Child’s Play – Akshara Rajaram

Laya was here sometime back to visit Akshara. Laya is Akshara’s cousin (Vidhya’s bro’s daughter!) and she is 2 months younger to Akshara. We wanted to take a picture of all the girls, Vidhya, Srividya (Laya’s mom), Laya and Akshara. 4 girls in one perfect photograph, that would have been quite an achievement!
After Vidhya and Srividya settled down to a comfortable pose, we had to get the kids looking in the right direction, into the camera. It was easier said than done. Since i was behind the camera, i needed help in getting the attention of Akshara and also someone else to make laya look towards the camera.
Below is the photographic story of the attempt. I am writing “attempt” here, because it remained an attempt until the end!

First, both the kids decided to look left.

Then, they decided to turn right. Can’t blame the kids. There was something so distracting there, that one of the moms also decided to turn in that direction!

Then, their gaze slowly moved down. Maybe, they were sizing up some guy from top to bottom.

By then, Akshara wanted to get things moving on and gave a menacing stare at Laya as if saying “Cmon, look at the camera”, but without realising that Laya was indeed looking in the right direction.

Laya somehow sensed the stare and not wanting to be left behind, decided to stare back, right when Akshara had finished her stare and started looking at the camera!

Now, both realised that they were fooling around and decided to pose properly. Alas, they missed their target by a few degrees, each in a different direction.

Enough was Enough. Each one was getting frustrated at the inability of the other to concentrate and pose. A face-off was unavoidable at this stage. It reflected in a mean stare at each other.

To prevent things from getting worse, the moms had to intervene and act on a peace-making deal between Laya and Akshara. Finally, as every known fable goes, they became friends, for ever.

written by Rajaram S

written by Rajaram S

written by Rajaram S

is a must, i guess, before you qualify to become a fully functional father! Well, without such knowledge, as I am currently, it is almost impossible to please the mother to believe that the baby’s room has been decorated enough.
For me, a well decorated room would mean that the pillow/cushion is in the place it should be, but for Vidhya, such is the setup she expects after the house has been hit by a tornado! So, after hours of forced manual labour, i was able to decorate the room to her satisfaction and I have to admit, it looked good.

Some photos from our room which has been converted into Akshara’s room.

We had purchased curtains matching the bed-cover on her cot. According to the shop, the whole set of quilt, pillows, curtains and the bumpers belonged to a Jungle Theme.

Akshara's cot

Akshara

written by Rajaram S \\ tags: Add new tag, room

Before i moved to Cyprus, 7 years back, i never knew the colour association that seems so implicit nowadays, that of boys to blue and girls to pink. I even remember having worn a pink t-shirt for a school trip to yercaud. Such an act would have been considered “gay”ish nowadays. But, here in Europe and the US, girls and their accessories have to be pink in colour, boys get some amount of leverage though.

I did some searching and found the following interesting piece of information:

Scientists have found that women tend to prefer pink – or at least a redder shade – while men prefer blue, and that the gender difference may be down to genes rather than upbringing. Early human societies almost certainly engaged in a division of labour between the sexes, with men travelling long distances to hunt wild game. Women, meanwhile, foraged locally for fruit and berries. Dr Hurlbert suggests that this division of labour may be at the root of why girls now prefer pink.”Evolution may have driven females to prefer reddish colours – reddish fruits, healthy, reddish faces. Culture may exploit and compound this natural female preference,” she said.As for the wider human preference for blue, Dr Hurlbert said this may have something to do with our love for the grassy plains of our place of origin, in Africa, where the sky is an important feature of the landscape.

So, there is a reason behind this and it seems that it not hallmark or any other super-corporate trying to impose ideas into the human mind. But, this inherent difference has been taken to the extreme. When we knew that we were going to have a girl, i was strictly against going all-pink. Ok, pink looks cute on girls, but i didn’t want to get everything in pink.

When we went over to Mothercare for buying some stuff, we didn’t realise the extent to which this pinkness has been adopted. The floor was pink all over (this floor was only for girls) and my cones (the ones in the eye) had a clear difficulty to adjust to this. The cones in my eye were used to 16 million colours (i guess this is the setting on my PC) and here they were seeing 16 million variations of the same colour, pink! The confusion in the cones sperad to my middle ear and i started getting dizzy. i was about to blurt out “Water, i want water!”, but then my inner consciousness pinged me not to do so, as water is such a scarce and expensive commodity nowadays in Cyprus that even a store like Mothercare cannot afford to give out free water to its customers in need.

Within a few minutes, after my internal systems resumed normal operations, i calmed down and asked the salesgirl if she had any non-pink tops for girls. She said “Come this way” in a very encouraging tone. I strained my neck not to focus to the zillions of pink dresses we passed on the way. Then out of a dark corner, she took out one top. Okay it had small pink dots on a white background, but it was a big improvement from the one with minuscule white dots on a pink background. I was impressed and thanked her profusely. Then i asked her to show me some more like that. She replied in her heavily accented English “Sorry, this is the only piece we have”! What! Only one non-pink dress! i didn’t know what to say. I was forced to be happy with this piece, so i asked for a different size , that for a newborn. The reply, “Sorry, this is the only size we have. No one buys these kind of colours!”

Do i belong to a different species? I am beginning to have doubts!

written by Rajaram S \\ tags: pink