Child Friendly Bollywood songs for viewing

 I have small kids - girls - and they like Bollywood Numbers. The higher the tempo, the better. The problem is that once they have listened to a song and begin liking it, they want to see it. Yup, if you have small kids and want to give them a healthy body image in later life, your plan is already screwed what with the constant messaging everywhere they get about thin=beautiful, fair=beautiful, less clothes= sexy/desirable. So, I am reluctant to let them watch the videos until they are older and can understand why the Bollywood industry panders to the male gaze and now more and more to the female gaze as well. But, now as they get older, the struggle to keep them from the TV is real and on going. 

In any case, I am trying to compile catchy beats that are child appropriate (read - less skin show by both male and female actors) , and now that is almost impossible, then at least, songs that have no titillation, kissing, overtly-sexual content, inebriation - excessive drinking/drug consumption,  etc. Also, while, we are at it, why don't we have a age rating system for music videos/movie songs that has to be compulsorily displayed before the song is shown on TV?

These are the kind of songs seem okay for 3-6 year olds:

1. Dol Bhaje and intro song (Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam)

2.  Shava Shava  and Bole Chudiya( Kabhi Kushie Kabhi Gham)

3. Pinga (Bajirao Mastani)

4. Ghar More Pardesiya (Kalank)

5. Radha Kaise na Jale (Lagaan)

6. Naacho Naacho (RRR)

Do you have any additions to this list? 

A child-less world : The future?

Jokes and memes aside : India's population grew tremendously between the 1930's and 1970's when those governing woke up suddenly to the fact it was growing at an alarming rate without concurrent resource growth and began devising policy to control it. Tubectomies, Vasectomies were touted. Sterilization targets were given to states by the centre. International aid was sought and supplied. "We two ours two" became a policy in India towards reducing the fertility rate towards replacement levels of population growth , which we are almost at now - that is- 2.1 fertility rate from more than 5 in the 1950's. China went a step further and mandated a strict "We two ours one" policy in 1980 which was only withdrawn in 2016- because the demography was getting screwed, and even then, the policy withdrawal came after many, many internal calls from population scientists for ending the policy over the course of several years.  

Now to the other side of the coin - Who wants to have kids these days? Either people across the world are getting super smart and learning from the experiences of others or people are automatically becoming less enthused by the idea of becoming parents and not having much between the sheets action. In fact, discounting a few northern states, fertility rate is actually below replacement level in most of India. And so our population may stabilise in the 1950's and then begin to decline is what Indian population experts are saying. 

My current interest is in what happens when people refuse to have kids? This phenomenon is already happening to some extent. For various reasons : I don't think I'll be a good parent. I am too focussed on my career to take care of a kid. I don't really like kids. I'm not good at marriage and I don't want to be single parent. And so, me, coming from a small metro city in a still developing country, know personally, people who say the above things. So, this is a real thing. At some point more people will say the above things and less people will be willing to have children than the ones who don't want kids. 

Countries and politics can induce people into having kids by giving freebies (Child allowance), more time off work for parenting, etc - like several European countries do. But still, people are just not willing to have children or most have one child and so politicians are encouraging skilled immigrants. As people see that having no kids or fewer kids is rewarding, more and more will opt for that lifestyle. Then what? What will happen to a small country when there are hardly any people now and will have none in the future. This is not likely to happen in my lifetime. But this is a scenario that may play out in the next few centuries. (Provided we are not hit by a massive meteor, huge tsunami doesn't drown half the world, etc etc. 

If everyone has just one kid or less, then what happens? The world population goes into a gradual decline like China's policy affected their demographic spread. More people would be older and less would be of working age. Then eventually as population dwindled further and further, cities and towns would get abandoned as governments would work to concentrate the resources better to provide for those cities that were still occupied. Like there are more unmarried men available compared to unmarried women in China and India, there might be sex ratio issues in the reverse. 

So clearly this one kid per every two people is not really a good idea. This replacement ratio seems to work better. But it would mean that population would remain the same as it is currently : Every two people have 2.1 kids  (That 0.1 is to account for those who die off before reaching reproduction age) . And the population that is currently on earth is 8billion odd. (Happy world population day btw). That does not seem like the right number. There is rampant poverty in a lot of places. There is malnutrition. Lack of access to healthcare. So that is not the right amount to people this earth can support. Then what is?

