I know I should really get going and work on that decorator’s post about lighting in a home, and I will do that soon-ish.
This month of August has left me drained, with all these holidays, parties, birthday parties to attend…taking the toll out of the introvert that I am really. So instead I will tell you about a little craft project I did recently:

The inspiration from this one comes from a craft ideas book I bought last Summer for Ishita and I to keep ourselves busy. The problem with that book is that there are many way too cute ideas that I want to do on my own, like this sticks garland or mobile. The original one just shows sticks stringed together, and nothing else, I added wooden and jute beads to mine, first because I didn’t have enough sticks to make a long enough string, and then because I might as well use the beads since after 2 years it is clear enough I’ll never fix that necklace that broke and I haven’t even missed said necklace at all (until recently I didn’t even remember the existence of these beads to be frank).

Ishita did help me a little, first by not objecting of my using the sticks in a bundle of sticks she gifted me last January. Then by handing me the beads as I went putting the whole thing together.
To do that one you need to fold a wool string in two, put a bead at the end of the two strings, then place a stick, knot it into place, slide the two strings inside the hole of another bead, knot another stick and repeat until you have the desired length. I used a plastic ring left from one of these Kinder Joy surprises that Ishita likes to hold for 15 seconds before moving to the chocolate bit of the treat. Some of the elements make good craft supplies…at least I tell myself that not feeling good about throwing all that useless plastic.
With the sun making more regular appearances I don’t think that the purple jute covered beads will stay purple very long, but the mobile is cute and is part of my goal to make the balcony a bit more of a relaxing space. DH and I are still debating what kind of seating arrangement we want there and so far the choice is between iron chairs, bean bags, floor cushions, or cane chairs…and we still haven’t really settled on one idea or found something we really root for.

As stated on my Facebook page for those who follow me there, I intended to write about the Rakshabandhan festival yesterday, but it was a school holiday, which meant my priorities were all sorted out, and a short night of sleep meant that by the evening I just didn’t feel like writing. So I’ll do it today instead.
The festival in question took place yesterday, for those not familiar with it, it is traditionally a festival that bonds siblings and during which sisters tie a thread around their brother’s wrist in exchange for protection, the brother in return give her a gift too.
Ishita having no sibling, should in theory send some rakhi (the name of the thread bracelet) to her cousin in Delhi and Lucknow as in India first cousins are assimilated to brothers and sisters. But we never do it, mostly because we always forget to plan enough in advance, and then because we see said cousins about once a year and the bond they share is not a strong one, if we were living closer we probably would do it.
I have another reason not to be very hot about doing it, and it has to do with the feminist streak in me. I, like many of my friends here in Mumbai (Indian friends by the way) tend to feel the festival as it is should envolve, we for the most part are mother of girls, and we don’t feel the message Rakshabandhan in it’s traditional form is a very nice one. It basically tells that girls need to ask protection for their MALE siblings, and enforce from an early age that a woman needs a man to fend for her and that this world isn’t meant for lonely woman. In the sight of the skewed perception of women in India, the rise of crime against women, we all feel we don’t really want our daughter to feel they need a brother for protection. We also discussed how the protection aspect became a bit ridiculous when the sister is much older and tie a rakhi to her baby brother who can’t even walk yet.
One of my friend commented that as a child she always felt very left out of it all having only one sister as a sibling, so they used to tie rakhi to one another to celebrate a mutual sibling bond. A version of the festival that is more and more gaining popularity in today’s India it seems. The other aspect that my friends do find more and more bothersome is the commercial aspect, a brother receiving a rakhi has to give a gift back, in the past it used to be money, a box of chocolate, but nowadays the stake a raising, it’s clothes, jewellery, designer gear, and even electronics such as mobile phone and tablets that are marketed as the perfect gift to give your sister.
The simple rakhi thread that was costing a few rupees a piece has now turned into a massive commercial affair with costlier designs, some encrusted with precious stones, some with cartoon characters (my friend ended up buying Angry Bird rakhi for a school function). I saw some battery operated ones with the cartoon character twinkling when you press a button. The whole thing leading me to think that if the sister did go buying a pricey rakhi, the return gift’s value should match it…not a very nice message either. Beside call me a party pooper, but I think sibling bond is something that should be celebrated everyday, and yes I think the same about Mother’s day, Father’s day and Valentines, all three Western world festivals I really don’t like at all, for the same obligation to gift and celebrate something that should be celebrated quietly all year round through thoughtful little mutual gestures.

