A prayer

Hi Ambatty...Please don't show me and my baby Jaguar any bad dreams...Ok Ambatty...Act like a shield and push away all my bad dreams...Do you know what a shield is Ambatty? It is the one that Elo uses...u know on Disney Junior? Ok Great Ambatty! Please let me see only good dreams and be able to sleep well and wake up fresh so that I can go to school and play with Smee and Sharky! Do you know Smee and Sharky Ambatty...please act like a shield for their bad dreams also!
Ok Ambatty...Good night...sleep tight...Don't let the bed bugs bite! I know Amma told me that bed bugs only come on old beds because they are sweet...and this bed is new...but if bed bugs come, please stop them. Acha is old, but he is not a bed...so please don't send bed bugs on him!

Ok Ambatty...Great Ambatty...so please be nocturnal and look at my bad dreams. I love you Ambatty and also my Amma! Amma, when you pray please make sure you invite Ambatty to my Christmas Story assembly OK! Goodnight!

N's nightly ritual! With all the clarifications to God and the confirmations this takes a good 15mins or more...but is always hilarious although I try my level best not to laugh! On some days he even commends God on a job well done - a night without bad dreams!!

Sleeping Beauty and the Prince!

Was in bed trying my level best to get rid of the headache, who was turning into a constant companion. Just as I was drifting away into the lovely world of slumber, heard my son pushing his rickety truck down the hallway towards the bedroom. Was about to call out to the husband and ask him to stop this racket, but realised I didn't have the energy. So I drifted back to sleep.
Woke up all of a sudden to sweet kiss being planted on my forehead. My son stood there, concern writ all over his face. When I opened my eyes he said - Ma, you are Sleeping beauty and I'm Prince Changu...wake up!
I know kisses don't cure headaches, but mine was completely gone. I realised that it is days like this that make being a mother totally worthwhile...and there is no greater way to be woken up than with a kiss of a loved one.

PS: also realised that not only did that kiss of his wake me up from my sleep, it also revived my blog from a sure death. The powers a 4 year old has!!

Universal mother - Myth or reality?

Can you be a “universal” mother and a true and unselfish giver only if you do not have children of your own? If Mother Teresa and Florence Nightingale had children of their own, would their path in life have been different? Would they still have had this calling? In short, if you have children of your own, is it possible to love someone else’s like your own?


I am a huge advocate of adoption. A trip to an orphanage made a huge impact on my life. I built a strong resolve in me that once I was married and had the means, I would adopt a child. I didn’t really care which gender, but a girl child had the most number of votes in my head. Along with my pregnancy, the urge to adopt a child became stronger too. G just didn’t get it! He kept saying – “But we are going to have a child now. Why do you want to adopt”? Then I had this brilliant idea to adopt the opposite gender to the child I would have. My mum gave me her thumbs-up, G ignored it. But to me they were all brilliant ideas – all in my head…somehow seemed impractical in the real world. At least in my world!

Once I had my son, my mum was a totally different woman. Grandmas are a force to be reckoned with and she told me outright and she might not be able to love an adopted grandchild with the same genuine force that she loved her grandson. My mother-in-law seconded that. G continued to pretend that it was my hormone talking and they would fade with time. I was outnumbered. How come no one saw it? How come no one understood that we would be giving a new chance of life to a child who would otherwise maybe not even have a life at all?

So my mum posed a few questions of her own - Now you might never tell this child that he or she is adopted, but someone might. What then? You might shower all your love on this child, but can you guarantee that G and others will? Won’t you be putting a child into a life of suffering, through no fault of hers? Can you be sure that if you catch both the children having a normal sibling spat, you will remain impartial? I argued till I was beat that these things would never happen in my case, till one day when my son was about 15 months old and his 17 month old cousin beat him like crazy as kids tend to do apparently (so I was told!). As I stood holding my wailing baby in my hands I knew I wanted to beat the crap out of that kid –someone who I love very much by the way and dote on. So maybe I was not really cut out for adopting after all.

So my question to the world is this – Can we only be mothers to our children? Is it only those who do not have a family of their own that can embrace other children into their life with ease and selflessly dedicate their lives to them?

Or the question begs to be asked – Am I the only selfish one around?