Steps to a well fed child

I have a young son. He is still at the age when he thinks grocery shopping is exciting (he gets to sit in the cart and tries to topple displays). He seems to have a dynamo inside him. If ever there was a perpetual motion machine, he is it.

It is getting to be noon. Soon the schoolbus will arrive to take my son to school. There are about 60 minutes to go, give or take. In football time - it is a lifetime, careers can be made. In cricketing terms, it is enough time to get settled, to play yourself in. In feeding-a-child time it is but an instant.

Time to commence operations. I set the first stage in motion. Laissez Faire.

This is the ideal we work towards. I saunter across to where my son is playing and nonchalantly mention to him that his food is on the table. I expect him to leave the train he is playing with, go across to the table, sit himself down and finish his food. It rarely happens. But being conscientious parents, we want to achieve this ideal, so this is where we start.

I have heard of parents of teenage boys having the reverse problem - how to get them off the table once they start eating. That problem is still a decade off for us.

Expectedly, nothing happens. Tiger gives no indication that he has heard me. The train continues its inexorable march to the edge of the bed.

We seamlessly move into Stage II: Enticement.

"Look! What are we having for dinner today!! It looks YUMMY!!! I REALLY LIKE THIS." I go up a few decibels and try to inject as much excitement and intrigue into my voice as I can muster. I feel like a used car salesman. I know he is having spinach and cheese, which can be 'yummy' only under exceptional circumstances and these are unexceptional times.

The salesmanship also elicits no action, though the tone and volume make him look up from the train. He has bought lemons before. He knows it is 'yummy' spinach and cheese.

He is back to the train.

Next we try the Logical Stage.

"Come, son, we have to go to school and have to have dinner before we leave so you can be a BIG Boy!"

"I want to play."

"But we have to finish dinner so we can go to school"

"Ok, I don't want school"

In one swoop of logic he has swept aside both school and the meal.

We need some results and fast. Time to move to Stage III: Parental Authority.

"You have to go to school and you have to eat." Tiger looks confused now. He thought we were in for a logic based exchange and here I am pulling rank.

I carry him over to the table and buckle him into his high chair, thus preventing escape. This ensures proximity to food but does not ensure actual consumption. That is entirely another matter. I sit across the table from him.

It is now fifteen minutes since this exercise started. I check the scorecard.

Plus: I have him strapped into his chair.

Minus: No food has been eaten yet.

We might still beat the clock.

I set the yummy spinach and cheese in front of him. He gently pushes it away. "No."

"You must eat, Tiger, you need to go to school soon."

"I don't want school today. I want holiday." He brightens up at this brilliant idea. He thinks we can still have a logical conversation.

"You have to go to school. You'll have a holiday on Saturday."

"And holiday on Sunday." he says just to be sure we are not shortchanging him.

I push the bowl back to him. "Why don't you eat all by yourself like a big boy!" I encourage him.

" I am a little boy" he says and at 100 centimetres tall, he is not far off the mark. The bowl is back to my side of the table.

When my wife and I were newly married and had not yet had children, we would talk about how we would make our children independent and well-behaved and get them to eat on their own with no TV or other distractions. We would never overfeed them or bribe them. We would be strict. Firm but fair.

Ha!

"How about we have ice-cream after we finish dinner?" I ask him. We are both in the realm of the reward mechanism now. Commonly known as bribery.

He knows the bus is about to come. We might not be able to have both dinner and ice cream before that happens.

"Ok, how about I have ice cream now."

"First dinner, then ice cream."

"I don't want dinner please. I want ice cream."

We've been teaching him to ask nicely and not to shout and if he does not want something to say no thank you. Evidently, we have taught him well.

I push the plate back to him again. "First dinner then ice cream." He considers that and puts a spoonful of spinach in his mouth. He looks at me and deadpans "Mmmmm Yummy". I let it pass and play along. "See I told you it was yummy. Let's have some more."

"I don't want more. Now is ice cream time." Since sarcasm is lost on me, he decides to be direct.

My wife walks in. "How much has he eaten?" She doesn't need an answer. It is time to tag her into the ring. I hand over the chair to her.

"Who wants to watch TV?" The Battle of Wits and Deception has begun.

"I want TV."

"You start eating dinner and Papa will switch on the TV."

Tiger picks up the spoon again and gets some spinach into his mouth. This is my cue. I switch on the TV. He eats a couple more spoonfuls of spinach. I flip through channels to find him something spinach friendly to watch.

A few more minutes of eating. He chews the spinach meditatively while watching TV. The magic of TV is fading. Realizing this my wife tells him a story to speed up proceedings. A few more spoonfuls. I steal a glance at his bowl. A little under a third is gone. We have another twenty minutes to go. The story is nearing completion. The food is not.

"Baby you are late - eat quickly. We have to finish dinner" My wife bucks him up. Our stalwart catches on to the 'we'. "Ok. Feed Mama. Must share." A spoonful of spinach is headed to Mama's nose. I make a timely exit.