Nope, there is no magic number. But whatever it is that scientists and experts postulate is far lesser than 8 billion for sure. Some say 5 Billion. Some say 2 Billion. Some propose a range : Between 500 Million - 5 Billion. And so we are back to Thanos :-) Clearly this earth is overpopulated. So this population reduction policy that India is following "We two ours two", while not ideal, is the best we have got. So I say we stick to it. The problem comes when every country is trying their own population control or are implementing a population growth policy at very different times. 

By the way - Nigeria's the new China and India. Their population is set to grow very fast in the next few decades. So clearly my dire predictions of abandoned cities will not come to pass soon. We and China can always invite people from countries which have too many people to come and populate our dying cities and towns in a couple of 100 years, eh? 

Tiger-Mom or Push-over Mom?

Now, as kids, we all thought we could do better than our parents. Come on, didn't you tell yourself at least once, "If I had a kid, I would deal with the kid completely differently compared to these idiots."? Or some version of that? Especially when beaten by our no-issues-with-corporal-punishment parents' generation? Never the sparing rod 70's, 80's, even 90's parents? 

Turns out that effective parenting is not as easy as we thought it was, just like most adult responsibilities. 

Where do we draw the line between guiding a child and forcing a child against his/her will? That is my question for the day. My older kid is strong willed, and my younger one is worse. 

Most kids don't have good decision making skills  - this is a fact. Mostly because they live in the now. Study now play later - is lost on them, because later seems too far away. Getting them to do home-work itself is a chore, depending on mood, subject, the teacher's personality ("That Mam is so mean" or That mam is angry all the time, I don't like her) or  "I wanna watch TV" demands, etc.

Sending them to extra-curricular classes : this is my current parenting issue. What is a reasonable demand vs an impossible demand? Sending them to one/two classes per week seems to be reasonable to me. Since these classes are scheduled bang in between their play time, it seems to be impossible to them. 

Is it fair to the child to force him/her to learn a skill against their will? If they cry and protest, won't their mood and attitude affect the learning outcomes? Just because he/she cries and makes a scene, shouldn't  I, being the older, responsible adult, looking to the long term, force him/her to attend the class? 

Where should I put my foot down and where shouldn't I? Questions, questions. Sigh. 

The compulsion of the first baby and the choice of the second

I am now mother to two children. As I see a lot of my peers going through a choice - of whether to have a child at all, or two, or in rare cases, three - all valid and right choices, I wonder about the factors that drive these choices.

Free availability of money is clearly a factor as is parental or in-law support for the raising of children , especially for working mothers. Not to mention, physical ability to have one of course - this is an issue as old as time - fertility. And mental fortitude to actually raise the child/children one has, instead of running off to Kasi or to a far off relative's house, to an isolated tropical island - which all mothers and fathers get tempted to at some point, depending on the weight of their purse.

In the way I see it, for most Indians of the child bearing age, the first child seems to be almost a compulsion - the biological imperative - to reproduce and propagate the species - though they don't think of their choice to have a child in those words, for sure. The intense need to experience motherhood (and Fatherhood too, though it is less articulated) feels very real , personal and an independant animal in itself, to be explained in such prosaic terms such as "propagate the species." The woman or man, doesn't ever think that that is indeed what she/he is doing- for the intense need to have a child is a very selfish , personal expression of themselves - such is the way the individual mind is designed to fool itself so that the species benefits. How devious is nature or God, huh? ( What ever designed life according to your belief system).

But, the interesting thing is the choice to have a second child. It is hard to predict which way a couple goes as far as having a second child is concerned. People who grew up happily with siblings most likely make the choice to have another child. People who grew up as single kids feel that they weren't denied anything special and make the choice to stop with one. Going through a few more years of sleepless nights is not something anyone decides about lightly, especially in this day of easy living. As a generation, most of us din't do hard labour as children or as teens outside or even in our own homes, and raising a small baby, especially the first couple of years, is indeed hard labour. And who wants to sign up for that unless absolutely necessary?

As we all look for reasons to make ourselves feel letter about the choices we make, this Covid-19 lockdown, has shown me something that I always felt to be true. Imagine keeping a single child occupied for 3-4 months inside the house! I see my friends, colleagues and neighbours with single kids. And I see those children growing more and more isolated in their homes. How much of the parent's time and effort goes into making sure the child stays engaged and not getting upto naughtiness or just getting stuck on the TV or Laptop or phone screens?