To make sure no kid is really left out of the festival, and to teach them about their cultural heritage, schools usually have festivities a day before the actual day (which is a school holiday). it always seem to involve sending the kids dressed in or ethnic wear or party wear to school. Last year the teachers made rakhi with the kids and they paired a girl and a boy together, tying rakhi to one another and ate chocolate. This year I was told to send Ishi in ethnic wear, along with two rakhi, boy were told to bring two chocolates. The girls tied rakhi to two boys, they got chocolate in return. Ishita told me about how boys were brothers and girls sisters. And how exited she was to have gotten some chocolate. I think I would get exited about chocolate more than a rakhi tied on my wrist myself too, and since Ishita only got one chocolate in her backpack I have a feeling the boys did  want to eat some too.

What is clear to me is that the day we give Ishita a sibling, if it happens, I will want them to celebrate the festival as a mutual sibling bond regardless of their gender, and certainly not the “women need protection from men” aspect of it.

Sorry for the lack of update, August is all out to kill me with public holidays Ishita’s school has, holidays that of course are for the most part optional for DH. So these days I have one day a week with no school, errands to run because the school asked for specific outfits and items to be brought to celebrate said days, and the chores I have to do at home pile up while my energy to even think tackling them shrink.
So with this disclaimer, here is what we decided to do on Sunday morning a week ago.
DH heard of a bookstore in South Mumbai called “Kitab Khana” and wanted to check it out (we are book nuts…if you haven’t realised that already), so the plan was to go early in the morning, stroll on Marine Drive, have a breakfast in one of the cafes in Colaba, and then head to the bookstore before heading home.
We did it all according to the plan, no big twist in the plan.
Marine Drive even early in the morning still feel a bit sterile to me. It’s big, imposing, but always bland, I visited that place at several time during the day, and while I see potential for ice cream and chaat corners there are surprisingly not much, in the afternoon you can take a horse carriage ride along that stretch, there are a few snacks vendor, but coming from a country where we practically worship the outdoor and see a shore promenade as an opportunity to laze and eat food al fresco the instant the weather become pleasant I find the potential of Marine Drive in Mumbai seriously underexploited. Early in the morning that promenade is invaded by marathon runners in training, fitness enthusiasms and the healthy lot. As much as I love to walk this big crowd of spandex clad things running, huffing, puffing and jumping jacking around made me feel like I was committing a capital crime just strolling around in my cotton kaftan and leggings, these people who are out at 8am are taking working out super seriously there.
I turned my back to them facing the ocean and went crab watching with Ishita..ha!

We then headed to Colaba causeway, and had breakfast at Cafe Mondigar, nope not Leopold’s which is a few yards away. Continental hearty breakfast menu, quirky cartoons on the wall, cute plates, and a distinctive old world’s cafe feel.
Then we walked, and walked, and at one point DH said : “Wow look at the size of that sidewalk”

Now bear in mind that we were there on a Sunday morning at around 10.30am, there is no traffic, no noise, no crowd. Should you visit the Colaba and Fort area during a weekday you will have a different picture, the road will be jammed with traffic, sidewalks will have more crowd, and a few stalls selling stuff as well. But despite all that it still retain some of that old charm you can only find there. South Mumbai has still lot of the colonial architecture remaining, and when you look at this picture above it looks very London-esque. Walking there without the traffic noise you would get during a busier time of the day let you imagine a less fast paced era,, when pedestrians still mattered, time still had a human value, and a time where people didn’t have so many gadgets and screens to keep them busy and away from a stroll on a big sidewalk lined by trees.
When I am in that area it never fails, I always end up wondering what life must have been when the city still had human proportions, wasn’t disfigured by flyover and chocked full with cars and smoke from being simply saturated with people, a time where the area I now live in was a Jungle and South Mumbai was called Bombay with people not having to wonder where the city end and where the suburb started. Because that’s what this city was at one point, busy but not frantic, a commercial nerve of the British Empire, and of early Independent India but still contained to human proportions. Now we have Mumbai, aka maximum city, that has suburbs that spread on distances as long as my good old lake of Geneva, packed with twice the population of Switzerland. A city of long commute, little free time, high real estate prices, tiny living quarters, a city of extreme contrasts in every senses. A city that at time feel like it’s more likely to eat you alive, in which it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, prone to agoraphobia. A city that make you feel like you are pretty much just there to work and sleep, sleep and work. A city where at time it is really easy to wonder if it is actually designed for human beings with human needs to actually live in it.
A trip to Colaba always end up recharging my batteries a little, sidewalks like the one above making me feel that yes there are still areas in this huge city that were meant for people be human and move at a human pace.

