Reagan steps out to buy medicines in Mumbai under lockdown and sees four guys eating kebabs

Following up with our TidyBytes' #micropod, Reagan steps out of his house to buy medicines and finds four guys eating kebabs and drinking beer. The uncrowded streets are a reminder that Mumbai is under lockdown because of Covid19. #pandemicdiaries

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0xOL8b5I6UQdt2hHZZHV4y?si=ckCRFb9IT32nVwxJkxNyhA&utm_source=copy-link

Recollections: Headhunting in Borneo, Skulls as Trophies and an interview with Janick Gers of Iron Maiden

 In this episode of TidyBytes, Eisha talks about visiting headhunters in Borneo. Reagan discusses how skulls were collected as trophies till as late as World War II and association of the skull with heavy metal bands such as Iron Maiden. Reagan recollects an interview he conducted with guitarist Janick Gers a few years ago when they released the album The Book of Souls and we have excerpts from that interview about the band and their music. 

TidyBytes by Reagan and Eisha: Our venture into Podcasting

Reagan Gavin and my new venture, #TidyBytes, is a set of very short #podcasts, which we call #micropods, where we will talk about #music, #movies, #nature, #science, #books, #spirituality, #experiences, #places, #art, #travel and notes from our personal #journals that we've scribbled over the years. Here's Reagan talking about walking to #BNHS to get bananas while #Mumbai's under lockdown because of #Covid19. We're exploring the possibilities on #Anchor by #Spotify. Let us know what you think.

#pandemicdiaries #india

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7lplGDkrT19nZDBaLTLhoG?si=RvnTZVPLSN-Ps_KkUTn3uA&utm_source=copy-link

On why we could be in a Richard Linklater film: Reagan Gavin and Eisha Sarkar

He: You met everyone I know, you spoke to everyone I know, except me!

Me: I saw you typing with two fingers of a broken arm and did not forget you for fifteen years. Stood behind you, one hand on the back of your chair and your nose buried in the keyboard

He: Why didn't you tap me on my shoulder?

Me: I did not know what else in your body was broken 🙄

(Big pause)

He: I would have finished the page in 15 minutes and we could have talked

Me: I waited fifteen years to start that conversation 😀

Reagan Gavin it seems like we are in a Richard #Linklater movie 😀😀

#twinflames #twinflameunion #after15years  #RealLifeStrangerThanFiction #himandher #beforesunrise #beforesunset #beforemidnight #movies

Feelin' Faint: Twin flame talks with Reagan Gavin and Eisha Sarkar

Out of the blue:

Reagan: When did you faint in college?

Me (thinking): How does he know?

Me (aloud): I didn't faint in college. I almost fainted on the train on my way back from college. I had eaten only an orange all day

He: I used to eat only a bar of chocolate sometimes

Me: Yes. Perk or Mars. Lab stressed me out, especially Life Sciences, so never had lunch before it in entire first year. Sometimes, I would eat a samosa or a plate of Hakka noodles

He: Samosa or Maggi for me

Me: When did you faint on the train?

He: 1999

Me: 2000

He: The coincidences never end

Me: When I was about to faint, my friend asked me a very pertinent question at the most inopportune time, "Are you seeing red or are you seeing blotches of white, yellow, red and green?"

He: When you faint you don't see anything, just white noise and blank

Me: 😀 😀

#xavierscollegemumbai #xaviers #mumbai #canteen #collegetales #memories #fainting #twinflameunion

Jobless Jackass and the Pizza Delivery

Job Talks with Reagan Gavin and Eisha Sarkar

He: I had once gone for a job to that book publishing house

Me: How was it?

He: They gave me a ballpoint pen and paper and asked me to write

Me: What did you write? Haiku?

He: No yaar. Who writes with ballpoint pens? You know me. I have a collection of classic fountain pens. I am not going to write with a ballpoint pen.

Me: Maybe you should have carried yours. 

He: How was I to know they would ask me to write 300 words on the relationship between an author and publisher with a ballpoint pen?

Me: At least they gave you a pen. For my Mumbai Mirror test at TOI, they gave me a pencil. 

