Magic Maya

Having written just a few days ago how wonderful I thought Charlie and Lola (Maya's latest fad) were, I could now quite happily wring their giggling cartooned necks. The reason for this is because for some reason there is a particular episode that Maya has become obsessed with, when Lola is, in her words, feeling 'really, ever so not well.' As a result, whenever I now ask Maya to do something, she suddenly pulls the corners of her mouth down, puts on her best folorn face and often dives into her infamous horizontal position, claiming that she's not feeling very well. Hmm....perhaps I'll have to introduce the story of the boy that cried wolf to her a little earlier than I'd imagined...

Last night however, Maya was not feeling unwell and when I asked her if she'd like to come out with me she jumped at the chance. I've started volunteering one evening a week at a Leonard Cheshire home (an international network of homes and centres for people with various disabilities). The reason I chose this place is because I was a volunteer for a few years back in England at a Leonard Cheshire home and really enjoyed it, and although the Bangalore home couldn't be more different, I thought it would be interesting to stay with the same organisation. Maya and Lily nearly always came with me back in England and at the start, Maya was pretty scared of going but by the end, just before we came to India, she referred to the residents as 'our friends in wheelchairs.'

The residence here is home to females aged between 5 and 80, the majority of whom have polio. It's the younger ones, particularly those in their teens, that want to chat the most. When I turned up with Maya last night, they were very, very over-excited and of course Maya had to deal once more with lots of cheek-pinching and dozens of faces about half an inch from hers calling her name again and again. Naturally this was all just too much initially, and I had to explain in the gentlest way possible that she was happy to be here but didn't really like too much attention. We spent an hour there and I was really proud of the way she dealt with it. Whilst the girls were surprised that she was so 'shy' and didn't want to get up and sing and dance for them (seriously, that's what everyone seems to do here!), as her mother and someone who knows her well, she handled the inquisitiveness and excitement with a great deal of courage and grace. I could almost see her making a physical effort, and enjoying the feeling of bravery that came with this. She knew she was a 'big girl' as normally she would have been tucked up in bed at that time and she kept asking 'Is it night time? Is it night time?', a big grin spreading across her face when I told her that it was.

The girls told us that Maya means 'magic' and at one point we sat on the grass, eating mangoes with bats swooping over our heads whilst they serenaded Maya with a song in Tamil actually all about a girl called Maya. Whether or not she wants to return with me is another matter, I'll leave that one up to her. But here, like at the home in England, she is witnessing the incredible strength and creativity people display in the face of their disabilities and it's definitely never too young to be exposed to this.

Thought for the day

Here's my thought for the day:

That you know your life has changed irrevocably when you hear your mobile phone ringing, pull it out, start trying to talk into it and only realise several moments later that you actually holding your two year old's plastic toy phone against your ear.

Highs and lows

Oh to be at the age again when you can just kick your feet back and dance to your heart’s content, no matter who’s watching and no matter what you look like. The photo above shows Maya dancing on – ahem – a drain. We’d just got out of a taxi and she launched into a fabulous, impromptu dance (doubtless inspired by the Bollywood music that the taxi driver had been blasting out) which lasted about five minutes and then off she went on her way again. The other photo, incidentally, shows the road which Maya's school is on. (If you want to see any of these photos bigger, you just have to click on them.)

I am very, very happy and relieved to report that in the past several days Maya (on the whole) seems far more settled and content than she has done in a while. I’m sure there are a few reasons for this. For a start, her urinary tract infection, whilst not completely cleared up, is almost on its way out. There is also the matter of her impending third birthday which, when mentioned, sends in into such a frenzy of delight and excitement because there’s a new pink dress waiting for her and there’ll be a chocolate cake with a tiger on top and balloons and dancing and sooo many presents and, and, and….well the anticipation if it all is almost too much for a two-nearly-three-year-old to bear. Maya goes round sticking three fingers virtually up the nose of any person who’s happened to ask how old she is going to be. It’s wonderful though – her excitement is truly infectious.

The other, and possibly most significant reason why I think we’re being reunited with the old Maya is because she is no longer bored in the mornings. School, so far, has been a great success. The fight she puts up upon arrival is, according to Andy, incredibly half-hearted and once she sees that lots of the other kids are upset (Maya is the ‘big girl’ of the class, one of if not the eldest), she sets about comforting them and exerting her authority, knowing the place as she does from her summer camp days there. Although we go out every afternoon, a single morning can seem like an eternity to a little person, particularly if they're insufficiently stimulated. I feel bad about this now, because even though I was only escaping for about an hour or so to write in my bedroom, I do think that Deepa's attention was far more focussed on Lily rather than Maya and by the time I'd really figured that out, it was the end of the summer holidays anyway. So, let's hope that this new contentment at school lasts.

