Homework? Not on yer life

I've written a little before about my impressions of the education system here, including how much homework kids seem to get from a very young age. But what I wasn't prepared for really was that my own daughter, aged 3 years and 2 months, be sent back with homework! On friday when I went to pick Maya up, I was handed one of her many workbooks and told that she was required to do a few exercises over the weekend. I must have been looking dumbfounded because I think Paula (Maya's beloved teacher who is standing behind her in the photo) must have thought I didn't understand what she was saying and so got out her notebook and showed me the same request, this time written down. To be fair, it was only a matter of colouring in a picture (not of a tree or animal or anything but a computer - that's a sign of the times I suppose!) and also filling out three lines of marking in 'downward lines' in her exercise book...but still. I do feel that giving homework to three year olds is a tad silly. But Maya's only there for another week and I wasn't about to argue with the formidable Paula so I just took the book and off we went.

Over the weekend, an opportunity presented itself for Maya to do this 'homework' as we were sitting at the kitchen table with her book within easy reach. Ah well, I thought, perhaps she'll quite enjoy it since she does seem to love school and will be proud of the sense of achievement at the end of it and all the rest of it....We opened the book up and I explained to Maya what she had to do. She nodded thoughtfully and took up her pen whilst I went into the kitchen to make a drink, thinking that perhaps homework age three wasn't such a bad thing after all. But this is what had happened when I returned to Maya a few moments later:

She'd taken her pen up alright but instead of doing her 'downward lines' (which she does so beautifully at school - I've seen them - unless the teachers do them for her!), she had scribbled all over the page, and the one after that (which was probably meant for this week's homework). Oh, I said to Maya, that's a bit messy. And she just looked at me through her curls with that defiant, stubborn little stare of hers and closed the book in a very definite way. So much for that, I say. But she's off, homework and downward lines forgotten in an instant.

Exclusive Interview

I am all too aware that sometimes Maya's voice gets lost in all this blogging business, so I think it's high time Maya speaks for herself. Often, she sits in front of the laptop tapping away at the keys and when I ask her what she's doing she casts me one of her well-whaddya-think-I'm-doing looks and says 'I'm writing my blog, Mummy.' So yes, if the little lady could actually write, I'm sure she'd have a very different take on many of the things that feature in her blog. But, since she can't yet write, here's an exclusive, unabridged interview with the girl of the moment!


Please can you tell me your full name?

My name's called Maya Elizabef Narra-COTT

How old are you, Maya?

(Sticks 3 fingers up my nose) Free

Do you like India?

Mmm

Why do you like India?

'Cos my best friend was there.

Who is you best friend?

Aanya. Yes, and Ashiswini and those 2 girls, Anou and Jaya. And Ashiswini. And Aanya.

Do you remember England?

Yes.

Are you excited about going back to England?

Yes.

Who do you want to see in England?

Mummy, let's go on a farm and see that boy.

Which boy?

The one on the farm. The one with the beard.

(Lots of headscratching from Mummy ensues. But we never get to the bottom of this one.)

What will we see in the airplane?

My best friend.

When we get to England, who will we see?

Nannie Liz. (Editor's note: This is her paternal grandmother)

Who else?

Nu-nu. (Ed: her auntie)

Anyone else?

Errrr....Granny Amma and Tata. (Ed: Maternal grandparents)

Anyone else?

(Very impatient look) No Mummy, that's enough people. I'd like to see a picture now.

Can I just ask you a few more questions?

Yes.

Do you remember Godmanchester?

Yes.

What do you remember about it?

No people there.

Is there anything else you'd like to write on your blog now?

Sweetcorn and olives.

What's your favourite food in India?

Dosa and besgetti (Ed: I think she means spaghetti)

What do you like about your school?

Because teacher Paula was there. Is called teacher Paula.

Why is she nice?

Because she's getting fatter and fatter.

Oh. That's not very PC is it?

Huh?

Nevermind. Thanks for your time, Maya.

All the fun of the festival

I must confess to feeling a little sad today, because if we were in England right now we would, without a shadow of a doubt, be heading to Shambala Festival tomorrow. We've been two years running and it is seriously good fun. English festivals are brilliant because all British reserve and restraint is chucked firmly out the window and festival goers dance, crawl, twirl and waltz, jive, skip, hula-hoop and romp their way through what is essentially a huge field converted into a magical adventure playground filled with music, games, stalls and people dressed in an assortment of weird and wonderful clothing for a few days. So this is just a quick blog to say, we love you India, but we wish we were there Shambala!

