My first pic, yipee!

English tea at Selfridges. A pot of Darjeeling tea with scones served with conserves and clotted cream.
A suggested I could have the real thing at the Ritz.I passed.. after looking at the price tag : 300 pounds!

P.S. Thanks for the madame butterfly blouse, plumpie!

60 students in a class

Went to junior’s school today. His teacher looked at me a little accusingly and started to tell me how he needed writing practice as he was very slow. Midway, she realized that I was actually listening and asking her intelligent sounding questions like ‘ what do you think is the problem’ , ‘does he seem sleepy or tired’ , ‘do you think he does’nt understand’ or ‘is he distracted with something'..Usually she hears things like , ‘I make him practice at home, he seems fine then’ or I don’t know what to do, he does this at home too. She suddenly asked me if I work . I told her I was a training manager and worked full time which is why she did’nt see me at school more often. She seemed suitably impressed. It was as if a crown had suddenly sprouted up on my head. I promised her that I would get junior to practice regularly this term.
Here is what I really need to do : make myself more visible as a parent, offer to volunteer, you know, make charts to decorate the classroom etc, seem very concerned as a parent and ask her for a feedback every now and then, and oh! then maybe, actually help junior with his writing a little bit. His grades will be much better next term and I don’t know how much the writing practice would have contributed.

Junior was born in the city of his father’s birth – Kolkata. A went to St. Xavier’s, regarded as one of the best schools in the country, by many. That was the school A and I had hoped junior would be in one day.
Then we moved to Pune. We decided to send junior to the school he goes to today. This was a school known for academics and sports. Though junior shows more signs of being a showman than a sportsman right now, he thoroughly enjoys school. We hope the school would give him a grounding he would have never got if we chose to send him to one of the new age international schools where the school fees runs into lacs and they have AC school buses and classrooms.
By Indian standards we lead what I may term a ‘priviledged life’. We have a housekeeper (who likes to call herself a ‘governess’ these days, I not too sure she knows the difference) , a gardener (for our 25 pots) , a couple of maids and a chauffeur , multiple cars..we stay in a up-market building, holiday abroad almost every year, eat in fancy restaurants, stay in fancy hotels have multicuisine dinners at home, put up Christmas trees every year with the same élan as we light our diyas and so on.
My husband and I work hard for the life we lead and by default the kids have become a part of all that too and as Shahrukh Khan had once said in an interview, "If I am driving around in a rolls royce, I can’t ask my son to ride in an auto"
We chose the school we did, for junior, to make sure he met and learnt to appreciate people from diverse cultural, social and economic backgrounds. And I think we are pretty much on the way there. His class has 60 students and the teacher knows very little about each child till a parent decides to show up in school and makes sure the child gets ‘the’attention one way or the other.
My son is an avid reader. At 6 he reads and understand books which most children almost twice his age usually would’nt, without any proding from us. He has the gift of the gab and loves performing. Somehow she has'nt seemed to notice that!
There are two choices I have : like most other parents make sure the teacher gives him an opportunity to use his skills or let him learn to fight for his place. My motherhood instincts push me towards the first but I would feel more at peace with myself if I did the latter..

we are back...

The last two weeks have gone by in a flash. The MIL was in the hospital for almost 2 weeks getting her knee surgery done. Though we were in one of the best rooms at the hospital, the attending nurses and she seemed to be playing dumb charades all the time. Neither spoke hindi too well and surprisingly most of them spoke broken or no English. I presumed it was a dangerous situation for a patient who is or has undergone 2 major surgeries. So FIL would spend the day there and I would stay back most nights and some evenings.
The good thing was that junior was packed off to mom’s place where he underwent a crash course in hindi, got a typical north Indian zamindar (landlord) style massage or malish done 4 times a week and learnt to fly kites.

ramblings..

I am down with a bad throat infection..gets especially painful in the nights. As usual I am avoiding seeing the doc. Only if every doc was like Dr. T. Sigh!
I don't think I will be able to last out an entire hour with Dr.T outside his clinic. But there is something about him- an oozing confidence and contentment which comes easy with success. Ok if you are a patient. otherwise it feels more like arrogance..

the week..II

So I am not very good at writing travelogues..
The best part of our trip was the day we spend in Birmingham at the Aston university - my husband's alma mater.
It was a trip down memory lane for A. We managed to locate his first apartment - Vauxhall court now known as Vauxhall house, the pub he downed several beers on Saturday afternoons - sack of potatoes, the Aston business school and the computer science center - now much larger, modernised and richer .
A insisted we buy something from BHS at the market square , for old memories sake..he shopped there often as a student 24 years back. So we picked up a dress for me and a tee for Cinderella in similar prints.
We watched one of the football world cup matches at a pub called 'Shakespeare' while waiting for our ride back to London. The atmosphere was infectious..For once I felt inclined to follow the world cup. maybe I would have if I stayed in London longer.
The train ride from London to Birmingham offers fabulous views of the lush green english countryside. I wish we could have spend some more time driving around the countryside, maybe next time.