Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

“Favorite Colour?”
I asked my husband as I smoothened the crease on the bed sheet before placing a plateful of rajma-chaawal before him. My daughter was playing with her blocks; Udayan Mukherjee was enlightening us with the latest on pharmaceutical stocks on CNBC TV18. It was 11:15 PM and we had an interview for her school admission to Pre-Nursery the next morning.

“How would I know? You never told me.” He snapped back.
[Yeah, yeah. How insensitive of me!]

“Never mind. Its mauve I think. At least that’s what it used to be back in college.”
Frankly at that point of time, I wasn’t sure I even had a favorite colour any longer.

“What is that? Huh?”
He gave me the bewildered look that was so typical of him. I am beginning to feel he feigns that look sometimes to avoid any estrogen-laden topic.

“No, lets stick to basic colors. Maroon. Yeah, just say maroon.”
I remembered an email doing the rounds at work about men being colorblind to non-RGB colors. Besides I was sure he couldn’t spell “mauve”.

“And I’ll say yours is Blue. Hey, what if they ask questions like how do you deal with mutual differences, how do you resolve issues...”, I asked.

Now this requires some explaining here. Let me tell you that my husband has always managed to avoid the “talk” after our fights. “Issue resolution through effective communication” was merely a power point slide in the Management Training slideshow, applicable strictly at work.
What would he have to say to a question like that. Hmm… I was enjoying this.

“Oh. Never mind. Tell them we don’t fight at all. I’m sure they will ask more objective questions like what time we get back home and stuff like that.”
He once again managed to avoid the sticky topic. He can get conveniently pragmatic.

“Lets say, one of us makes sure we are back by 7:30 PM. I know that rarely happens. But then it’s our fault that sometimes we have to work until 10-11 PM, not our child’s. That’s how it ideally should be. And right after this project is over, I have promised myself I will put my foot down against late stays.”
Scared as I was, I tried to validate the lie I had suggested. Lying had never gone down well with him. He never really understood why I felt so guilty about my work timings. And frankly, this time I intended to keep my promise. I was sick of late nights.

“No. 7:30 is late. Lets say 7.” He said, devouring the last spoonful of rajma-chaawal and pointing to his glass for a refill of water.

Needless to say, I was dumbstruck. This was the same naïve, impatient man who would call me up from the store to describe, in excruciating detail, the color, pattern, texture, MRP and the discount on the so-called surprise T-shirt he had just bought for me. He couldn’t keep a secret from a lamppost. Men can be such liars when they want to be!

I decided against rehearsing the A-B-C with my daughter. She was sleepy, and the last thing I wanted in the morning was a cranky three year old. Making a mental note of what I was going to wear to the interview the next day I switched off the light and television.

Next morning was a mad rush as usual, apparently no different from the others.

But well… different it was! We don’t speak to each other in English at home unless we are fighting. Hindi is the lingua franca. And that’s the love language between our little one and us. So much that every time I ask my daughter to “pick up her toys from the floor” instead of “chalo, toys uthao, beta”, she thinks she is getting a scolding.

Today, however, was an exercise in “English Conversation” – a necessary evil highlighted in bold in most play-school fliers these days. The importance of acquainting my child with the language dawned on me one fine evening in the neighbourhood park. My daughter picked up a silly fight with an English-speaking Punjabi friend. The reason? The other girl insisted there was “water” in the bottle and my daughter argued it was “paani”. Sadly, no one had felt the need to teach the other girl that water was called “paani” in our country.

Brushing teeth was intermingled with practicing “Good Morning Ma’m. My name is Nandini Goel.” [Name altered to preserve anonymity] and “I’m fine. Thank you. How are you?” complete with handshakes and nods and the right pauses.
Children can be such marvelous imitators.

By the time she was dressed in her carefully-selected-by-Mama-lovingly-ironed-by-Papa outfit, we were done with “Ba-Ba Black Sheep”, “Humpty Dumpty”, “Johnny, Johnny”, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Kisne banaaya phoolon ko”. I could easily have put the Riverdale cheerleaders to shame with my energy level and fervor that morning. I was clowning around the house to make sure she was well entertained and happy. You see, dancing on “Old Mac Donald had a farm” early in the morning was not exactly a routine with me.

Taking a cue from our out-of-the-way efforts to please her, she refused to have milk and insisted on chocolate, which I had to reluctantly give in to. We couldn’t take any chances with Her Majesty’s mood. Could we?

The meeting was scheduled at 8:30 AM and hurried and harried, we were at the school gates at 8:40 - scared as hell of being labeled as irresponsible parents.

“You’ve got to be disciplined yourself before you can discipline your children”, I heard these voices in my mind while my husband chatted with the pretty lady at the reception.