I return in fifteen minutes. There is food everywhere. On the floor, on the table, on the parent, on the child. By this time, Grandfather, who is around, either looks angry and at the end of his tether or a bit distraught and tries to appear totally immersed in the book/newspaper seemingly oblivious to the goings-on in this household, depending upon whether he lent a hand in feeding the tyke or not. The child looks slightly smug. The mother looks like it is my fault.

The bowl is empty. The rule of parenting that I have learnt with experience is that if the bowl is empty, assume the food is inside the child. Whatever you might see around you contrary to this assumption is an illusion.

In the remaining five minutes we get him showered and changed in time to catch his schoolbus.

Our little dynamo keeps humming.

A Question of Storage

After I got married, one of the first things we discussed was splitting.

Splitting the space in the cupboard.

Initially, we took the democratic outlook. There were two of us and one cupboard, so we split it down the middle (this not being possible literally, we allocated the space equally). It worked for me. I could see all of my clothes. Agreed, there was some stacking required, but I understood that the days when each bit of clothing could stake out it's own territory were past. The system was a nice one, functional, cosy, ideal for a new couple - even our clothes stuck together. She would suggest clothes I should wear when we went out - while it played havoc with my last-in-first-out system that ensured all clothes were worn cyclically, I didn't mind it at all since now I did not need to decide.

After a few weeks we realized over dinner that the divide space equally system, while having merits, was not the ideal system. We moved over from "One vote one person" to "From each according to his capability to each according to his need". We decided, unanimously, that space division equally, was bourgeois, and that we needed to change with the times. Me and my comrade decided that now we would have space divided equitably, according to need.

This system was a definite improvement. It made for a good deal of consolidation among my clothes. The number of stacks my clothes were in reduced, thus making it easier for me to find stuff. Instead of looking in three or four different stacks, I just had to look at two now. The stacks were higher and more colourful - making the cupboard aesthetically pleasing. In fact I got into the habit of opening the cupboard door and staring inside transfixed. My wife just thought I took inordinately long to find clothes to wear.

During this system I got pretty good at flicking out shirts without upsetting the pile (Flick! "You can't wear that! You wore it last week. Wear something nice." Re-Flick!!). While it was a nifty trick - it impressed friends and nephews - it left the wife distinctly unimpressed. She didn't realize that you can only get someone to realize how hard it is if you get them to try it - which results in an avalanche of clothes unfortunately.

This system lasted longer than the last one.

The politburo in its wisdom had scheduled regular reviews of the prevailing system to see if it could be made better for the masses. At the next session a motion was passed unanimously that taller people should use the higher shelves that were currently under-utilized and free up more space downtown for use for the greater social good.

My trousers went up there, where with the help of a stool, I could easily reach them. Plus the exercise would do me good as well.

Time went by.

Once again, over dinner we realized that there was a stack of five drawers in the cupboard that we had divided amongst us. Two of these aforementioned drawers contained odds-and-ends. Specifically my odds-and-ends socks, underclothes and such. We also discussed in detail the merits of keeping all such items of clothing together, in one place. There was no point in separating them, for after all, one can easily tell half a pair of socks and a pair undershorts apart, even in darkness. This would of course free up a drawer where we could keep some other clothes that were useful but had not been unpacked yet. It was of course a necessity since keeping these clothes packed precluded them from being worn. It was a step in the right direction.

A few days later, we were getting ready to go out on a Friday evening when my wife said she couldn't find a few of her clothes ("Where's the blue dress you bought me the night before I went to A's baby shower?"). We needed a reorganization since a lot of her clothes were in the closet in the spare bedroom.

That weekend, we moved my shirts to the cabinet under the TV in the bedroom, next to the DVDs and moved the rest of her dresses in the cupboard (re-christened the wardrobe now) or as many as could come in.

This is undoubtedly the best system thus far. I am in good shape. I do step-ons using the stool to take out trousers and then do back stretches to take out the underclothes. I follow up with squats for the shirts and am all warmed up by the time I leave home, ready for the rat race of life.

Universe, beliefs and salads

Belief is a good thing, though sometimes I think it can be carried too far.

"At the beginning of everything, there was nothing. No space, no time, no salad bars. All that nothing was something. It was a singularity. One that boldly decided to go where nothing had gone before - literally as there was no where to go to. And it went. It created the how, the what, the where and the when.

There were particles. These primal particles coalesced to form complex particles which in turn formed the atoms to create the first elements. And molecules and suchlike. The primordial world was creating a place to be as it expanded. There was no place outside of it. It was all that there was. There was no time before it. It created time as well as it went along. It created immense clouds of dust. These clouds of dust coalesced to form galaxies and stars and planets and solar systems.

This took billions of years. All this tumult also created in itself a small dot at the edge of a galaxy. Over time this small dot went through immense changes of its own - till it became a small blue dot.

This blueness led to the creation of more and more things joining together to give rise to very complex particles. Somehow, sometime in the distant past, some of these complex particles, became alive.

From here the story becomes much more interesting directly - since it has a bearing on all of us living things on this little blue dot called Earth.