The first photo was taken at Shambala '07 and the next three are Shambala '08 with 3 month old Lily attending her second festival (at 2 months she went to Latitude Festival!). Maya loved both her Shambala experiences - highlights were dancing on Daddy's back and swinging in a hammock with the backdrop of an English stately home and ladies in leotards, stockings and wellies. I had a quick look at the Shambala website just to torment myself and see that there are still some tickets going. So if you're at a loose end this weekend, get yourself down there. Immediately. You won't regret it! Here's the website. Failing that, have a quick look at this wonderfully quirky band, Gadjo, we watched perform at the festival last year.

However, before we feel too sad, it's the Ganesha festival going on here at the moment. There are lots of noisy drums and street parties taking place day and night and huge, very brightly painted elephant God statues everywhere you look. Maya likes counting them all as we tear past in rickshaws and now seems just at home saying 'Look!It's the elephant God, Ganesh!' than she was last year around Christmas time when she tore up and down the streets of Cambridge dressed as an angel in mini-evangelist mode calling 'I love baby Jesus!'

Last child in the woods

Every child comes with a message that God is not yet discouraged by man.

Rabindranath Tagore


Tagore was a Bengali poet, writer, artist and general all-round genius whom I was introduced to last time in India. Yesterday, as we were walking to a park we don't normally go to, we passed a gate on which the above was emblazoned across. What wonderful words. I'm never without pen and paper so wrote them down and as we continued our journey to the park, I thought about them and how right he is that children possess that wonderful ability of pure, unbridled enthusiasm and joyfulness. I know we must not over-romanticise childhood because as a child the world can seem huge and scary and confusing. But what is certain is that, as children, we still have not piled on ourselves (and allowed others to impose on us) the demands and insecurities that characterise our older years.

Anyway, the reason we were going to this new park was because I recently read a review of a book called 'Last Child in the Woods'. It's written by a guy called Richard Louv and sounds fascinating. He's coined the term "nature deficit disorder" to explain how children now spend so little time alone in nature, exploring. In his own words, "In nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy
and privacy: a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace." I know, we've heard it all before, that we don't let our kids out of sight these days, but it's true: we over-parent, over-worry, are over-paranoid and I know evil people out there exist who abduct our children but Louv claims that children today are no more likely to be abducted than they were 30 years ago.

The reason I'm waffling on about this is because, as much as I like many things about Bangalore, sometimes I just heave a great big sigh and would like to be transported to wild, wide, green open spaces so Maya and Lily can run through long grass under vast skies. But hey, right now, it's not possible. So the next best thing is going to a park and I thought it would be fun to try out a new one. I did an activity with Maya where she had to find one thing of about eight different colours in the park. When we'd done this, I started thinking about that book and decided to let Maya and Lily have a little 'wander'. They were funny - they held hands and off they toddled behind a couple of small kids they'd spontaneously befriended whilst I sat on a bench. Every 30 seconds or so, they'd turn round and wave at me and Maya would yell 'We're going on an adventure!' I know it's not the same as being in nature 'proper' BUT Maya seemed genuinely excited and proud of being in charge of Lily, away from her mama and doing her own thing.

So there I was, sitting on the bench and taking a trip down memory lane, reminiscing about my own lucky childhood when I spent countless hours both with my siblings and alone dreaming, imagining and playing in the fields at the bottom of our garden. I don't know how long I was sitting there for before I realised that Maya and Lily had vanished from my sight....so much for 'letting go'! I jumped up and tore off to find them (largely because daughter number 2 has barely been walking for two weeks rather than fear of abduction!). When I rounded the corner, the pair of little devils had already climbed almost to the top of some stone steps on the outside of a small house in the park, Maya helping Lily hoist her chubby legs up from one step to the next.

I look forward to the day when I can really let them explore. I've said this before and I'll say it again: oh, for a plot of land and a cob house and a few fat chickens surrounded by fields!

(ps - the first photo above was taken last weekend, not in Bangalore I hasten to add, but a night we spent away at a farm, and picture two was taken last summer in England.)

Where have all the flowers in Bangalore gone?

