Getting Your Kids Rooted – In Gardening

First published in a local Canadian magazine.

As a child, I would love to play in the mud, smelling it once in a while for its earthy fragrance. I helped my grandparents sow rice (paddy) in wet, slushy fields and loved every second of it. A few decades in, I am trying my hand at many things gardening – indoor plants, veggies, and flowers – I want to do it all now that I have the space and time for it.

I hope to inculcate the same love for nature and gardening in my son. He is four and loves to get his hands dirty. Every spring, we look for earthworms and talk about how they help the plants with essential nutrients and how worm castings, their excrement, is actually gold for soil. We look at butterflies and bees coming for our flowers in the summer and we talk about how they help pollinate. And we harvest our veggies together in hopes of showing him that one can grow healthy food in their own backyard or porch.

Why am I telling you this? Let’s face it. Our children’s lives are so much different than us boomers, GenX, or even millennials. Their health is declining. They are less active in many cases thanks to digital media and don’t have the luxury of just being out and about due to various reasons (the pandemic being one of the recent ones). The Child Obesity Foundation of Canada reports that by 2025, 206 million children worldwide will be obese. That’s a grim statistic.

 WHO says that the overall increase in obesity in the world, both in children and adults, is due to two main reasons:

• An uptick in energy-dense foods that are high in fat and sugars
• Physical inactivity

 And these are often the result of environmental and societal changes associated with the development and a lack of supportive policies in sectors such as health, agriculture, transport, urban planning, environment, food processing, distribution, marketing, and education.

Michelle Obama was motivated to start a garden to get more fruits and vegetables for the diets of her daughters, which would sometimes consist of dining out three times a week with occasional sandwiches for dinner (as many of us are guilty of). She also wanted to use her influence to encourage Americans to increase healthy food choices and educate children about the benefits of locally grown produce.

In February 2010, she launched Let’s Move!, a nationwide initiative to address the epidemic of childhood obesity by bringing healthier food into schools and communities and encouraging kids to be more active. 

Let’s look at another fact. The percentage of people who work in agriculture has dropped from 44% in 1991 to 26% in 2020, according to data from the International Labor Organization. That’s partly down to the growing use of agricultural technology, but it also points to a bigger problem: many people don’t want to work on farms anymore.

Age is a factor too. The average age of the Canadian farmer is 55 years old and most farmers are 55 to 59 years old (2017 Statistics Canada report), which is a worldwide trend. Many youngsters don’t want to get into farming because it’s tough to get financed, the climate is changing, urbanization provides better opportunities, and the cost of farming is high.

So what happens in the next few decades if we don’t have enough farmers?

Our children are the future, so what can we teach them to best prepare them? Giving kids the opportunities to build confidence, skills, and community connections is the key foundation of building a strong community in the long term. 

By using gardening as the means, kids learn about environmentalism and food security. Studies have proven that those who spend more time in nature are more likely to care for the environment. Learning by doing allows children to create lifelong habits, values, and skills that can help them make healthier and more sustainable lifestyle choices for themselves, their community, and their environment. 

How do we get them interested in plants and growing them? Here are some ways I am thinking of involving my son. I hope you can too.

1.  Microgreens – this is probably the easiest way to show how plants germinate and grow. Put some common seeds like mustard or beans in transparent takeout containers and let them see the magic happen. Within a few days, they will be able to see the roots grow and then see sprouts and seedlings reaching for the light. It’s a great way to teach them about the plant’s lifecycle, concepts like photosynthesis, and what plants need to grow.
2. Get them playing – kids love to play in mud and water. So let them. If you are preparing to grow something, let them take the lead. Show them how to turn the soil, sow, and water and do a fun chore. Also, show them worms in the soil. Earthworms and other microbes are essential to keep the health of the soil and provide essential nutrients. Get books about worms and teach them their importance. If their attention wanes, build a scarecrow or a windchime together – you get them engaged in related activity, and it also helps keep the pests away to a certain extent.
3. Reuse the sandbox – if the children have outgrown it, it is an excellent way to turn it into a garden bed they own. Make plans with them to decide what they will grow and help them execute their plans. Help them learn how their pocket money might buy them seeds that will give them ten times the produce. This teaches them about gardening and essential life skills like managing money, planning, and executing it.
4. Cheat a little – if time is short and you are busy, then cheat and get some seedlings from the stores. Take them along and let them choose which plants they want to take care of.
5. Unsung heroes, the pollinators – Pollinators are essential in the ecosystem to ensure flowers turn into fruits. Again get together and learn about pollinators and see them in action.
6. Harvest party – harvesting the plants or food you have grown calls for a celebration. Let them harvest the fruit of their labor and make a meal together.