Having said that Maya is happier at the moment, there are two matters in which I am really, really struggling with her and I would just love some help or advice on these. Firstly, if she has a nap in the afternoon (instigated by her when she's tired - I no longer ask for her to lie down), the mood she wakes up in is something akin to a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. It has got to the point that I dread it if she drops off because I can pretty much guarantee what'll happen later. Parents among you, have you ever experienced this? Sometimes I can distract her with stories / snacks / drinks / songs etc etc but on other days, like yesterday it can take as long as two hours to get Maya to calm down from the complete state she has worked herself into.

Which leads me to the second matter that I'm finding it difficult to know how to deal with. Maya is a daddy's girl, no two ways about it. That's absolutely fine, but what is not so fine is that at some stage most days (often during one of her post-nap meltdowns), Maya clocks that Daddy is not there. And she wants him to be. Knowing that he is at work and cannot come home makes her desire to see him there and then even stronger and everything gets very emotional. Short of me morphing into Andy, I don't know what I can do. I've tried reasoning with her, promising that he'll be back soon, trying to put her on the phone to him...all kinds of things. But more often than not I end up feeling like a wicked stepmother rather than Maya's flesh-and-blood-Mama! Help?!?! What to do, what to do....

Andy keeps reassuring me that what we are experiencing with Maya is completely normal. I tell myself that he's right, but I must confess there are times when I watch her writhing around on the floor in what looks like phyiscal but is actually emotional agony and I think What is going on? And what on earth can I do? More reassurance needed, pleeeeease!!

ps - On another note entirely, does anybody own the book 'The Reader' and would be prepared to send it to me out here??? A bit cheeky asking I know, but books here are quite pricey. I recently saw the film and really enjoyed it but am sure the novel must be even better.

Post Offices and Pink Temples

If I'm ever having one of those afternoons when I'm thinking how on earth am I going to pass these long, hot hours before evening falls without Maya or Lily or me or all three of us losing the plot, sometimes we go to the post office. I know this may sound like a strange afternoon activity for two small girls and whilst it may not always be 'fun', one thing I can be guaranteed of is that it will be lengthy. Which has its benefits. Plus there's the bonus that it's situated right next to the 'pink temple'...(more of that later)

Maya quite enjoys these trips to the post office. For a start, she gets to sit on the high counter top and indiscriminately comment on whatever takes her fancy in the way that only small children can get away with (Last time, she pointed to one of the employees and shrieked at the top of her lungs 'Mummy! Look at that man's beard!' So I did, and so did everybody else in the post office, including all the poor man's colleagues who stared and stared at his rather splendid wizardesque beard as though for the first time). Secondly, Maya enjoys this outing because she invariably gets to see Mummy in a complete flap which must, admittedly, be pretty entertaining. It is never a straightforward matter going to the post office. Never. Ever. Here is what happened about a week ago which typifies my general experience there:

Me: Please can I post these cards to England?
Post Office Employee: Certainly. That'll be fifteen rupees for each postcard.
Me: Oh. But last week I came it was eight rupees and....
POE: No madam, it's fifteen rupees.
ME: I've just put about ten postcards in the postbox outside with eight rupee stamps on them.
POE: But Madam, it's fifteen rupees. Who told you it was eight?
Me: (I look at her hard. Names, I must admit I'm pretty useless at but faces I rarely forget). You did.
POE: No, Madam.
Me: Yes, Madam.

I can see we're getting nowhere in a hurry, the queue behind me is growing and I'm pretty sure it was at this point that Maya interjected with her beard observation which didn't much help to speed things along. So I try another tack.

Me: Right, so it's fifteen rupees. Fine. I need five fifteen rupee stamps please for these cards.
POE: Certainly.

Brilliant, half the problem solved. But I still need to get my postcards back and I take a deep breath.

Me: Please can somebody unlock the postbox for me?
POE: Why?
Me: Because I just posted lots of cards in there with eight rupees on them.
POE: Oh, no problem Madam, no problem. They will get there.

Right. Now I'm confused. Very confused. And hot and sweaty and Lily is doing a wriggling eel impression in the sling and Maya is doing a noisy rendition of Little Bo Peep on the counter. And my nerves are starting to seriously fray. I put on my best pleading voice.

Me: Please can you open it? Please? Please? Do you have a key? Does anyone have a key?

The lady yells something in Kannada over her shoulder and motions for me to wait to one side whilst she starts serving other people. About ten minutes later, a man appears behind her who looks like he's just been woken up from his afternoon snooze and can barely keep his eyes open. A lengthy explanation ensues from the lady I was dealing with and eventually he slouches out then shortly after, returns with the most enormous sack of post from the postbox which he now needs to sort through to find my postcards. Please let me look! I want to cry. Please, or if not, could somebodyd kindly give this man a hearty injection of caffeine? But he's gone, off round the corner, dragging his sack behind him like some reluctant Father Christmas.