“Please have a seat. Ma’m is in a meeting and would be with you shortly”, she said pointing to the gray sofas.

Almost three hours had passed since we had made ourselves comfortable on the sofas. I had received three phone calls from my manager. Yet there was no sign of Her Highness, the Principal. My little one had rehearsed all the lines, practiced all the rhymes, counted the chairs in the room, played more “Tipi-Tipi-Tap” than she had ever played with me, identified all the colors in the room and was getting bored. Trust me when I say that handling a bored kid is a challenge for any parent. The waiting, the boredom, the anxiety and the constant phone-calls from office were beginning to take their toll on our moods. I knew as soon as my daughter would get into one of her peevish moods, my husband and I would definitely pick up a fight. We both have low boiling points.

And then it struck me. (I have read far too much detective fiction in my life.) All that waiting could be a setup for us – a strategy to judge our crisis management abilities and patience. As a saying goes, “Parents who are not patient, soon turn into patients.”

[Don’t believe me. I made up that saying just now. :)]

Soon I was feverishly looking for hidden cameras in the reception.
“You are imagining things.” was all he had to say when I shared this explosive pearl of wisdom with my parenting-counterpart.

As if taking pity on the unrest on our faces, or perhaps not wanting to listen to “Ba-Ba Black Sheep” the seventeenth time, the receptionist called up one of the senior teachers who came within five minutes and to carry out what they called a “child-capability” assessment test.

[Talking of capabilities, she could have brought down the entire school if she had to stay put in that gray sofa for another two minutes.]

To begin with, the teacher shoved a whole bunch of Nestle Chocolate Toffees into her pockets. That ensured she was on her side and we were the “bad, uncaring” people the teacher had rescued her from. We were ushered into a Red-Blue-Yellow-Green classroom and it was time for the little one to do some answering.

"What’s your name?”

[Silence]

“What’s your name?”

[Nothing but the sweet sound of the toffee wrapper parting from the good-brown stuff.]

“Nandini, say good morning to Ma’m.”

[I tried to help. But the teacher silenced me by placing a well-manicured finger on her lips.]

“Okay. Tell me what does Mamma call you.”

[No answer? 1-2-3. Timeout. Next Question.]

“Will you tell me a rhyme?”

“She calls them poems.” I managed a murmur. That finger again.

“Will you tell me a poem?”

[Slurp. Silence and the sound of the gooey stuff between the teeth.]

“Do you know Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?”

I heaved a sigh of relief. This was a breeze.

“Mommy told me you can sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with actions. Is that so?”
Yes. Yes. I was nodding my head fiercely.

[Another toffee wrapper unfurled itself.]

“Okay, what do you want to do?”

My little woman, a woman of few words, simply pointed at the yellow swing in the classroom. All of us went up to the swing. Her Majesty made herself comfortable in the swing and looked at us as if we were a bunch of monkeys staring out from a cage in the zoo. Papa had started rocking the swing gently so he was spared the monkey look.

“Let us all sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star together!”
The third and final attempt from the teacher.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little… [I stopped as soon as I realized I was the only one singing it.]

“Tell me, what is this?" The teacher asked, picking up a red bat from the pile of toys and holding it up for all to see.

[Slurp! With the divine taste of melting chocolate filling the mouth, who on earth would care to speak. By now I was hungrily eyeing the remaining toffees that peeped out from her frock pockets.]

“What is that, beta?” I could no longer stop myself. This was the third question. Unanswered.

[Pop went the fourth toffee in her mouth.]

As if reading my mind, Papa jumped to the scene.

“Tell us, what color is this?” He asked pointing to the swing.

“Yellow”. A meek voice escaped from in between caramel coated teeth.

[Did I see a light in the teacher’s eyes? Obviously that was the sweetest sound I had heard in the last few hours. My husband gasped for breath. My knight in shining armour!]

“Okay, what else is yellow in color?”

[Now this one was a huge risk my husband was taking. A totally bad idea, I thought.]

“Sun”.

The teacher smiled and wrote something at the bottom of the admission form. I could cry with joy. My hero!

We left the classroom victoriously – a feeling comparable only to the triumph of India in an Indo-Pak ODI. Yet, the battle was only half won.

The Principal was back from the meeting. We were at the door that read “PRINCIPAL” when my husband joked, “Are we supposed to say, “May I come in, Ma’m?” like our school days?”

Thankfully, we were greeted with a lukewarm “Good Morning. Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry, you definitely must be...” I mumbled to myself, still believing in the “sting-operation” theory.

“Hellooo Nandini, How are you doing this morning?”, she uttered a longish Hello and offered the little one a handshake.

“Tissue”.

A tiny pair of sticky fingers stretched out in response.

A wet tissue was brought in close contact with the gooey mass of chocolate on those fingers. My offer to wipe the brown stuff off the mouth was snubbed off.