All of this sounds easy, but every child is different. I made a little cheat sheet of what you could focus on based on your child’s age. I call it ‘Let’s talk about Bruno, no, gardening.’

Let’s talk about gardening.

Preschoolers (3-4)

Let them take the lead, don’t expect them to accomplish everything you have in your mind. Remember, this age is about having fun. Move mulch, catch worms, blow the fuzz of dandelions, pull a few weeds. Let them use what they ate like melon seeds and sow them in a pot or backyard. Don’t have all the answers to the million questions they have? Don’t worry, no one does. Library trips and watching videos about gardening are part of the journey.

Kindergartners (5)

Invite friends over, make forts, and hideaways – let the backyard or park become their learning ground. Explore different kinds of mushrooms or insects and keep the conversation going with your children and their friends. Let them take the lead on pruning and cutting, with supervision of course.

Elementary (6-9)

Increasing knowledge about math and science make gardening even more fun. Talk about buying seeds or seedlings, poring over seed packets to understand seed depth and spacing, nutrients in the soil and lifecycle of plants. Let them help you build trellises and fences. Take them to local farmers markets and farms. This age is still about doing, and not really the end result of all the activities, so keep that in mind and don’t worry when things don’t go your way.

Late elementary (tweens) and post that

Math, science, and art – gardening can also be a business. If they want to trade or sell what they are doing in the garden, help them. Let them showcase their learnings and skills in class projects. But as with anything with children, don’t force them into it. You have taught them the basics, now let them ask for help and guidance from you.

Year of the Garden – 2022

Communities in Bloom and the Canadian Garden Council have proclaimed 2022 as Canada’s Year of the Garden in honor of the Canadian Nursery Landscape Association (CNLA) centennial celebration. The Year of the Garden 2022 will showcase Canada’s diverse horticultural and gardening practices and hopes to create a legacy for a sustainable future through plants. Planning is underway for a year of exciting events, celebrations, and promotions that will take place in communities, schools, businesses, public gardens, and backyard gardens across Canada.

Roe V. Wade Overturn – A Sad Day for Women Across the World

The United States has gone 100 steps back w.r.t the fundamental freedom and expression a country should provide its women. And with that, it has destroyed decades of progress that women have made. What overturning Roe v. Wade would mean for thousands of girls and women is unimaginable. States will be free to ban abortions for any reason putting lives at risk. Restrictive laws and outright bans on abortions would make choices for women limited, if not wholly taken away – options that they should be free to make because we are talking about their bodies, bodies that carry the fetus. This may encourage many states to invoke trigger laws that ban emergency contraceptive pills and IUDs.

Every person who thinks abortion laws should be archaic hasn’t gone through the decision to abort. No woman decides to abort as a fun thing to do, and each abortion is a painful decision that one must make depending on circumstances and individual scenarios. And with restrictions on where they can do it, abortions, on the whole, will get riskier.  

I read this book a few months back called ‘Don’t Turn Around’ by Jessica Barry. It’s a fictional tale about two women – one who helps women cross state borders to take them to abortion clinics, and one, a politician’s wife who needs to get an abortion but is threatened with her life because of the choice she wants to make. And this book was published before Roe v. Wade was overturned.

And don’t even get me started on what this decision would mean for women in other countries and how restricting women’s reproductive rights may become more prevalent. Women don’t have fundamental rights in many places, and lawmakers and governments might take a page from the Roe decision to snatch away even more.  

It is a dark, dark, day for women’s rights and the work that has been done for so many decades. As a woman, I am probably just rambling about what this may mean, but there are thousands of girls and women in the U.S. right now who are making hasty decisions, shit scared that the state they are living in may make abortion a felony. My heart breaks for them, and I hope they find the strength to get through this.

The Henna Artist – Book by Alka Joshi

The Henna Artist follows the life of Lakshmi, an ambitious, defiant, self-made woman who wants to write a different future than what is given to her. A child bride, who is physically abused by her husband, runs away to the city. Her mother-in-law has taught her herbal medicine and an artist has given her some art lessons – both of these skills come in handy when Lakshmi begins a new life in Jaipur (after a brief stint in Agra), as a henna artist to the elite women of the pink city.

The story is set in post-independence India, where eastern and western ideology clashes were common. It describes how women in different strata of life coped with the power imbalance between men and women. And it throws light on a vital topic – unwanted pregnancies.

Many countries have legalized abortion, but there are parts of developed countries today that are regressing and passing laws that are not in favor of the women who have to endure the pregnancy. The decision, in the end, should be of the woman and no one else, and the systems should work in a way to best support that decision.

The story is gripping, and you root for Lakshmi for all that she has endured in her life. You root for Malik, an orphan who has helped Lakshmi and who, in turn, has clothed and helped him become someone. You despise some characters while you cheer for the goodness in others. Overall, I quite enjoyed the book.