Approximately twenty minutes later, he re-emerges triumphantly with eight postcards. I can't remember how many I posted but I was fairly sure it was about ten. . By this stage, we've been regaled with one man's photos of his granddaughters in America, Maya and Lily have had their cheeks pinched about fifty times and Maya has hit one man who squeezed too hard. So I'm not about to send the man back to look for the other two. All I want to do is get these accursed cards in the post and get out of here.

I wait in the queue again, get to the front, ask for more stamps to make up the difference and then, only then does the lady say these words to me:

Madam, the cost of postcards has risen this last week.

What? What?? Why on earth didn't she just say that to me in the first place?! I know this wouldn't have changed the fact I'd still posted my cards in the postbox but knowing this may well have kept my blood pressure low. Some things I shall never, ever understand.

By now, I've lost several pints of water in my sweating and we're all pretty dehydrated so we go next door to the 'Pink Temple'. Now, as you'll see from the picture above, it's not particularly accurate to call it pink. But the fact that it has any pink in it at all is good enough for Maya, so pink it is. It is a Sai Baba Hindu temple, built for the devotees of the living Sai Baba, a South Indian guru, Hindu mystic and orator who also sports the most amazing afro ever (I mean no disrespect - it really is quite something). We love going to the temple as it is a cool, peaceful haven which smells of incense, sandalwood and jasmine. Everyone takes their shoes off and sits on the floor praying or in quiet cotemplation but last time a group of women were chanting and singing which I found wonderfully calming and restorative. Maya knows that this is not the place to belt out Little Bo Peep or any other song for that matter, and nobody seems to mind if Lily crawls around.

Whoever built the post office next to the pink temple (or vice versa) could not have possibly known that one day, a hot sweaty English woman with one child on her chest and another at her side would not be suffering a nervous breakdown as a result of this happy accident in town planning. Phew.

Actually, Rats and Writing

I have to recount a little tale that has, as its central character, not Maya. Not even Lily. No, a rat. This is, however, Maya's tale too as it affects my sanity...which of course affects Maya! To understand why Andy and I have slight phobias of rats these days, scan down to the From Rainforest Retreat... entry. So, what happened was that the other night, I got back from my evening yoga class and tapped on the door for Andy to let me in. I was greeted by one of Andy's eyes peering suspiciously through the barely opened door, then he grabbed me, pulled me in and shut the door firmly. Odd behaviour I thought, but then he told me what had happened just five minutes previously. He'd heard scratching at the door and, thinking it was me, had opened it to find not his wife but an enormous rat sitting on the doorstep asking to be let in.

I just cannot believe it. I thought we'd left the rats behind in the rainforest but for some reason rats really, really like us. I have no idea what we've done to deserve this honour. Perhaps I shouldn't be so harsh on the poor creatures just because they are traditionally abhorred but frankly, I wish they'd go and crawl over someone else's feet and knock on someone else's door. And before you think it must be that we're filthy creatures ourselves and the rats are trying to get in to eat the crumbs of cake left everywhere, remember that Deepa the star comes six mornings a week for goodness sake to clean. So no, our apartment is not dirty. I wish they didn't, but rats just love us. Opening the front door has never been the same since and we are no longer the English family, we are the Paranoid family.

On another note, some of you may have heard of the children's book series Charlie and Lola. If you don't have children, there's no reason why you would have done (I'd certainly not heard of them till about a year ago) but if you do, I imagine you've come across them in your childrens book and tv travels. Charlie is Lola's brother and he narrates the events of his amusing little sister's life whilst they romp their way through landscapes consisting of fairy cake mountains and
dance on the wings of butterflies. I must confess I'm quite taken with Charlie and Lola. Unlike several of the book/TV series aimes at kids which are sheer and utter gobbledeygook nonsense, Charlie and Lola are, in my opinion, genuinely funny and thought-provoking. But anyway, the reason I bring them up is because Lola uses a lot of words like extremely, absolutely and actually. Maya is at the age where new words are spewing out of her at the rate of knots and she is delighted to discover these lovely-sounding, long words. In the past couple of weeks since her Charlie and Lola infatuation began, many of her sentences have run something like this:

Actually, I'm not feeling well

or

Actually, can I do a puzzle?

or

Actually, is it lunchtime?