He: 😀😀😀😀

#HimAndHer #JobTalks #publishers #penandpencil #fountainpenfans Reagan Gavin

“When a five-year-old boy called my three-year-old son his enemy,”

Recalls Eisha Sarkar, a communications professional, and in this piece, she reflects on her journey as a parent and describes incidents, books and literature that helped her chart her own journey through motherhood.

 https://thegoodstoryproject.com/2021/04/15/when-a-five-year-old-boy-called-my-three-year-old-son-his-enemy/

“You said Ronnie is your enemy,” eight-year-old Rahul shouted to five-year-old Siddharth in Gujarati who was plucking mulberries for my three-year-old son, Ronnie. Siddharth handed over a ripe, black mulberry fruit to my toddler and then sat next to Rahul outside a bungalow’s gate. “Ronnie is my enemy, but his mother is standing here so I decided to help her get mulberries from the tree,” Siddharth told him. I opened my mouth to say something but then my little boy came running towards me giggling and we walked away from the two boys.

Three days before this particular exchange between Siddharth and Rahul, I watched in disbelief as Rahul pinned Ronnie to himself by grabbing his hands and Siddharth scared him by making monster faces. My son was getting very disturbed. I asked the boys to stop and let him go. They obeyed immediately. Why did kids as little as eight and five think curious toddlers were their enemies who needed to be punished or scared away just because they ran amok and touched or smiled at everyone? Did I attempt to explain to them that it was Ronnie’s way of getting to know people? No.

Usually, I don’t intervene when the children play. We don’t live in a gated colony in Vadodara but in a loosely formed society where there are more senior citizens than young children. With Covid 19 restrictions in place, schools, nurseries and playcentres shut, this is the only form of socialization I can offer to a curious toddler who wants to know the world around him. I want him to interact with children of all ages and different backgrounds. For most part of the half-hour of play, I am a bystander, watching him make his way through the pecking order. The older girls are very welcoming. The boys not so much. Some occasions require me to get in the middle of their play. When my toddler disrupts a game of cricket or badminton by running onto the ‘pitch’, I have to carry him off with him wailing and writhing in my arms or I have to step in when the kids play rough.

When I narrated these incidents to my mother, who has over a decade of experience as a schoolteacher in Mumbai, she warned me. “Don’t let the older children bully Ronnie. You must come to his rescue. Don’t stand there and wait until they push him or something. The moment you see them behave in a way that is disturbing him, act. Be involved. That’s what parenting is about.”

Parenting hasn’t been easy. During my child’s first eight months, I suffered from post-natal depression. Rather than opting for counselling what I ended up with was streams of visitors, relatives and friends who would drop in to see my baby at any time of the day or night, often without asking me if I was okay with it. It drained my energy, along with long breastfeeding sessions and sleepless nights, to such an extent that I didn’t want to spend an hour a week talking to a therapist. Many people gifted and suggested books, right from Heidi Murkoff’s What to Expect When You Are Expecting during my pregnancy to Time Life’s Your Baby’s First Year to Skinny Bitch Bun in The Oven by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin to old copies of Reader’s Digest which had articles about babies and Tarla Dalal’s cookbooks. A zillion links to blogs and articles about parenting and babies were WhatsApped to me.

I read some of them and they did help me deal with issues of diapering, feeding, cleaning, nutrition, sickness and exercise but I also needed a book that would guide me through the day-to-day conflicts of raising a multicultural child in a multicultural household. I am agnostic and Bengali by birth. I have no direct connection with Bengal, having lived my life in New Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Brisbane, and Vadodara. I studied in Christian schools and colleges and have friends from diverse communities. My husband and his family are traditional, religious Nagar Brahmin Gujarati with roots that run deep in Saurashtra and Vadodara. Often, the conflicts at home revolved around food, language or how a sick child should be treated.