What I didn’t care for in the book was the general portrayal of women in India and the country itself. It would have been very rare for children in villages to read English literature, let alone girls in the 1950s. So I find it a little convenient that the author put that in the plot. Also, the whole application of henna as a sensual experience is far-fetched, according to me. Yes, people do apply henna for functions and marriages but to have fun, not to enhance their sexual experiences. The plot itself is more like a movie, where every conflict is settled pretty quickly and everything and everyone is happy at the end. I also didn’t care for Lakshmi’s sister, Radha. But I guess she is the reason the whole plot exists.

In the end, the book felt a little superfluous to me. It was gripping and an easy ready but just surface-level.

For people who may not be able to travel to India and want to learn a little about the country through fiction, this might not be the best example of post-colonial India. There are better books out there for that.

See No Stranger – A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love – Book by Valarie Kaur

Valarie Kaur, born to Sikh parents, tells her story of life in America. Her Sikh roots (her grandparents moved to the U.S. over a century ago as farmers) enabled her to be a warrior – to fight for change, against injustice, racial hatred, gender stereotypes, sexual assault, and white supremacy. Her fight started with 9/11, but she felt the hatred and fear of colored skin even when she was a child. And she and her community still fight back after over twenty years, not with hatred or violence, but with revolutionary love.

What is revolutionary love?

Here are excerpts from the book.

Revolutionary love is the choice to enter into labor for others, for our opponents, and for ourselves in order to transform the world around us. It is not a formal code or prescription but an orientation to life that is personal and political, rooted in joy. Loving only ourselves is escapism, loving only our opponents is self-loathing, loving only others is ineffective. All three practices together make love revolutionary, and revolutionary love can only be practiced in community.

Loving others – see no stranger. Seeing no stranger begins in wonder. It is to look upon the face of anyone and choose to say: you are a part of me I do not yet know. Wonder is the wellspring for love. Who we wonder about determines whose stories we hear and whose joy and pain we share, who we grieve with, who we sit with and weep with, are ultimately those we organize with and advocate for. When a critical mass of people come together to wonder about one another, grieve with one another, and fight with and for one another, we begin to build the solidarity needed for collective liberation and transformation- a solidarity rooted in love.

Loving opponents – Tend the wound: an opponent is any person whose beliefs, words, or actions causes violence, injustice, or harm. The word enemy implies permanence, but opponent is fluid. We have a range of opponents at any given time, distant and near. Even the people closest to us can become our opponents for a moment. It is daring to put all these people in one big category, but it is useful, for whether our opponents are political or personal, persistent or fleeting, we can practice tending the wound- ours, and if it is safe, theirs. We can rage in safe containers to process our pain, listen to understand the contexts that enable our opponents to cause harm, and use that information to reimagine cultures and institutions that protect dignity for all of us. Attending the wound is not only moral but strategic: it is the labor of remaking the world.

Loving ourselves – Breathe and Push: loving ourselves is a feminist intervention: it is choosing to care for our own bodies and lives as a priority. In all of our various labors – making a life, raising a family, or building a movement- we can care for ourselves by remembering the wisdom of the midwife: breathe and push. We can breathe to draw energy and power into our bodies and let joy in, we can push through fear and pain to become our best selves, including through healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation. And in the most convulsive movements of our lives, we can summon our deepest wisdom and find the bravery to transition, undertaking the fiery and life-giving labor of moving from one reality into another. Laboring in love is how we birth the world to come.

Revolutionary love is practiced in community. Each of us has a role in any given time period we can all be midwives in this time of great transition period the future might still feel dark and unknown, and we might not live to see the world to come, but when we choose to show up with love, or labor becomes an end in itself. We can measure our lives not by what we produce, but our faithfulness to the labor. Revolutionary love is demanding labor, but it is also creative, transformative, and joyful labor – immeasurably complex and messy, tumultuous and revelatory, marked by wonder, and worth it. Revolutionary love is how we last.

The book chronicles how hate crimes have risen since 9/11 and how Sikhs, with their turbans, have been a prime target for violence. Over the years, it’s not just the Sikhs, but also people of color and religious institutes that have been targeted over and over again. Kaur says America is in transition.

But transition is an imperfect metaphor. There is no one point new society is born. We always find ourselves in the middle of a cycle. At this moment, you may be seeing around you earlier stages of a movement taking form. Or you may be seeing the president’s pen on a civil rights bill.  Often when you bear witness to the first, you will not be in the room for the second, but what matters is the choice to show up to the labor in front of you, with the specific gifts you have been given, to play your particular role. When we labor in love, we not only make future victories possible, we also begin to transform the world within us and around us, here and now.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Kaur demonstrates through her works as an activist how not to hold on to hate, and bring forth love. Revolutionary love is a practice that can transform a relationship, a community, a culture, and even a nation.