I read recently that between the ages of one and three (which Maya is fast leaving), the average number of words a parent addresses directly to their child varies from 600 to 2,000. So of course it goes to follow that the more words they hear, the more they'll digest and store up for later on. So for older children above 3, this number logically increases but often doesn't as parents feel their children won't understand what they're saying. But time and again, I am amazed at the words Maya comes out with, remembering that I'd used it a few times whilst reading her a book several months ago. So it's never too young to wallow in the glories of the English language. Not that actually is one of our language's finer words but hey, it's a start and I'm so excited for her to explore the magical world or words in the years to come.

Speaking of words, since my blunt literary agent rebuffal last week, I must admit my novel is now in hiatus. As Lola would say, I am absolutely going to continue with it, but I'm just pausing for a while for reflection. At the same time, in my grabbed hours here and there, I've also been working on a few other bits and bobs and it's not all bad because in the past week I've had a couple of achievements: an article I've written on dealing with insomnia (the subject I most love to hate) is going to be published in The Green Parent later this year and a short story called Honeysuckle, loosely based on my grandparents, is going in to a free London underground creative arts magazine called Notes from the Underground. I also have a short story called Nur's Ark (with the unlikely setting of a Middle Eastern zoo) being published in an Oakland based magazine called Monday Night. So while there's no joy on the novel front, there's much to be positive about.

ps - I know this photo above is a bit random but I thought it was lovely and colourful. I came across this small Hindu offering shrine whilst on a walk.

The girl of the horizontal inclinations

I've lost count of the number of times that Deepa has asked if Maya is ill. 95% of the times she has asked this, Maya has been absolutely fine, but the reason for her concern is that she's obviously not used to seeing a child who spends quite as much time horizontal. When Maya feels tired or overwhelmed or excited or contemplative or even just completely normal but just wants some time out, what she does is lie on her tummy with her head on one side and her hands tucked under her. She doesn't do this to go to sleep, but sometimes if she stays in this relaxed position for long enough, she drops off (as shown in this photo taken yesterday - she then proceeded to sleep for an hour and a half on the chair!).

Maya has been adopting this 'comfort' position for as long as I can remember and she doesn't just do it at home, she does it in libraries, at nursery, in cafe's, restaurants and parks. In other words, pretty much anywhere. I have no doubt if I allowed her to she'd stretch out across the length of a rickshaw.

The reason I bring this up is because entering this solitary comfort zone is so very Maya. I think she feels safe and secure in this position and will simply not come out of it until she is good and ready to engage vertically with the world once again. I do wonder how long her horizontal inclinations will persist - I have an obscure image in my head of a teenage girl getting bored in a lesson at school and stretching out on her front under the desks to zone out. Or several years on at work, finding an issue that has come up just too much and reclining in front of the coffee machine to take stock.

Perhaps not though - perhaps she will leave this habit behind her at the same time as stepping out of her toddlerhood skin. But I really don't mind either way - whilst she is horizontal, she is calm. And a calm toddler is a thing of joy forever!

Maya goes back to school

Over the past few days Maya has definitely been feeling much better which is a relief. Every time we've mentioned nursery to her - or 'school' as we're now calling it, she has reacted in one of two ways, depending on her mood. Either she's been gripped with pain once again (good grief, she's not yet three and she's already learnt that trick!) or, more happily for us, she's seemed genuinely excited, puffed out her chest and crooned 'I going to schoooool!'

These dual emotions come as no surprise because this is exactly how she's feeling I imagine: both excited and apprehensive . So many questions keep whirring round my head - Should she really be going? Is this the right place for her? I say I want her to be treated equally, but then I'm setting her apart by asking her to be given space and for her not to be 'manhandled'....so there's lots of conflicting emotions for me too at this time. I'm sure that the times that Maya gets excited about school is when she remembers climbing the tree, snack time, dancing and singing and being surrounded by other children. But we can't choose when bad memories creep up on us too, and at the times she's 'ill' again, she's remembering the brusqueness, the rough boys on the push-along cars in the playground, the endless pointing to her BCG scar and wanting to know what it is (there is a constant weary fascination with this), the communication problems and the well-meaning but over-attentive helpers.

So yes, a nervous day for us all. Andy too, as school now starts at 9 rather than the 10am of summer camp so he will now drop Maya on his way to work. Imagine our surprise then when Andy took Maya in this morning, only to be told that for the first week back it's just a half-morning, and parents are to stay with their children to get them settled. Actually, I think it's a very good idea but it's fairly helpful being informed of these things! So I dragged poor sleeping Lily out of her tent and we went and took over from Andy. I think, I hope, I think, I hope it may be okay this term. Although upset initially to be there, Maya soon cheered up when she spotted all the fun activities to do and the cars in the playground.

When we left, I asked Maya if she'd like to go back the next day. 'Of course!' she replied in her 'der - what a stupid question' voice. I know this could change from one minute to the next but her first day back, at least, we have got through without any scenes and we can all high a great big collective sigh of relief.