And then I end up wondering if people from that other distant era would still recognize the city today. How much of it was lost in the chaos of modernisation?
And while I was thinking that, my daughter was whining like a typical 4 years old fed up with everything saying “Mama I want to go home” The very think I used to tell my parents when they felt like strolling the old city on a Sunday in Geneva…sigh!

Today, I’m blogging as part of a blog carnival idea initiated by my friend at American Punjaban PI. The theme is “The West has no culture” and each participating blogger adapt the title to reflect their own country or region. And prove that it is not true at all.
I have heard it way too many time…we people in the West have no culture…and I have heard it from Westerners no less. While some people in India tend to stereotype me as a Westerner (with ideas taken form bad TV and their perception of AMERICAN culture as a world wide standard applicable to the entire “West”). I am yet to hear any of my friends in India utter the phrase “The West has no culture”, they seem to be clear about the fact that the West has indeed a culture, much different from theirs, and no less interesting and vibrant. Many also asked me if Switzerland is having a different culture than the better known US culture that reach India via the media.
The big “bad” West is actually made of many cultureS (emphasis on the plural here), differing from regions to regions, and in tune with a country’s personal history, and so here are some interesting things about Switzerland, country I was born and grew up in.

- History lesson first, Switzerland started as an Alliance between 3 cantons to unite against Austrian’s tyranny in 1291. The legend said they met on the Grutli pasture in early August vowing to stand up for one another. They signed what is known as the “Federal Charter of 1291”. This pact isn’t marking the independence of Switzerland as a nation, they only got it in 1499 after the signature of the Basel treaty. The Observation of August 1st as a National day has been decided in 1891 when it was celebrated as such for the first time, there was no widespread national celebrations before that, since the 1291 Charter had no exact date of signature, just signed “early in August”. It became an official national public holiday in 1994, the initiative for it to become so started in 1991 on the 700th anniversary of the confederation, and as with every initiatives had to pass in votation before being implemented. The national day is celebrated and organized by counties within a canton, each have their own, and in true Swiss cultural way it’s communal, in open air on the public field, people get together, sing, dance, eat, drink and talk. At dusk kids take part in a paper lantern procession, and a giant bone fire called “Feu de joie” in French is lit while the Mayor of the county recite the 1291 Charter and conclude with all singing the National Anthem, the bone fire is the signal our ancestor decided upon to warn each other of trouble in their provinces after the pact was signed. Geneva joined the Swiss Confederation on December 31st 1815 only, before that it was an independent city State.
Archaeologists found ruins and vestiges of civilization in Geneva dating as far as 11000 BC.

- Switzerland has States that are predominantly Roman Catholic, and others that are Protestant Christian. Geneva became after the “reform” the Rome of the Protestants, with many Protestant Christians fleeing France which is still a Roman Catholic nation.
You’d think that festivals in Switzerland would be steeped into religion the country having started coming into existence in the middle age under Christian stronghold. But it has retained a lot of pagan and Roman (yes as in Roman Empire) traditions. Bacchus, the Roman God of Wine and Winemaking, patron of Vineyards owners is still associated today to the Grape harvest festivals taking place all over the Vineyard areas of the country in the Fall. Switzerland celebrates a massive “Fete des Vignerons” (Vineyard masters fest) every 20 years or so, the festival is steeped in Roman Mythology.

- We still have a few well preserved Roman ruins in the country, and probably inherited the concept of public bath or thermal springs from them, with a few cities still having the name “les bains” (baths) in the name and a Thermal pool complex associated to them. Now affiliated with hospitals as these hot water springs have health properties and are recommended in physiotherapy rehab treatments, as well as treatment of old age disorder such as arthritis, loss of mobility, and loss of coordination.