Thankfully, now a book like that is available. In Raising a Humanist, authors Manisha Pathak-Shelat and Kiran Vinod Bhatia write, “Accepting something that is ‘different’ is not always easy. We often look with suspicion at people who seem different, who (have) a different lifestyle or culture or who have a different way of seeing the world. Realizing that we – parents, teachers, family members, and other adults – are responsible for sowing seeds of bias and prejudice in the minds of young people can be unsettling, especially when we love them and care for them. As a result, most of us refuse to evaluate our stake in the process of raising children who are biased, intolerant, and scared of interacting with others who are different from themselves. Also, many of us are unaware of our own personal bias towards other individuals, belief systems, practices and processes.” While I believed that I was more secular and liberal than the Gujarati part of my family, after reading the book, I realised how haughty and prejudiced that assumption is. In order to bring up a child who accepts both cultures, I need to be less biased towards the other culture in my own household.

While leafing through the pages of the book, I revisited the play scenes in my head and discovered that, as the authoritative figure, I had left the field without telling two young children what they had done wrong, that they should have been gentler when they played with my toddler. The next day when Ronnie saw the boys coming towards him, he first got scared and then aggressive. I calmed him down by laughing and telling him that they were making monkey faces. Humour cuts where anger doesn’t. The word, ‘monkey’ did the trick. The boys stopped at once. Then Rahul tried to grab both Ronnie’s hands and pin him down. Gently, I asked him, “How would you feel if someone were to do that to you?” He immediately let Ronnie go. “Good!” He smiled at me and took Ronnie’s hand. For the next forty-five minutes, the three boys played with each other as if nothing had happened. That’s the beauty of childhood.

This incident also says something about the power and potential of books; of finding voices and approaches that help you in your journey as a parent. Sometimes, it could be just a line, other times, an entire book.  

If I were to leave you with some of my personal favourites – books that resonated with me and continue to do so as I grow as a mother, I would suggest looking up:

·      Time Life’s Your Baby’s First Year, which is the most no-nonsense practical book you can find

·      Becoming by Michelle Obama, if you want to learn how to strike work-life balance as a mother

·      Tongue in Cheek - The Funny Side of Life by Khyrunnisa A., if humour is the antidote you need to alleviate your anxiety

Everyone approaches parenting differently and there is so much to learn and unlearn, and if you have curated a reading list on this topic, please feel free to write back to us with your thoughts.

Names of all the children have been changed to protect their identity

 

Eisha Sarkar is a writer, educator, designer and peacebuilder based in Vadodara, Gujarat and has worked extensively in the fields of journalism, education, peacebuilding, design, documentation and international relations. She became a mother in 2018 and currently has the toughest job on her hands – trying to get her toddler to obey her instructions.

This photograph, used for representative purposes is by William Fortunato from Pexels.com

Portrait: Reagan Gavin

Reagan Gavin asked me to make a portrait of him in my own style. It has been ages since I have painted so here it is in print, oil crayons and acrylic paints on paper. Run your fingers on it and they may cut. Unlike most artists, I want people to touch my canvases.

New Door Design from Old Toddler Books

New Cartoon Series: Cellar Talks By Eisha

Culture Talks with Reagan Gavin and Eisha Sarkar

Me: Who wears a Rolex nowadays! 🙄

He: Exactly. It's so 80s. My father worked in Kuwait and once he came back with a Rolex and at that time it was like, "Yes, I've got a Rolex."

Me: And did he get the bottles of Scotch too in the suitcase?

He: Not Scotch. It's Skaaaach 

Me: 😂😂😂

He: You know in Portuguese they have a word for the five-litre bottle with a handle. It's called garrafa. It's almost like a jug

Me: Ah yes, I know that

He: So the friends would come in. There would be roasted and salted cashews and Skaaaach. 

Me: That sounds a lot like the cantonment life in Pune

He: And... There would be Engelbert Humperdinck. You know Engelbert Humperdinck?

Me: Uh... Yes but no.

He: That and Jim Reeves

Me: I listen to Jim Reeves' Christmas album sometimes

He: 😀 In Konkani, the word for sleep is "jem". So it's not Jim Reeves, it's Jem Reeves 😀😀😀 And oh yes, Pavarotti. They'll put you to sleep

Me: 😀 You know, Pavarotti in Bengali means bread

He: 😂😂😂😂

#HimAndHer #LaughterInTheTimeOfCorona #Goan #Portuguese #Konkani #Bengali #Bombay #Pune #languages #cultures #watchandScotch