spent many afternoons reading those books, moving my fingers over the faintly yellowed pages... The books looked well kept, neatly stacked and dusted daily, and as I pulled one off the shelf, I asked myself if my Nanaji thought I and the others (some of us barely toddlers when he passed away) would someday read the words he wrote into the margins of books on Philosophy, poetry and World Religion.The ink, cobalt blue and bright to begin with is now almost dully faint, but the awe I feel for the man who read so widely, from the Old Testament to Homer's Odyssey is still alive.

Tales of a Bedtime-Story...

Sometimes, the only way forward, is to look back.....



One cold night last week, an hour or so before I left for work, I got busy with the kids' bedtime routine, in a well intentioned, slip-them-into-it-slowly ritual of a bath, warm glass of milk, and the promise of a much-loved story in bed. When I took them both upstairs, I had been meaning to tuck them into bed and talking to them about WHY it is important that they stay there and try and get to sleep...
After weeks of argumentative arm-twisting (I mean that figuratively, of course!), pleading, bargaining, etc, I started talking to them before reading them their much loved book of stories....

For a very long time, I've read a bedtime story to my daughters every night that I'm at home which presented me with some peculiar difficulties-
First, there was the question of the choice of story- a subject, book or title, on which both of them were always at odds. Most of the time, We'd take turns from day to day, but the discussion preceding the selection was always fraught; something I endeavored to avoid. I believe strong emotions like anger, discord and bickering cause are best avoided so close to bedtime.
Then there was the whole situation- I couldn't possibly read without decent lighting, and that made it harder for them to drift off to La-La Land as I read to them...!
Third, the story would end, the lights would be dimmed, and after a few cuddles and kisses, I would slip out of their room, still wondering if they would be able to drift off to sleep...

Thinking about all these, I got ready to read to my kids, waiting for a moment of 'inspiration' when none came...so I turned to them, book in hand. As I suspected, their eager, beautiful, bright-eyed little faces took my firm "I'm-SO-in-charge-right-now' words away... my mind blank, wordless and still.
"...Shall I tell you what my Ba used to do when we were kids??" I asked them tentatively.
They nodded, smiling, and I could see why- they were probably trying to imagine me as a kid, I guess!!
I told them how all  of  us slept with our Ba, (Grandmother) and listened to her saying a prayer for all of us at bedtime, I smiled as I remembered days when she patted my face lovingly, as I cried myself to sleep, or, as I recollected with a laugh, nights when she 'floated' in, frown at all of us cousins, telling us off for giggling and talking, huddled on the living room floor, 'camping style' on rare but monumental, memorable occasions in the holiday calendar!

As we always slept together, my memories of sleep-time all go hand-in-hand with her voice, her caress on my face and her big, safe hug..I can still smell her clean cotton saree, and hear her voice as she'd say a prayer-

"ઓમ નમઃ શિવાય, ઓમ નમઃ શિવાય..." (as she got ready to sleep), followed by the beautifully simple Gujarati prayer that both my parents remember from their own childhood days..

ઓ ઈશ્વર, ભજીએ તને, મોટું છે તુજ્હ નામ,

ગુણ તારા નિત ગાઇએ,

થાય અમારા કામ. 

હેત લાવી હસાવતું, 

સદા રાખ દિલ સાફ,

..ને ભૂલ કદી કરીએ અમે 

તો, પ્રભુ, કરજો માફ..."

(O Lord, we pray to you; your name is, itself, so vast and your glory so blissful...that our tasks always get done as we dwell on you always...

Lord, make us loving and kind and keep our hearts pure,

and, if we make mistakes, O merciful One, then do forgive us...)

"..After this prayer, our eyes closed, holding our hands together, she'd try to bustle us off to sleep saying, 

"ચાલો, જોઉં, કૌન મોર સુઈ જાય..!!"...Only, we, sometimes clamoured for a story, as children often do! .....coming back to the present, I tried to think of HOW to tell the two eager little children who were smiling up at me, eyes and hearts hungry for affection, that I was getting late, and that they should stay in bed even if they didn't 'feel' sleepy...

So I said the prayer Ba taught us as kids, invoking that timeless love she always showered on us. Somewhat tentatively, in hushed, sweet voices and endearing 'brit' accents, my children joined in. After one try, their confidence growing, I explained the meaning to them in, yes, English...I told them about her love, her stories, her warm hug as she patted us to sleep..."She told us stories, and what glorious stories they were...!" I said. Stories of all the Gods we pray to, (stories she would tell with her soothing voice carrying over the steady, rhythmic revolutions of the fan above.).

Stories of how Vasudeva put little baby Krishna, eighth son of Devaki and Vasudeva, in a basket one stormy night, and carried him across the swollen River Yamuna, (to the village of Vrindavan, where the headman, Nand lala and his wife Yashoda had just had a baby girl) as instructed by Bhavishya Vaani (The voice of that which is destined to occur), so that he may live and fulfill his destiny of slaying the demonic uncle Kans." Of how Krishna ate mud, stole Butter, broke the मटकी (earthen pots) of the village gopis, and strung up their clothes as they bathed in the river, on the higher branches of the tree as they pleaded with him to give them back!! How the sound of his flute, or बंसी mesmerized them, and they followed him, entranced, and paid no heed to anything else, as he played his divine melodies". "....these are the stories my Ba told me." I said to my daughters, as they looked at me, smiling. "will you tell us one of those stories too, then?!" .."Of course I will!" I replied, caressing their small foreheads with each hand, "..but for that, you must go to sleep after today's story, okay?".."OK!" they chorused!

"...so , Do you want to hear the story of the singing bird and the princesses?" I began...

A half hour later, with their peaceful faces expressionless in their sleep, I tiptoed out of the room, and down the stairs, thinking that this was the best night ever!! It was only eight, and I had achieved the unimaginable!! Job Done!