- Christmas is celebrated much differently than in the US which is the version most know. Those following my blog know about our cookies that are still very rustic looking and done without fancy Icing and all. But There are other thing about Christmas you should know. Santa is NOT part of the Swiss Christmas, no gifts and goodies in kid’s stockings or shoes to be found in the morning of the 25th. Saint Nicholas is the one that does that, on December 6th, and while being a “Saint” who should technically be only celebrated by Roman Catholic areas, it is celebrated as big in Protestant areas. The folklore is coming from the Germanic myth of Odin on Which Christianity grafted itself in Germany and immigrated into Swiss culture that way due to our being affiliated to the the German Empire until 1499.
We celebrate Christmas on December 24th at night, when family members all gather around the tree they light together (we used real candles until the 90’s on trees), kids normally should sing Christmas carols or poems learned in school, thought that tradition has been dying, then all exchange gifts, before heading to the dinning table for the Christmas eve meal. Turkey is not a Swiss traditional dish for the festivity, it is more common in France, and is done on occasion in French speaking areas, but we usually have something roast, pot roast, chicken roast, ham…served with mashed potatoes, and steamed vegetables, the meal is actually not that fancy, the ingredients are simple, what makes it festive is the fact that the dinning table is always decorated for the occasion, with pine tree branches, candles, and other holiday trinkets. The dessert for that day is always a “Yule log” which is a tribute to the pagan solstice Yule tide log, that has prevailed through the ages, the original log was a real wood log thrown in the fire, we now eat it, and it is basically a Swiss roll cake covered in butter cream flavoured icing to look like a wood log. December 25th usually sees a Christmas lunch for some, exchange of gifts with family members you didn’t see on the 24th, but in no sense as magical and festive as the Christmas eve atmosphere. On January 6th we celebrate the “Epiphany” eating a “3 Kings crown bread” in which a ceramic or plastic token in the shape of a king is hidden, who finds the king in his bread bit is crowned king of the day, recent versions also include a Queen token and a queen is crowned as well (probably an effort to minimise dram in the typical 2 kids Swiss family), the tokens became more creative as the year passed, and some bakeries will hide gold plated ones in their bread. And ahem ahem…Disney Characters token.

- For some odd reason we only celebrate Mother’s Day but Not Father’s Day, kids do handmade gifts in school for their Mothers. Valentines Day is a an adult celebration, I heard from my American friends that kids exchange Valentines in the US…no such things in Switzerland, this is the worst time of the year to be single too as they make you feel like you are a disease of the society for thinking it is a good idea…I never liked that festival, single or not. We don’t do Halloween, it’s not part of the Swiss culture. It came as a US import in the 90’s with some throwing Halloween parties at home and going to Halloween pub nights, but there is no trick or treating of kids dressing up happening. I happened to know an American lady in an expat forum who thought it would be celebrated everywhere and felt the full blast of culture shock at that time. We don’t do teacher’s day or Friendship day either.

- Geneva has a special festival on December 12 called “Escalade” which means climb and refers to the attempt by the Duke of Savoie troops to invade the city in the night of December 11 to 12, by raising ladders against the moat and fortification walls in 1602. A insomniac Genevan walking by the walls noticed them, raised the alarm, the men of the city were mobilised, and took the Savoie troops by surprised foiling their invasion plan and winning the battle overnight. We celebrate it with kids dressing up in costumes to school, then going door to door in their neighbourhood singing the State’s anthem in exchange for candies and small monetary sums, a vegetable soup is usually cooked by the teachers in school and served to kids and parents on that day, and a chocolate hollow cauldron filled with marzipan shaped like vegetable is smashed by the oldest and youngest of a household or party while they scream “and so perish the enemy of the republic”. The cauldron is a tribute to a lady who during that battle panicked at seeing invaders trying to break into her house. She went to her stove, picked up the cauldron of slow cooking soup that usually stew overnight, and threw the pot and it’s scalding hot content out of the window on the men trying to break her door. We still have a historical parade with people in traditional costumes of the era on the weekend the closest to the actual date taking place too, a massive even that you can’t miss if you are a tourist in the area at that time.