What I felt when reading the book

Sadness, inspiration, understanding, and life lessons – I was deeply moved by what Kaur says in the book. In the midst of a war between Ukraine and Russia, this book shows the readers the power of wonder – if only all of us could see no stranger but look at others and say: You are part of me I do not yet know. – would we able to avoid all the violence?

See no stranger has helped me imagine new ways of being with each other, and with ourselves – so that together we can begin to build the world we want to see. This is a must-read for everyone.

Life lessons – excerpts from the book

Wonder is where love begins but the failure to wonder is the beginning of violence. Once people stop wondering about others, once they no longer see others as part of them, they disable their instinct for empathy. And once they lose empathy, they can do anything to them, or allow anything to be done to them. Entire institutions built to preserve the interests of one group of people over another depend on this failure of imagination. Violence comes in the form of policies by the state and sometimes bloodshed in the streets. More often, it comes in forms that are hard to see, unless we find a way to make them visible through our stories.

Our minds are primed to see the world in terms of us and them. We can’t help it. The moment we look upon another person’s face, our minds discern in an instant whether or not they are one of us- part of our family or community or country- or one of them. This happens before conscious thought. Our bodies release hormones that drive us to trust and listen to those we see as part of us and to fear and resent them. It is easier to feel empathy and compassion for one of us, much harder for one of them. When one of us does something bad, we tend to attribute it to circumstance, but when one of them does the same, we attribute it to essence- oh that’s just how they are. We think of us as complex and multidimensional; we tend to think of them as simple and one dimensional. We are much more likely to intervene when we already see a victim of violence as part of us. We tend to stand by when people we see as them are harmed, whether by policies of the state or violence on the street. In other words, who we see as one of us determines who we let inside our circle of care and concern.

Stereotypes are the most reductive kind of story: they reduce others to single, crude images.

Grief is the price of love. Loving someone means that one day, there will be grieving. They will leave you, or you will leave them. The more you love, the more you grieve. Loving someone also means grieving with them. It means letting their pain and loss bleed into your own heart. When you see that pain coming, you may want to throw up the guardrails, sound the alarm, raise the flag, but you must keep the borders of your heart porous in order to love well. Grieving is an act of surrender.

Grief does not come in clean stages. It is more like the current of a river, sweeping us into a new emotional terrain, twisting and turning unexpectedly. In one moment, we need to cry and rage, in another we feel nothing at all. And in another we feel a sense of acceptance, until we find ourselves one day sobbing on the steering wheel of a car as a song plays on the radio. Grief has no end really. There is no fixing it, only bearing it. The journey is often painful, but suppressing grief is what causes the real damage- depression, loneliness, isolation, addiction, and violence. When we are brave enough to sit with our pain, it deepens our ability to sit with the pain of others. It shows us how to love with them.

Grieving together, bearing the unbearable, is an act of transformation. It brings survivors into the healing process, creates new relationships, and energizes the demand for justice. We come to know people when we grieve with them through their stories and rituals. It is how we build real solidarity, the kind that shows us the world we want to live in and our role in fighting for it.

Martin Luther King Junior said “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

Who is your sacred community, your sangat? You just need three kinds of people: someone who sees the best in you, someone who’s willing to fight by your side, and someone who can fight for you when you need help. Bring them together and you have created a pocket of revolutionary love.

Neurobiologists called oxytocin the love hormone. The more oxytocin in the body, the more care and nurturing mammals show for their babies. Oxytocin decreases aggression in the mothers body overall with one exception- in defense of her young, when babies are threatened, oxytocin actually increases aggression. For mothers, rage is a part of love- it is the biological force that forces or protects that which is loved.

Rage is a healthy, normal and necessary response to trauma. It is a rightful response to the social traumas of patriarchy, white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and poverty. But we live in a culture that punishes us when we show our teeth, we are called hysterical when we raise our voice; we are less likely to be believed when we tell our story with fury; and, if we were anything other than differential with an officer, we might get hurt or shot, and even then, our deference might not make a difference. Black and brown people have been schooled in the suppression of our emotions as a matter of survival.

The opposite of repression is also dangerous. Too many men have been socialized to unleash rage without apology. For men, rage is often a secondary emotion that masks sadness or shame. Violence is the socially conditioned default for male rage, and the proliferation of guns has made male aggression deadlier than ever. Suppressed anger always finds a way to explode. For women and girls, it is more likely to explode internally as self-hatred or stress or illness. For men and boys, it is most likely to erupt as violence against others.