 But, we made the choice to have two. And now, they play with each other, talk to each other, engage each other in conversation. And my work in making sure the house is not a prison for them is cut in half. They have each other, as playmates. They have each other to learn from. They have each other to fight with and make up with. And hopefully they will grow up with each other and enrich each other's lives. And we, my husband and I, never need fear the lockdowns or the quarantines or even the bunkers, as far as the kids are concerned.

Mommy trials - Is breast the best?

I have read a lot, I mean, a lot, of parenting websites before giving birth. I thought forewarned is forearmed and so read everything I was recommended about pregnancy and parenting. I was full of facts and figures about pregnancy, pre-term labour, symptoms of pre-eclampsia, views of both the camps in the epidural or no- epidural debate (I'm a wuss about pain, guess what I chose?) , chances of cord-wrapped-around-neck - you name it- and I had read something about it.

But when I got to being the mommy part- after my child was born, I was stumped. I guess this is a malady amongst women of my generation, of these years, in the early Twenty-First century, give or take a couple decades depending upon the stage of development(read access to the internet) in the country. We get to soak in information by the Mbps full, we just don't think about what such a life-changing experience will actually do to our lives.

I see that younger girls in any family are better prepared because they see the older ones go through this. But most families have one or two children at most and so, most girls, are girls with no immediate woman family member go through the process of emerging motherhood in front of their eyes after they are grown up enough to appreciate this.  So they go through this process for the first time by themselves with no benchmarks/goal posts/I'm so fucking this up - in sight. But that is different story for a different day.

My main problem happened with breast-feeding - but it is not the problem itself that is my issue. It is the die-hards I had read before who had been insisting that this is the only way to parent- breatsfeeding or no feeding at all(starving baby will learn to latch on) road- and whose voices are the most stringent in the online motherhood, babyhood, early days, etc portals. I was so taken in by their argument, that I had, in my best intentions towards my as yet unborn child and worst inexperience with little humans and how they never do what you would reasonably expect them to - and hence the problems that might come my way, insisted that I would not buy and take a bottle and formula to the hospital along with all other supplies.

Alas, my child just would not latch on. No matter what I tried. Throw in hormones, tiredness from the pushing the 3.8kg baby out, and the bleeding and the soreness due to the stitches - oh yeah, the worst parts in the "What to expect while expecting" are all true. And I tried. So hard. I met three lactation consultants and was pushed and poked and squeezed - oh yeah- another thing they don't tell women who are about to be mothers- nope, breasts are no more about sex or sexiness- they are now baby-nutrition-machines and all sorts of women will take amazing liberties with them - nurses, doctors, visiting aunties and grandmas, servant maids, basically almost every woman who has been a mother and can claim to be an Indian, thinks she's an expert on breast-feeding and will try to help. By suggesting ways to hold baby, ways to put breast into baby's mouth, how to keep it there, how to stop a baby who won't release its hold, etc.

 We, my baby and I, eventually overcame our latching issues - but only after weeks of tears (Oh, why won't the baby latch on?) "Its been a whole day, we have to feed the baby something" to weeks of pain ( Where is the nipple-cream??? Arghhh), Let's try nipple shields, Breast - Pumping? Nope,  nothing works, to overflow problems ("I'm leaking again, where's the baby?"). We went through the whole gamut along with loss of hunger and hair(for me- the kid was just fine) due to the stress, the blues, the doubting Thomases, more blues, the breast-squeezing-and-shoving-it-into-baby's-mouth aunties, hassle of getting the birth certificate, sitting down and getting up, etc

Which is why I say - screw it! Is breastmilk good for the child? Undoubtedly. Is it necessary? Nope. Is formula easier? Yes. Is sterilising easy? Nope. Highly time consuming, monotonous, and if you don't do it right- the bottles become petri dishes. Want to do a bit of both types? Sure, why not? But if the kid gets too attached to one way, you can't get it to switch ways easily.

Any way you chose is likely to be stressful, and there is no right way. In all this stress, you only lose out on the sweet, innocent, beautiful baby's first few days, which will never come back.

Just pick your way, don't stress, and most importantly, don't judge a woman who picks a way different from yours and force your way down her throat or more aptly, down her baby's throat.

Baby happy and healthy? You are set.

Happy motherhood ladies!