- The Swiss culture is a highly community driven one (surprise my Indian friends who thought the West was not community oriented at all), after all the country started coming into existence and form itself as a confederation from the 1291 pact that was signed as an alliance of people against an oppressor. All Spring, Summer and Fall long you will find open air festivals in a county or another, to celebrate harvest, togetherness, a local association, club or very local event. A big tent is now usually pitched, but the tables under and around that tent still go by the old medieval design: big wooden table top set on V shaped supports, the whole thing is foldable long benches are placed all around the tables for people to sit, no chairs, benches, you sit with you neighbours in a communal way, each county is to have their stock of such table that get set for each festivals, including the National day. A wooden stage is erected under the tent where folks music will play, the local fire brigade volunteers are almost always in charge of the barbecue booth, there are drink stations, pastry booth, tombola booth, kids games booth…each booth held by a club or fundraising association, the benefit of the sales of everything goes to fund the county’s various activity clubs, the firemen association, and charities. Elementary school children celebrate the end of the school year in such a party, they parade with their entire school around the country, then get the Mayor speech about the importance of education, a commemorative item is given to each kids to symbolize their “graduation” from one standard to the next, the parents are of course part of the celebration…anybody in the area can sit and eat at that party, they are public, and encourage people to meet and socialize…the tradition is age old and was the Facebook of its time, and still prevail today. From May to October, it’s impossible to get bored in Switzerland, these county fairs are everywhere.

- Folks arts are still pretty much alive in the country, might not strike as obvious, but with the amount of village fair, county fair, harvest fair, we have to have enough entertainment for these. Folks music bands, marching bands are still going strong. And so are popular choir. Most of my American friends associate choir with church and religious music. We don’t really do these in Switzerland but we do have popular song and folks song choirs. A lot of schools have their own, and it’s compulsory to attend, my elementary school was one of these, we practiced whole year round, for the choir recital at the end of each year, and every now and then a State wide school choir convention. This grooms kids into being adult choir material…and yes I sang in a choir as a grown up for a couple of years myself. There is a national Choir festival every 3 years if I remember well, with Choirs from all over the country gathering in one host city for a couple of days of small competitions, free concerts, and yup you guessed it…county fair atmosphere with tends, food, and drinks shared in the community.

- Such festivals aren’t limited to Choir, there is a National Gymnastics Convention taking place the same way every 3 years, and yes like most Swiss kids I got enrolled in Gymnastics for a couple of years before my mom realised that the ground and I would never rally be best of friends. There is a National Shooting Festival taking place every 3 years too, and despite us Swiss not really being world champion at it, Shooting is apparently the National sport…no no it’s not Tennis, or Sailing (Two sports we are known to win into).

- We have one week of school holiday in October that is still known has the “potato holiday” even in cities…the reason? In rural area and in the past, kids were freed from school duties to help harvest potatoes in the field which was before the arrival of machine an intensive work.

- The Carnival and Mardi Gras is done in Catholic areas, but not in Protestant ones. In Basel the “guggenmusik” troops which are drumming and trumpet marching bands wear giant Papier Mache masks with silly and scary faces on. Guggenmusik is however a carnival thing in all carnival areas of Switzerland. Carnival is celebrated before the period of Lent. One Pagan tradition that grafted itself upon the very Christian festival is the “burning of the Winter man” since Mardi Gras usually occur around the end of Winter, people in these area in Switzerland usually burn a big paper figure of man symbolising Winter and the people of the land being fed up with it and wanting better warmer days to come. I even have a feeling that Lent made sense then as toward the end of the harsh Winter the stock of food in the pantry might have been quite low and people panicking at the idea of being without food before the good days would let them sow new food stuff and the necessity to go easy on the food.

- Swiss are outdoorsy, very outdoorsy, we don’t do indoor unless we have no choice. The Mountains being a hostile element, I suspect it was all in our interest to adapt to their fury and learn to live with them, their cycles, their seasons, their temper. The local folks literature is full of tales of mountains imposing their wills on locals. Mountain area are a challenging terrain: avalanche, landslides, floods, the risk of being cut out from the valley forced people to be self sufficient. People in the valley always live near to the mountains, in Geneva they were all around, they are imposing watching upon us. Not mastering our environment not being used to react to the nature around us is still pretty much ingrained in the communal consciousness as being stupid. Schools organize compulsory week long field trips to the mountains, in the Fall to hike and learn about the fauna and flora, in Winter to learn how to deal with the snow (skiing on it mostly). In cities office goers itch the whole week to escape the concrete and go back to connect with the green land, we hike a lot, cycle, ski, sail, if it’s not pouring down or snowing silly we are out there. We grill food on a bone fire, we pack our back packs with food for the hike, we all know our survival 101…How outdoorsy the Swiss are is something that puzzle DH still. I still pretty much go crazy being cooped up in a flat in India and even came up with the term urban claustrophobia on days it drives me insane enough. DH don’t see what’s so great about being even in a park just walking around.