How do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed? By Bell hooks

Toni Morrison’s novel Love: Hate does that. Burns off everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemies.

The more I listen, the less I hate. The less I hate, the more I’m free to choose actions that are controlled not by animosity but by wisdom. Laboring to love my opponents is how I love myself. This is not the stuff off saintliness. This is our birthright. Listening is also a strategic choice. The more I listen, the more I understand. I am persuaded that there is no such thing as monsters in this world, only human beings who are wounded.

Pain that is not transformed is transferred says Franciscan priest Richard Rohr. When we leave people alone with their pain, their alienation becomes the precondition for radicalization. But in listening to people’s pain, we can help them transform it.

How do we make these with beloved ones who become ghosts? The secret is to understand that a relationship with them has not ended even though they are gone. If haunting is possible in death, then healing is possible too. The dance is endless: the circle of listening goes on even after death when their voice becomes internal to us.

Forgiveness is not forgetting: Forgiveness is freedom from hate.

Sometimes reconciliation happens in the course of healing; Sometimes it does not. What matters is the insistence that our liberation is possible. Pushing together through healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation is the labor of revolutionary love.

“Each of us is more than the worst thing we have ever done. We are all broken by something. We have all heard someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent” – civil rights leader and death penalty abolitionist Bryan Stevenson. In tending our wounds, we show mercy to ourselves and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy to others. We are released from our attachment to punishment period we evolve our pursuit of justice from retribution- and eye for an eye- to collective liberation.

All that you touch, you change. All that you changes, changes you. The only lasting truth is change – Octavia E. Butler.

Love is more than a rush of feeling. Love is sweet labor- fierce, bloody, imperfect, and life giving. A choice we make over and over again. Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love. Anger protects that which is loved. When we think we have reached our limit, wonder is the act that returns us to love. Transition feels like dying but it is the stage that precedes the birth of new life. Progress during birthing labor is cyclical, not linear. It is a series of expansions and contractions, and each turn through the cycle brings us closer to what is being born.

The Lighthouse Witches by C. J. Cooke – Book

The Lighthouse Witches tells the story of the Stay family, who is spending the summer near a creepy lighthouse on a remote island called Lon Haven in Scotland. The lighthouse was used to capture witches/women in the 16th century. The rumors are that these women or witches cursed the village that had bloodlines wiped out thanks to wildlings – children of the village who disappeared and came back after a while, seeking revenge for the witch trials.

Liv Stay has three daughters, Sapphire (Saphy), Luna, and Clover. She was commissioned to paint the weathered lighthouse with a probable satanic symbol in 1998. The story also follows two other timelines – 2021, where Luna is an adult, trying to find her mom and two sisters who disappeared in 1998. She is surprised and ecstatic when she gets a call saying her younger sister Clover has been found. But when she meets Clover, Luna is shocked to see that even after 20 odd years, her sister is still seven years old!

The other timeline is told through an old diary written by Patrick Roberts in 1666. He talks about the actual witch trials in which his mom was one of the women who was captured and died in the trials. He had a friend called Amy, who is also an integral part of the story and whose mother was also one of the other captured women.

The book is really atmospheric and is excellent at keeping the eerieness of it all. Though it follows three timelines, the storyline is well-knit together, and you can follow on easily. The family dynamic is well captured between Liv and Saphy and there are other plot points that keep you guessing.

What I didn’t find that interesting is the conclusion – I felt that the story’s basic premise is where the author got stuck in a loop. While it is presented as a story of witches, it is actually more scientific than that.

Here are some questions I have had that I haven’t been able to crack. If you have the answers, let me know.

DISCLAIMER – SPOILERS AHEAD

• If the cave lets you time travel into the future or the past, how does it let you travel in the present, as a double or a clone of your actual self? How can there be two of you at the same time instance?
• Patrick’s diary says the captured women were innocent and were not really witches, so how can they have cursed the village? If they didn’t condemn the village, then did the time-travel-inducing cave exist before this period? I thought the science behind this time travel was not really connected to the witch trials. 
• Amy – I didn’t understand this one at all – if she had figured out the secret of the cave, then why didn’t she just tell Patrick? Also, why did Patrick think Liv looked like Luna – that arc seemed forced to me.
• I didn’t quite understand Liv’s line of thought – if she had a disease, wouldn’t you ensure you are taken care of or make plans to keep your daughters safe after you are gone?
• The police and child services not figuring out something is wrong and just handing Clover over to Luna is somewhat fishy. There had to be a missing person case or family history records showing that members of the Stay family went missing 22 years ago. It was a plot hole that I couldn’t get over. 
• What about all the murdered children? If there were many, why wasn’t the island more known?

