Thinking of you.............

I thought you boys would like this. It's something I pulled out of Osho's website when I was thinking of you. This is exactly how I see you when you fight and cry and play; I am awestruck guys. Really you have given me so much joy and it's not a la-la sentiment. It's a real thing like play dough- it's genuine. I always think of you as being able to do anything on earth. You are the trap. See? Marriage isn't. Neither is parenthood. Or your culture or your religion. You are the biggest trap of all and if you can get a little out of it the world will change for the simple reason that you did.


You are out of jail, out of the cage; you can open your wings and the whole sky is yours. All the stars and the moon and the sun belong to you. You can disappear into the blueness of the beyond....Just drop clinging to this cage, move out of the cage and the whole sky is yours. Open your wings and fly across the sun like an eagle.

In the inner sky, in the inner world, freedom is the highest value - everything else is secondary, even blissfulness, ecstasy. There are thousands of flowers, uncountable, but they all become possible in the climate of freedom.

Osho ..........Deadliest Poison and Zen… Chapter 6

Quote

"When it gets dark enough, men see stars,"

Emerson.

Books the twins are reading

Dirty Bertie

Ping won't share

Picture book

The kids force me to read book after book. It really makes sense that I got them to read earlier on, hope the love of books stays. Then they probably won't know what boredom means.

A poem to read

Discovered a poet-Adam Zagajewski. In case you want to know about it Peanut and Growl a poem for you(source-poets.org). I wanted to clap and I did after I read his poem about autumn. I really wonder if you will like poems. I'm saying this to the boys- it is a rare thing to like poetry. Of course I do not understand all of poetry but something of the melody makes sense to me.

Balance
by Adam Zagajewski
Translated by Clare Cavanagh

I watched the arctic landscape from above
and thought of nothing, lovely nothing.
I observed white canopies of clouds, vast
expanses where no wolf tracks could be found.

I thought about you and about the emptiness
that can promise one thing only: plenitude—
and that a certain sort of snowy wasteland
bursts from a surfeit of happiness.

As we drew closer to our landing,
the vulnerable earth emerged among the clouds,
comic gardens forgotten by their owners,
pale grass plagued by winter and the wind.

I put my book down and for an instant felt
a perfect balance between waking and dreams.
But when the plane touched concrete, then
assiduously circled the airport's labryinth,

I once again knew nothing. The darkness
of daily wanderings resumed, the day's sweet darkness,
the darkness of the voice that counts and measures,
remembers and forgets.

Old tales

I got the babies an edition of Chandamama. The kids like the pictures of monkeys and bears and elephants. They understand Chota Bhim more than they would Ben 10. Although animation standards in India are different, the children in my building love the simplicity of Bhim chomping his laddoos.

Understanding our ancient stories is a good idea. I remember how many stories my grandmother told me and how the poems I've learnt about sages and ethics have stuck in my heart and made me the kind of person I am. This time when I go back to my village for the festival break, I'll have to remember to get them some good epic books. Not many people invest in that kind of knowledge any more as the old people who know the tales are all gone. Wish grandma could help out but she's lost her hearing pretty much.

It's just a treasure trove that should be part of every school library. Story telling is strangely ignored in curriculum today- an art which has its roots and soul in India's past. I read some stories to the boys today- they paid some attention and then dozed off, chattering something about cars:)

Links,links,links

I was browsing the web for some websites for kids:

Upto10

BBC preschool

British council kids

Peep and The Big Wide World

Number games

more later..........................

Airplanes

The twins love airplanes. They can tell commercial planes from military planes and then they love the helicopters. So here is some clip art for them!

Click here.

Peanut watches the planes fly from our window. He climbs to the top of the window and gazes for as long as half hours at a time.

Today during those plane watching exercises I told Growl that he was called Growl on my blog, to which he said "Not. I'm Shah Rukh Khan!"

Film Shots

I read Lust for Life by Irving Stone last year and the reason I loved it had a lot to do with the way Irving Stone got into Van Gogh's mind and told us why he painted the way he did. Yes, I did cry when the book ended because it was really the story of two brothers more than anything else.

Today I stumbled upon the story of Theo Van Gogh, the great grand nephew of Van Gogh, a maverick film maker who was killed. The genius that he was he introduced something his contemporaries call the Triple Theo- where three cameras are used. One for each protagonist and one for the entire set.

Follow this link.

Know your Geography

Geography is a subject that is so relevant in this global village. This initiative by the National Geographic is ossum. Check out the Geography Awareness Week on My Wonderful World.

Peanut and Growl learnt a little about the planet earth yesterday. I talked to them about the planets and the magic bus ride story to the moon. They listen only when they want to. Right now I tried to get them to view the geography site but they wanted TV instead. I don't force them at all. They come around when they are in the mood which is usually close to nap time or late evenings after they get sick of TV(I'm working on half an hour of TV followed by breaks).

Reading the Paper

As parents we shy away from letting our kids watch the news. Why? Because the news is filled with violence. There are images of burning cars and blood splattered terrain after bombs have gone off. I ask the husband to change the channel. That is my solution to global problems- change the channel.

Yes my children are young. Yes they are impressionable.

But what of the children who are displaced? Who have seen infighting and untold misery? Should we tell our kids about those children or should we pretend that such a world does not exist?

I tell stories instead. Peanut and Growl, my boys, read the paper so often. They want to see every car advertisement they can get hold of. Occasionally, they see the picture of a poached elephant or tiger. Yesterday they asked me about Obama as he spoke glorious on screen. They tell me that the cars in a picture are on fire. They take violence in objectively. I try to keep them focused on cars and sports and positive news pictures but they seem to know already that the world is good and bad.

The point of this blog

I dedicate this blog to my twins. Right now they are three and I want them to be aware of the world. As a child I lived in my imagination to the point of being unaware of the world around me. It is bizarre but the trend continued and I want my kids who are not so oblivious to profit from the fact that that they have educated parents who don't want them to nail grades...far from it...I want them to learn about new things all the time.

So this blog is about things that I read, links that I think could help. I already write a personal blog, chronicling my twins.This blog is more specialist in that it deals with learning. No curriculum...just new things on an as and when basis.