- Swiss also tend to be non bragging, we don’t like display of power and wealth much, as I said previously it’s a communal culture, and people that place themselves on top destroy the community. Community was absolutely capital to our survival against the elements (remember it’s mostly a Mountain land with very little area that can be devoted to mass agriculture), the lack of space to grow grain, the constant threat of landslides, avalanche, and floods (yes floods…we have lots of lakes and rivers) mean that people need to unite. And not only that, also need to understand where personal space starts and not invade that. I’m not saying we don’t have super rich people, or celebrities, but if you are careful to notice they are usually very involved in the community life and usually humble. We as a people also have the tendency to want to avoid conflicts or play mediators in one…which is probably were our famous label of being a Neutral country comes from. And again the founding stone of our entire culture and country is the spirit of community (again can’t emphasise enough 1291 marked the time people stood up for one another against a common enemy and vowed to help each other).

I could go on and on about it, but that would make for a way too long blog post…this post serve to prove that not only is Swiss having a rich cultural heritage (which again regular readers of my blog should have noticed already), we also have a much different culture than the American culture that is perceived by too many as the ultimate Standard in Western Culture.

This past Saturday was “Mom and me talent show day” in Ishita’s school. A special even day to encourage parents to get involved in their kid’s school activities, which I personally think is amazing.
Like most other moms I prepared something simple with Ishita, and we sang “Wheels on the Bus”, like most kids Ishita was not entirely up to the idea of performing. Then toward the end of the even, a lady came in the front with a saxophone around her neck, and a drum for her son to play, and I thought: “Wow you don’t see many saxophones around in India, much less played by women” and was eager to see what this lady would play for us.
her son refused to play feeling suddenly shy, so she ended up doing a magnificent solo performance, and what stroke me immediately was that the music she was playing was Indian music, on an instrument that is mostly associated with Jazz or blues music, and her way of playing sent a chill through my spine.
Once her performance over, the teachers were kind enough to tell us more about her, informing us she was one of the two “Saxophone Sisters” who were part of the show “India’s Got Talent”, and showed us a you tube video of one of their performances on the show, which I already shared on my FB page, and you can go check there, the video features the same piece the lady has been playing for us in the classroom.

Curious about them I went looking for more, and they are the only two duet female saxophone players in India, playing a mix of Carnatic, Jazz and Indian fusion.
Here is another video of their time on India’s Got Talent with a little more about their background and story :

I was blown away by that performance in Ishi’s school, and so were all the other mothers, and other kids, Ishita was completely fascinated by the instrument alone, asking me what this was, as this is not the type you usually find in picture books. Even in the West it is one of these that is associated with just one genre of music and not heard much outside a jazz band.
She made me think of Vanessa Mae who is famous for having shown the world that a violin is not just a classical music instrument, and took it out of it’s “comfort zone” to play some other music on it.
And the last place you would think of finding out about such a thing is at a simple casual optional school event.

I’ve been thrown in a whirlpool and all I seem to do these days is run from one even to another, or run shopping for one of the school theme days that are coming in huge number in the month ahead. So just this past week I had to go print a picture of Ishi and her best friend at a photographer’s shop because the school asked us to do so for Friendship day, I went reading a book as part of the BEAR program in her school, then the next day it was a mom and me talent show, followed by Ishita and me having to go shopping for some ethnic wear and a birthday gift for one of her friend, and yesterday was the Birthday party in question.
Now I started telling Ishita about that party when we got the invite during the week, she was clear that the party was on Sunday, but then what does that mean to a 4 year old? How long to wait until Sunday when it’s Tuesday…doesn’t make much sense at all to a little kid. Some manage to count the night of sleep left until the day, Ishita’s doesn’t do well without a visual aid when it comes to learning, so I came up with this:

The idea was that if she had a visual aid showing her the days of the week in order and got to move a token along to mark the days as we go she could start figuring it out better. For this little project all I needed was to head to our local stationary shop which is a treasure trove for all type of craft supplies and buy some foam sheets in different colour, double sided tape and use the 3D glitter paints I had home already. The Tape and the 4 sheets of foam set me at 50 rupees…which is pretty affordable (with still some foam and tape left for something else).
I cut 7 rectangles for the days of the week, wrote the names in pearly white 3D paint. The cut 2 strips in the length of one of the A4 sized foam sheets to make the “glider” strip, cut two hearts in another colour to make the strip look nicer, and then cut a big arrow shape for the glider. Glider in which I cut two horizontal holes to slide the strip through, then cut a small square in the blue foam to make a photo frame where I pasted Ishita’s picture with “fix all” glue from fevicol. I used the glitter and gold 3D paint to decorate each piece and when everything was dry, assembled the gliding strip and glider and pasted it to the kitchen door with the double sided tape, then put all the week days signs beside the strip, and voila!

Now Ishita just need to move the arrow up and down to mark the day of the week we are at each day, if a special event such as a birthday or a trip comes, all we need to do is take a simple post it note, write the name of the even or draw a picture and paste it next to the day it will occur on, with that in place she can see exactly how many days she has left if we are Wednesday and a party is coming on Sunday and make the visual connection she needs to grasp it. Not to mention that she gets to learn to “sight read” the days of the week with it too.

This week Ishita’s school had a week long program special in school called “Be Excited About Reading” or B.E.A.R for short. The concept applied only to the smaller classes where kids aren’t yet reading but need to discover how fun it is to open a book, the older kids in the school had another program called “Drop Everything And Read” (DEAR) during which a little time was set aside each day for kids to read a book of their own choice without being judged.
Since Ishita is a small child, she was of course in a class participating in the B.E.A.R program during which teachers took 30 minutes a day to read story books to their students, we as parents were also instructed to send the children to school with a book of their choice, and because in her school parental involvement is paramount they asked us to volunteer to come read books to the kiddos on Thursday and Friday. Which I of course did, because reading for fun is something that has to be encouraged and is a thing I support 1000%

As some might remember I did blog about how children books are seen in India, and how there is more choice in English kids books than there is in regional languages. I also pointed out that the concept of reading to your children is not yet mainstream in India with the antiquated notion that books are only existing to give a lesson rather than distract and trigger imagination. And the international board in Ishi’s school being far more personality development oriented than more traditional boards, a B.E.A.R program week made total sense. I would have thought however more parents would get involved in it.
I volunteered for today and was the only parent in Ishita’s class that signed up for it, and I am by far not the only SAHM in the parent stock. There was 2 other parents from other divisions that were waiting in the hall to get into the classrooms…and that was it! The circular sent to us at the beginning of the week also asked us parents to take the time each day to sit down with our child and read at least one book to them which of course is more than covered in our home with bedtime stories being ritual, and books being something we spare no expense upon. Ishita is exited at the idea of going to a bookstore, and we even have a library subscription she makes ample use of asking to go there every week. The idea of a kid’s room without a stocked up bookshelf is pretty much unthinkable to me. I grew up around books, grew into a bookworm, my parents gave no restriction on books as long as they were age appropriate, and I remember getting my library card the instant I could read on my own, being subscribed to the Mickey Book Club upon my request the instant the promotional leaflet came in the mailbox, and eagerly waiting for my two books parcel twice a month. Over the years I read “smart” books, silly one, soapy romance to kill the time at the airport, mysteries, scary stories, short stories, epics, books that looked so heavy they could have been a self defence weapon of choice, I didn’t finish ones that I deemed boring even though critics raved about them, I loved some critics pronounced sinisterly idiotic and not worth reading, I’ve read books that made book snobs snort, I’ve read books that made those around me call me a book snob…I’ve read under the blanket with a torch light past my bedtime, re-read certain books so many times they fell apart…donating some I though I would never read again only to have the urge to re-read it years later and have to purchase it again. But all this would not have been possible if I grew up thinking books aren’t to be fun and something to have around at all time from an early age. That’s what B.E.A.R is all about, and safe to say that from the look of this:

We are on the right path turning Ishita into a book lover for life…