While I had questions, I enjoyed the book thoroughly. It was also a great marketing tactic to launch the book around Halloween (2021). I am sure with it being an easy and fast-paced read, it sold millions of copies.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The circus comes announced. The sign that hangs at the gate reads:

Open at Nightfall

Closes at Dawn

What kind of circus only runs in the dark? The kind that is bigger than the workings of this world. The kind that has more than one world operating within its walls (think wizards and muggles from the Harry Potter books).

Where do I even begin to describe this book?

It is a hard book to summarize, but the story is simple. It’s a competition between two magicians to showcase their talents till a winner is announced, or rather, until only one player is standing.

Two mercurial magicians who started a game to prove each other superior in their magical craft many eons ago, choose their proteges as their newest competitors. It’s a proxy war – one’s own daughter and one boy plucked out of the orphanage. One possessing natural magic, and one that is taught magic in the most academic way. The competition between the two young magicians is fierce, the night circus their venue to showcase their talents. But years of pitting against each other, the rules of who the winner is, get murkier. And when love comes in the way, things get even murkier. Will Marco and Celia be able to let go of each other?

Erin Morgenstern weaves sparkling prose and complex narration to tell this simple story. Sometimes it is so convoluted that if you are not fully invested, you will lose track of what is happening. It is not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you are paying attention, it pays back tremendously.

You might even want to read it twice.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No color at all, save for the neighboring trees and the grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colorless world. Even what little ground is visible from outside is black or white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick.

Another one:

The circus looks abandoned and empty. But you think perhaps you can smell caramel wafting through the evening breeze, beneath the crisp scent of the autumn leaves. A subtle sweetness at the edges of the cold. The sun disappears completely beyond the horizon, and the remaining luminosity shifts from dusk to twilight. The people around you are growing restless from waiting, a sea of shuffling feet, murmuring about abandoning the endeavor in search of someplace warmer to pass the evening. You yourself are debating departing when it happens. First, there is a popping sound. It is barely audible over the wind and conversation. A soft noise like a kettle about to boil for tea. Then comes the light. All over the tents, small lights begin to flicker, as though the entirety of the circus is covered in particularly bright fireflies. The waiting crowd quiets as it watches this display of illumination. Someone near you gasps. A small child claps his hands with glee at the sight. When the tents are all aglow, sparkling against the night sky, the sign appears.

And another. I mean how poetic is this?

“I would have written you, myself, if I could put down in words everything I want to say to you. A sea of ink would not be enough.”

“But you built me dreams instead.”

That’s pretty much what I can say about the book – it is an experience you will need to go through to understand the beauty of the words Erin weaves.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of nine short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and has been featured in many top lists since. It’s been on my wishlist for so long and I don’t why I didn’t read it before.

The themes that Lahiri explores are love, loss, and the unfamiliar feeling of being in a new place, of being away from loved ones, of adopting and adapting to a new country as your own. Food is another common theme, it is like a souvenier, a bit of familiar that you cling to.

I could relate to so many of the stories as I, like many immigrants, sometimes don’t know where I belong. A country you are born in or one where you and your family have made a home? And I came back to the same questions that I have been asking for many years – what is a country? Is it just defined by borders? Why do we need borders in this day and age?

Lahiri explores the theme of identity in many ways. For immigrants, the challenge of exile, the loneliness, the constant sense of alienation, the knowledge of and longing for a lost world, are distressing. The children of immigrants are in a different boat altogether – they have strong ties to their parent’s home country and to the country they are born in, leading to the feeling of being neither here nor there.

I read in the author’s note that the title of the book came first to her and is inspired by a true story of an acquaintance who translated for a Doctor who had many Russian patients and couldn’t explain their ailments in English very well. And it took over five years for the story to take shape. As the name suggests, this short story is about an interpreter, who is in a unique position to be more powerful than the knowledgable doctor, who is at the mercy of the interpreter to understand and treat the ailments of his patients. But he yearns to be someplace else, to be making use of his English speaking skills in a better way, thus being an outsider in his own home country.

Another story that I liked was Mrs. Sen’s. The story is about Mrs. Sen, who is learning to drive in America. For a person who didn’t have much driving experience, I could feel the fear Mrs. Sen was feeling behind the wheel. I felt it when I learned to drive in the U.S. But that is the thing about living in a new country, it is like survival of the fittest – either you completely adapt or you perish trying.

A blackout forces a young couple to come to terms with their loss and their failing relationship. A Halloween night in the 70’s brings a young Indian-American girl to a realization that she maybe belongs somewhere else.

While most stories are about immigrants finding their place in America, there are two stories set in Calcutta. But they also tell the story of displaced individuals, from a place they called home.

