When do you start noticing the similarities that you share with your children that make them more endearing to you? And do you like what you see or does it embarrass the hell out of you when your child loves to snooze soon after she is supposed to be awake because that is what you do too on most days? Or when she keeps at a work project until it is done because otherwise she will have a sleepless night? So as Pihu grows older, I have noticed those traits and qualities that are so characteristic of me that she has imbibed, either through observation or naturally, who knows!
Pihu has an artistic and creative bent of mind. She loves to paint. She has a natural flair to dabble with colours of all kinds- chalk, crayons, colour pencils, sketch pens, water and acrylic colours, you name it. Her art work is all over the house and there isn’t a day she comes back from school without a sketch or painting stuffed hurriedly in her bag. Cutting pieces of paper to make patterns, odd bits of craft, using feathers, pieces of wood and stones to make a lamp shade or a wall hanging is part of her way to express the mind of the restless inventor in her.
She hit the books at two- loving a good read at bedtime, walking in to a library to browse through the book racks and sitting down with a stack full, only to make me carry at least a dozen home. She is great at taking care of them and arranging them proudly in her book shelf, one book ready at the bedside for the night daily.
She has a great sense of music. She loves rhythmic music and dancing on the Pop Hits of the 70s, 80s be it Madonna or Justin Timberlake. She has already mastered the Macarena steps and is largely excited at finetuning her Bollywood thumkas whenever a hotstepper is on TV.
She is a movie buff already. I am not even talking about Frozen, Trolls and Coco. The girl sat through Bajrangi Bhaijaan at 3 years of age. She watched Tiger Zinda Hai and Bodyguard by the time she was 4, recognising Salman Khan as a brawny superstar who can give the baddies a hard time in every flick. I got her to like Taare Zameen Par and ‘Bum, bum Bole’ became one of her favourite dance tracks. She recently watched Shekhar Kapur’s Masoom and Mr.India and couldn’t stop raving about them. One of the main reasons I have been exposing her to Hindi cinema is my desire to get her familiar with Hindi and listen and learn the diction so she connects with her roots and develops
a love for the language through music and dance. It is working as she already knows the lyrics of ‘Lakdi ki Kathi’ and is progressing steadily in her Hindi alphabet reading and writing.
She is a great one for cleanliness. A bit odd for her age but she loves to clean up table tops and surfaces meticulously when they get stained or messy. She is also mastered the art of holding a vacuum cleaner and wants to sweep all the dust of the carpets all over the house herself if left unsupervised.
She is not so much a morning person, groggy and slow when she gets up. It takes a good couple of hours to get her tired in the evenings though and she can jump up on bed a zillion times or talk nineteen to the dozen before bedtime finally enforces her to shut her eyes for the night.
She is outdoorsy from when she was a baby having travelled all over India and even a trip abroad by the time she was two. Always one with a sense of adventure, she is equally queasy on a long drive on the road, just like I used to be when young. That didn’t mar my joy on reaching a new destination, exploring new places, gorging on local food or smelling the freshly laundered sheets in a hotel or Airbnb.
She has this zany fashion sense too where she knows what she likes to wear. She loves dress up and make up which is not so much me at her age but it is something I have gradually grown in to liking post my teenage years. So whether it is braiding her own hair, sticking accessories to match her clothes or giving a new twist to her wardrobe mixing and matching clothes are must-dos on a frequent basis at home.
And trying to follow the rules, being a stickler for propriety and reasoning out why something must be done by finding a logical conclusion are all aspects of her personality that have begun to show up, not very different to what her Mummy is like or was like in her childhood.
Now if the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, makes you wonder if she will pick up on the flaws and the weaknesses that her parents may have as well. How do you as a parent stop that from happening? We will just have to cross that bridge when we come to it, isn’t it and hope that one’s own life experiences teaches you to guide your child through her own obstacles. If she does stumble though, she will learn toget up and rise again, knowing that this is all part of growing up and becoming a wholesome human being.
