Child’s Play – Akshara Rajaram

Location: Chennai, India
Step 1: Introduce the student to the surroundings and explain the scenario by using analogies like: This is a big bucket of water, just like the one you like to get into, after your bath.

Step 2: Do something which the student is very comfortable with e.g. take photos and very innoncently position the subject close to the water.

Step 3: Conduct theory classes by explaining the advantages of knowing to swim e.g capability to swim with the ducks, explore coral reefs in Australia, ability to rescue dad and mom etc.

Step 4: Introduce the student to potential classmates (Note: Classmates have to be carefully chosen based on similarity criteria such as height, weight etc.). If the student is introduced to the pot-bellied, big moustached next door uncle, the reaction of the student could be unpredictable.

Step 5: The first step, actually the first step towards the first step into the water.

Step 6: But appa told me that i can swim with the ducks.

Step 7(unexpected twist to the story): Student: I am so happy for the duck. I am glad that the duck can swim and enjoy. Let me sit back, relax and watch the duck.

Step 8: In goes the duck and along with it, the student. But, things may not go as planned. The student may realise that she has fallen for a trap and want to be taken out.

Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Scenario: Exactly the same!

Steps 1-4 repeated as above.

But, the student sometimes notices the repetitiveness of the attempts, decides not to cooperate and just settle down.

To be continued…

written by Rajaram S

Akshara is supposed to join the treehouse playschool today, but we are in Malaysia now and hence she had to “apply” for leave. What better way to start school than a 2 week leave!

written by Rajaram S

<For non-tamil speakers>Akshara seems to say “In the pretext of a function, i am being decked from top to bottom. Why cannot i be set free?”

written by Rajaram S \\ tags: function

Why do we name people? I tried to search around on the internet to find the history of humans using names, but i couldn’t find anything conclusive. According to one website

The history of names is so ancient that no one knows the beginning of the story. Since written history began, and as far back as oral history reaches, people have had names. It is therefore impossible to do more than guess at how the earliest given names were chosen.

Since everyone else before me had done it, i too had to do it. I too had to find a name for my daughter. As i had written before, choosing a baby name is not the easiest of things to do. i didn’t want my daughter to blame me later on for choosing whatever name i had chosen. We didn’t spend a lot of time on online resources or books, as we felt that they only add to the confusion. We were just randomly guessing out names and tried to store in memory the ones which were to our liking.

Two names which stayed until the very end were Akshara and Maya. i don’t remember how i got to Akshara, but we both seemed to like it. Maya was attractive considering the fact that it had some meaning or the other in almost all languages and it was easy to pronounce/spell. i had a fancy for Mayya (meaning water in Turkish) after hearing the song (Mayya Mayya) from the movie Guru. Experts might argue that even the words “Koyya Koyya” instead of “Mayya Mayya” in that song would have been appealing because it was Mallika Sherawat singing that song, but i tend to think otherwise. Anyway, mayya was soon thrown out of the window and maya too failed in comparison to Akshara.

When we came back home from the hospital, part of the decorations included a Kesari made by Murugesan & Bhuvana. When they came to know of our choice of the name, they probably made the assumption that we would spell the name based on pure tamil alphabets and not include letters for “sh” which have been imported into Tamil. That might be the reason that the cashewnuts on the Kesari spelt Aksara and not Akshara. Nevertheless, the kesari was tasty and some quick photoshop work fixed the issue.

Yesterday was the 11th day after Akshara was born and we had a small function. I didn’t quite understand the purpose of the function as all we did was keep Akshara in the center of the room and have dinner!

But, it seems that this was kind of the unofficial naming ceremony for Akshara. This function also included putting on many jewels on Akshara including something called a “Kaappu”. After a lot of fist-fighting, we managed to put on all the stuff on Akshara. She seemed to enjoy the attention, though.

written by Rajaram S \\ tags: function, home

Our friends had put in a lot of effort into decorating our home in anticipation of Akshara’s arrival. Our plan to check-out from the hospital changed 2 times because of some issues and both these times, our friends spent time on preparation. So, it was not only us who were relieved when we came home on Saturday 30th Aug, a week after Akshara was born.

We knew the sex of the baby earlier, but had not told anyone other than our parents. So, it was kind of a guessing game for our friends. Harish quoted his “grammathu experience” and had guessed that it would be a girl. He had maintained this until almost a few weeks back, when his guess was influenced by Anith’s confessions of overhead conversations between vidhya and me in our car. So, he changed his guess to that of a boy, which turned out to be wrong. Thanks to Anith, we managed to surprise all.

written by Rajaram S \\ tags: home