Twenty years later, this book is as relevant as it was when first published. More people than ever are moving, by choice or by force, to find a life in a new country. Many move from their villages to cities owing to urbanization. And with each move, there is a story that exists – of finding your place and identity, of finding love, of loss and loneliness, and of everlasting yearning for what you left behind.

I highly recommend Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri.

The Clovehitch Killer (2018) – Movie

The Clovehitch Killer tries to delve into a scenario where a child realizes that someone they love is a serial killer. What does he do – turn their loved one in? Take matters into their own hands?

The Clovehitch Killer has taken a break – he has not killed anyone for the last ten years. The case is cold, the only evidence that cops have gathered are rope fibers that the killer used to tie his victims and the clove hitch knot that he left at the crime scenes as his mark.

We see the Burnside family, a devout Christian family – Dom, the patriarch, who seems to have a chronic back problem, Tyler, the teenage son, and Cindy (mom) and Susie (daughter). They are a god-fearing, devout Christain family, that goes to church, helps out in food drives, and has a good name in the community. But Tyler’s world is turned upside-down, when he slowly comes to the conclusion that his father may be the Clovehitch Killer. Dom confronts Tyler and puts the blame on his quadraplegic brother, Rudy and both of them burn all the evidence – which includes 13 driver’s licenses, photographs, blueprints of how the crime might look, and weapons.

Does Tyler believe his dad? Is Dom the real killer, or is he telling the truth about Rudy? The movie proceeds to conclusion with answers to these questions.

I thought there is not much suspense in figuring out who the killer is but the movie is more of a drama, showcasing how a serial killer can be plain joe hiding amongst anyone of us. The acting could have been better and the screenwriting could have expanded on how it takes a toll on loved ones when such a dark secret is revealed.

The Clovehitch Killer is a good, slow-burn drama-thriller and you can watch it on Netflix.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Kristin Hannah weaves this historic fiction with a firm eye on the women in war. What did they do when men were packed off to fight at the front? How did the women survive the atrocities pushed down on them? Why aren’t there as many texts and stories praising their survival stories?

Source: Good Reads

All these questions are answered in the book through the eyes of two sisters spanning many years before and during WWII. Vienne is the elder, the more mature and calm, Isabel – the opposite – unruly, impetuous, and a force of nature. Through the years of the German invasion of France, Vienne and Isabel deal with situations in their own way. Vienne is concerned about her daughter, her rainbow child, and the German officer who is staying with them in their chalet. Isabel’s personality doesn’t allow her to be a mute spectator, she wants to do more in the war. She journeys from being a courier messenger for underground French groups to inhibiting her fears, even more, to help over 100 Allied and American airmen escape France through the harsh Pyrenees mountain range (inspired by a true story of a Belgian woman). While Vienne understands love and how it changes people in war, Isabel is just beginning to understand how profound love can be with Gaetan, who is also a French resistance soldier.

The Nightingale does have inconsistencies based on continuation and is oversimplified in many instances (the real life of people, especially women, may have been 100 times worse than the author describes) but the heart of the book is about an epic story, spanning many years with grief, love, bravado, and the bond between sisters. While the book did go back and forth from the present to wartime which made it a bit confusing sometimes, the author, I think was trying to tell us how difficult it is for war survivors to even think about what they went through. Yes, it is melodramatic and heartbreaking to the point where I was shedding copious tears, but that is the beauty of books isn’t it, to transport you into a mind-numbingly evil time period and still be able to give hope.

I am not very knowledgeable about how accurate the portrayal of the war was, but I am a sucker for normal people being larger than life in stories, and I loved the portrayal of love, loss, and the human spirit. I definitely recommend this one.

Raising Boys to be Good Men

My dear son,

You are almost four and I hope you read this someday and know that your dad and I have worked hard to instill values in you that we think will make you a better human first, other things later.

I have known for many years that the responsibility of the parents with boys is far greater in today’s times. And when we became your parents, we were aware that we would have to teach you a lot of things that society will not or may teach you incorrectly. We have spent decades telling girls what to do, how to behave, what to wear, and how to talk, and we have put our boys in peril. Many have no clue how to deal with their emotions or act in front of the opposite sex.

In the last couple of years, we have had many conversations with you about kindness, gratitude, and sharing. We spoke about and have tried our best to not have gender stereotypes at home – we share most of the chores at home in the hope that you see there is nothing like a ‘job for mummy’ or a ‘this can be done only by daddy’.

But we realize that it is not enough. In this world of toxic masculinity and polarized opinions, raising you to believe in the equality of genders is just not enough. We need to raise you to be a vocal advocate for the less fortunate, the marginalized, and the different.

And I am so glad that we chanced upon this book. This opens up so many topics of conversation that I am going to look to this book and many other experts to wade through today’s unique challenges for boys.