The pace of things really picks up. We start to talk in millions of years rather than billions. I know for you or me there is not much difference - after a certain level of prettiness, one pretty girl is as pretty as the other - but in the cosmic sense, we can say the plot thickens. I still do not have much by way of personal involvement with the world today. Millions of years went by and these blobs that were alive were content to be so till some of them got together and became the first colonies of primal cells to become the first complex 'beings'. Slowly the various components evolved different functions to become a uniform 'whole'. Then the first of these beings decided to move out of water and inhabit land. They started moving about. They started eating each other. The salad bar that was the earth was changing now. It was a cell-eat-cell world. Living creatures now started taking the paths we can recognize: plants, animals; flowers, fruits, leaves; fish, frog, lizard, bird, mouse.

One specific line evolved a mechanism for keeping itself warm, but shunned feathers. These mammals as we know them today possibly started off as something resembling rats and shrews. They evolved into many-many shapes and sizes, one of these being primates. One set of these primates came off trees and started living on the ground. They started walking upright. A bigger brain evolved and so did social structures; acquired the ability to use tools; developed language and the ability to solve problems. Also, mastered, as Sher Khan said, Fire.

This mastery of fire changed a lot of stuff. It gave warmth. It afforded protection. It allowed one to cook.

Fire must really have had a tremendous impact on the wear on proto-human teeth in those early years. Food was tender now. Gathering fruits and roots was good, but now one could make stuff out of it. no longer would one be stuck with greens alone.

Fire made agriculture possible. Earlier, if one grew wheat, one would have to be a cow to eat it. Now one could cook into any number of things.

As they say today, fire, was a game changer. And it is in respect for this most stellar of human achievements it is that I DO NOT EAT SALAD. I do not want to negate the grandest achievement of mankind. I am the culmination of billions years of evolution. I am human and proud of it."

I had only asked the guy if he'd like some salad.

A Kingdom Lost

Rewind to your days of single-dom when you were monarch of all you saw and your king-dom encompassed your apartment, your car, your music, your television, your refrigerator, your wardrobe, your bed, your couch.

You had free will. For instance, you could choose to sleep on the couch, a conscious choice. You had the bed available, but you chose (chose being the key word here) to sleep on the couch.

Fast forward to marriage-hood. The kingdom has been lost, the lands taken. The couch is the equivalent of 'naughty corner' for you. The last place where le Resistance is still about is the bathroom (provided you have secured the door from the inside). And even here the barbarians are at the gate. Almost immediately. And (almost) continuously from the moment you go in. Or when she realizes you are not be be seen and must have taken refuge in the loo.

The interrogation starts with the innocuous "Will you be long?"

The first few questions in a polygraph test are designed to put you at ease.

“No, I am almost done.”

“How long will you be?”

At this point of time you feel you need to exert your independence. “I just got in.”

“You shouldn’t take too long. It’s not good.”

“I am not taking long.”

Pregnant pause till both parties consider their next course of action. The small stack of books on the sill next to me lies forgotten. I am furiously thinking of what to say next in order to gain those precious, few, additional minutes of peace. There are only seven pages to go in the chapter. This truth will not fly.

“I know you are reading. Why don’t you read here in the room.”

“I am not reading (I return the book to the stack). I would read in the room if I wanted to.” And if I had been permitted to do so by the things-that-need-to-be-done-around-the-house list. In the house, 'reading' has the same social status as 'loitering'.

“What are you doing then?”

“What do you do in the bathroom?”

“You possibly can’t take that long. Have you any idea what the time is? You’ve been in there for half an hour!"

I used to fall for this one. I call the bluff. “No. It hasn’t been that long.” Two can play this game!

"Seriously! How long has it been then?" Damn! She calls my bluff!

“It’s been 12 minutes,” I lie. I am not sure how long it has been. I always forget to note the time so I can substantiate my argument with facts.

Pause. A quick re-evaluation of strategies. I pick up the book again and get through a couple more paragraphs.

"Are you ok? I think you should see a doctor?”

"I'm fine"

Another breather after this flanking attack.

Beginning to end, this inquisition via the door lasts from between 12 to 23 minutes and it is accompanied by a knocking steadily gaining in peremptoriness and the voice gaining an edge. As if a drummer were setting the rhythm for the siege. Bring out the battering ram.

My replies, of course, are irrelevant. Whatever I say, will most likely be unable to impede the question next in sequence.

In fact, the last few question-phrases from "What are you doing there?" to "Are you ok?" give the feeling that you are an errant child who has managed to lock himself up in the bathroom but false pride prevents him from admitting his mistake and wailing for help.

You are plagued by "What ifs.." What if the lock is indeed faulty..? What if you have managed to lock yourself in..? Just like your son frequently manages to lock everyone out. What if all these fears are true..? How would you face the world ever again? This last refuge would be compromised forever. It would begin an era of an open-door-policy where you would need to whistle as you sat enthroned so people knew that the King lives (Long live the King).

Her devious plan has succeeded there is now doubt in your mind. With doubt comes the fall. There is but one way to exorcise these demons of doubt: the spirit of science takes over, you test the lock - move the lever and turn the knob. And the stand is over. The castle is taken. The King is dead. Long live the King.

It is incredible that a woman who has the patience to feed a child three spoonfuls of rice in lunch for an entire afternoon loses patience after 17 minutes of bathroom time by the husband.