The lady must have been in early forties with a complexion to put Snow-white to shame. She was dressed in a plain red georgette sari with no embellishments. A tiny pair of pearls adorned her ears and the salt-and-pepper hair was tied in a tight bun at the back. A pair of gold-rimmed glasses adorned the hawk-like nose. The desk was a massive one and two comfortably cushioned chairs were stretched out. Her Highness sank back in a black leather upholstered chair and pointed at the other chairs across her desk.

“I see that both of you are working. Who takes care of your daughter while you both are at work?”, she said without looking up from the form on the table.
[She clearly did not believe in wasting any time.]

“My parents. We drop her off at their place before we go.” I smiled a redundant smile.
[Honestly, I smiled because I was curious to see how she would look with a smile under that beak of a nose.]

“Hmm…” No smile.

“I would like to ask you, Mr. Goel,” she turned her head 15 degrees to the left, “what are your work timings?”
[Bull's eye!]

“Well, we are in an industry where the timings are rather erratic. But we make sure that one of us reaches home by 6:30 in the evening.”
[6:30?! I thought we had settled for 7. There is something with men and a red sari I tell you!]

“That’s nice. Okay, I don’t want to know what she does when she is back home early”, she said looking at me briefly before fixing her gaze on him, “I want to know what you do when she is working late and you are home.”
[“That’s an intelligent woman”, I smirked secretly and sank deeper into the chair.]

“I take her to the park and teach her how to ride her bicycle. We just bought a bicycle for her last Thursday. She outgrew her tricycle pretty fast.”
[Liar, Liar… Does he even know where the bicycle is right now? Incidentally I had bought that bicycle without his knowledge and he had frowned and said, “Isn’t she too young for this?” until he saw her ride it.]

“And what did you both do before she learnt to cycle?”

“Well, she likes to paint. We do some painting.”
[Plan B was ready. Well, indeed that’s true. She loves to get watercolor on her hands.]

“She gets more color on her hands and dress than on the paper.”, I stepped in, trying to be witty. Clearly, I wasn’t welcome.

“So, what colours does she show a preference for?”, she looked at him again. This time a little more intently.

“Err… yellow… green... brown, sometimes.”
[The last painting he had seen of her was a big circle of yellow and green and mud brown. Evidently he didn’t know that the red color tube had been emptied out within two days of purchase.]

“Hmm… what shapes does she usually make?”
[She wasn’t going to let him get away easily.]

“Circles, mostly.”
[Does he know that all she likes to do is put color on her hand and leave hand prints on paper?]

“Do you also paint with her? I mean, hold her hand, help her with maneuvering?”

“Yes, at times I do. But my wife is better at it.”

He looked at me from the corner of his eye hoping a little praise would make up for the lies.
[You bet I am better! With the television remote in one hand and the mobile phone in another, who has the room for a paint brush?]

“That’s very impressive. So, Mr. Goel, what do you think is a father’s role in a child’s development?”

“Just as important as a mother’s.” He was getting better at impression-management.

“Do you also read to her?”

“Oh, we have a great collection of books at home. We never miss a chance to buy a good story book.”
[A technically correct statement. Not an answer.]

“Yes. That’s good. But do you read?”
[Someone wanted the answer to the question she asked.]

“Yes. Mostly at bed time.”
[Oh yeah! Times of India, India Today, Outlook, TV Listings, GSM Fundamentals…]

“I do not enroll children. I enroll parents in my school. I want parents, especially fathers who understand their responsibilities well and consciously participate in the child’s development." She locked her hands and looked at him.

"And I see that you are a great father. It would be a pleasure to have you as a part of this big family.”
The judgement was pronounced.

"Done? Already? What about me? I didn't get to say anything?", I thought.

My husband looked like he had just won the Oscar for best performance.

“There are some formalities to be taken care of. Mrs. Verma will help you with those.” She said, this time looking at both of us.

Finally, I was no longer invisible. Phew!

“Say bye to Ma’m, Nandini”, I attempted to get my daughter to say the fourth word of the day after "Yellow", "Sun" and "Tissue".

No Answer.

“You have a quiet, well mannered daughter”, she said as we bade goodbye.

It was 12:30 and I was too famished to settle scores with the picture of perfect fatherhood walking out of the school besides me. Quite obviously, he was beaming with pride and joy.
“That was so, so cool. See, just needs a stroke of genius.”, he said striking a sixer in air with an imaginary bat in his hand.

“Uh.. huh?!”. There was so much to say, I didn’t know where to begin.

As soon as we were outside the building, in the scorching heat, waiting to rush to work (I was thinking about the cafeteria, frankly) my daughter remembered something.

“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,
How I wonder what you are?
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky!!”

This time it was complete with actions and flawlessly in-tune.