Here are some conversations we hope to have with you:

• Express emotions. Teach you that expressing your emotions in any way is not shameful or embarrassing for boys. You need to be able to tackle your emotions first to be able to catch the curveballs that life throws at you.
• Do what makes you happy. We want to encourage you to pursue nontraditional interests and hobbies. Like you love to help out in the kitchen, and that is absolutely fine. If you want to take up ballet, that’s great. Ice hockey, we are behind you. If you want to dress up in a skirt like you did for this Diwali, that’s absolutely okay. You were so happy in doing that, and we would absolutely tell people who say ‘Oh why is he dressed like a girl?’ to take a hike. If you are happy about doing something, we support you 100%.

• Have a plan for internet and social media. God knows how we will wade through this but we hope to have a plan for you when dealing with social media. Bullying and unwanted/unreal sexual content are rampant and while there is no denying that you will be using the internet and social media very early in life, we hope to influence you to take up only the positive aspects and stories from these platforms. And if that means we monitor and keep track of what you see and hear, then so be it.
• Get controversial. Many times, you ignore the political outlook of friends because it doesn’t show what kind of people they are. But that argument doesn’t hold good today. If you are pro-guns or support people like Donald Trump, then sorry, we don’t want to be friends with you. We don’t want your children to be friends with our children because we know that all the good parenting can come all undone if you, my son, don’t keep the right company.
• Talk to you about consent. We have already started having this conversation with you and hope to make you understand that yes, consent is imperative. But it is equally important how you get that consent. Rape culture is prevalent today and it shames me to say that it’s largely the responsibility of parents of boys to put a stop to this culture. The book beautifully describes how consent is a topic parents talk about (sometimes), but nobody talks about respectful ways of getting that consent. You can not grovel, stalk, use force, or be in their way so much that they provide consent just to make you go away. It has to be wanted and enjoyed by both you and your partner. Similarly, we hope to teach you that if you have said no, then nobody can make you feel ashamed or bad about your decision.
• Platonic touch. Let you know that platonic touch is okay. You can hug your friends and relatives, be close to them, hold their hands, and sleep on the same bed. We hope to make you understand that there are different kinds of touches and that platonic touch by someone is okay. To give you an example, daddy helped a little girl get down from a monkey bar in the playground because the girl’s parents were not around but daddy felt awkward and scared and thought twice about helping her before he did it because of the societal stigma againts men touching young children. The world brands any touch by a man sexual in nature but it is not so. There are good people in the world too.
• Embrace differences. We hope you will embrace the differences of the company you keep and not mock or make fun of people who may be different from the majority. Like we learn in our book by Sujatha Saha, we are all different and it is okay to be different, it is okay to be you.

• Being born as a boy may be a privilege. That the world mostly doesn’t hold men and women in equal standing even today. That if you see any such instance of inequality, whether it’s gender or sexual or wage or power, you will have the courage to speak against this inequality.

We know this is a lot for you son and it’s going to get awkward at times, but we hope that the change we want to see begins at our home.

Book Review

I would recommend every parent to read this book – RAISING BOYS TO BE GOOD MEN by Aaron Gouveia. It’s simple, it showcases the unique challenges our kids face today and how to possibly solve them in a simple way.

Parents will not live forever but by talking openly to our kids, we can only hope that their world as adults is less toxic and more equal.

Excerpts from the book:

Toxic masculinity and tough guyism are on display daily, and we see anger, dysfunction, violence, and depression in young men who are suffocated by harmful social codes. Our young sons are told to stop throwing like a girl. They hear phrases like ‘man up’ when they cry. And just watch the bullying when boys try ballet, paint their fingernails, or play with a doll.

But we can treat this problem – and the power lies in the hands of parents. It’s not only possible to raise boys who aren’t emotionally stifled and shoved into stereotypical gender boxes; it’s vital if we want a generation of men who can express their emotions, respect women, and help nurse society back to a halfway health place. We can reframe manhood.

If we as parents don’t show our kids these truths, boys will fall into the lanes society assigns them as males. We don’t need to vilify the good parts of masculinity, but we do need to differentiate the good from a toxic culture. Strength is an asset, but force is often toxic. Protecting your kids is noble, but overprotectiveness to the point of discrimination and violence is toxic.

The changes we need to make may seem monumental and too numerous to count, but they are actually a series of small decisions that add up to a societal sea change. And to not sound alarmist, we are at a crossroads where the decisions we make from here on after will affect the paths we take. Men are killing themselves and each other at a sickening rate, and those who choose not to go down that route are being punished by one another and society for seeking the help they need. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy and a nonsensical downward spiral that we can only stop as parents vowing to raise their kids for a better future.

Giving boys agency to stop out of the insidious box we unfairly put them in is necessary if we are going to change things for the better.