Where have all the flowers in Bangalore gone? Yes, this is a good question, but one that can be answered quite easily. They've gone in Maya's grubby (or sweet-smelling I should say), thieving little mitts. Maya has, like many other children of her age I have no doubt, an obsession with flowers. Trying to walk anywhere takes a very, very long time, not because Maya is a slow walker but because this being the 'garden city', there are lots of flower-filled bushes everywhere. Even on polluted, grimy streets. So here's what happens: we walk a couple of steps and then Maya chirps 'Oooh, hang on, hang on', runs back to pluck a couple of flowers from a bush. Then we start again and maybe manage to move five or six steps this time before she sees a poor little fallen flower on the ground which she thinks needs her loving care and so scoops that one up. Off we go again, but this time she sees another one lying in the gutter and I have to literally restrain her to stop her from climbing down to rescue it. Yup, you get the idea.

To begin with, I found Maya's flower obsession quite sweet. After all, sometimes we do lovely things with the flowers like arrange them into a small bowl with water, as we did this weekend in the picture above. But I have to say that it's all gone a bit over the top now, as Maya wants to pick literally every flower from each stem, bush and tree that we encounter. Andy and I have tried a few different tacks: that the flowers look so lovely on the stem, for everyone to enjoy. Or that actually the poor flowers die quicker once they're picked. She doesn't believe us, and as far as Maya is concerned, every pretty flower in Bangalore (particularly if it's pink) has her name on it. I've lost count of the number of times I've found a foul-smelling, rotting heap of month-old petals hidden at the back of a cupboard or stuffed deep into the pocket of a skirt.

This morning, we went to our favourite Sai Baba temple briefly and it wasn't till after we'd left the temple that I realised Maya had thieved a small rose from the offering table no less. There's an important religious Ganesha festival going on at the moment and this act would, I have no doubt, be met with more than a few raised eyebrows. But we were all strapped back up into sandals again at this point and I didn't much feel like going back to lay the rose on the puja temple so I just gasped, swiftly admonished Maya and we scarpered, my little flower thief cackling in tow.

Aanya

Now that Lily is tearing all over the place, Maya considers her far more fun and worthy of her attention than she did so previously, even claiming occasionally 'We're best friends!'. But her non-family best friend is most definitely Aanya Gupta. They are in the same class at school and Aanya is a gregarious, mischievous little imp who was passed on to Maya the fantastic Indian head wobble (Maya has now honed this to perfection) which can mean anything from absolutely yes to definitely not to well, I'll think about it. She also acts as a kind of guardian to Maya at school. Even though I don't witness this in the mornings, both Andy and Aanya's mother, Anjali, tell me that every morning in the playground before the bell rings, Aanya covets one slide and if anybody with the exception of Maya tries to go on this slide - woe betide them, they are in for a nasty shock as Aanya pushes them off whilst Maya looks on with feigned coyness before climbing up their personal slide. Honestly.

Occasionally, we all go out for lunch after we've collected the girls from school and whilst both Maya and Aanya love this opportunity to spend more time together, it almost always ends in tears as the two little pixies invariably run riot in the restaurant or cafe or wherever we go, pulling fist-fulls of leaves off pot plants (poor plants), sliding up and down slippery floors till they bang into the wall and playing in front of and behind doors until one or the other gets their fingers trapped. Occasionally, Aanya forgets that Maya can't speak anything other than English and launches into a dramatic account of something in Hindi. Maya gives me a look which reads Eh? What's she on about? and I give her a look back which says No idea whatsoever but let's just nod. Or even better, let's wobble our heads. So the two of us stand there wobbling our heads (Maya does it much better than me) until Anjali comes to the rescue and translates for us.

The two cheeky little girls have only a couple of weeks left to spend in one another's company which is a shame. I know they'll miss one another. But perhaps we'll have the opportunity to come back to Bangalore one day and they'll be reunited. And then, if Maya loses the head wobble (which I'm sure she will), Aanya can re-teach it to her.

My curly-haired lovelies

Today is World Photography Day. Honestly, it really is. I haven't made it up (I am discovering more and more that there are world days for something or other the entire time, some of them more obscure than others but if there can be a World Laughter Day there can definitely be a World Photography Day!). Anyway, to celebrate WPD I am posting 3 pictures of my lovely curly-haired family (you can't really see Lily's curls in this picture but they're a-comin'! And no, neither of them get their curls from me. Andy has the curls, I have the wavy mop - or 'bird's nest' as a hairdresser once commented). What a treat to be in Bangalore with these three brilliant people. I'm going to echo the words Maya uses when she gets given a treat and say that I am a very lucky girl!