Mahita's one of the more enterprising people I know. She'd given up her cushy job at Infosys to set up 'Gambola', a play area for children. Parents who wanted downtime dropped their child off at Gambola, where Mahita and her crew would ensure that the child didn't miss its parents while they did their shopping, caught a movie, or did whatever it is that parents do when they don't have to worry about their kids for a few hours.
"Seven years into Gambola, I realised I'd spent more time taking care of others' kids than my own", she ruminated one day. "I shut it down in the summer of 2015 to devote time to Rohan, who was turning 7 himself"
Summers are when panic grips a lot of parents I know. As much as two months of vacation time is joyous for the child, it seems to have become a period of dread for parents. It isn't unusual for me to get calls asking for workshops in theatre, yoga, sport or some such. The angst stems mostly from the fact that we're a generation that's short on time, patience and maybe even the inclination to hold a child's attention for a reasonable period of time. If someone's monitoring the growth of the 'summer vacation' industry, watch out for the next Unicorn in that space - it's one that taps into parents' deepest concerns about how to fill a child's time when they aren't watching.
Not Mahita, though.
"I've my summer plans covered. They involve things Rohan loves; ones we do together"
"I've my summer plans covered. They involve things Rohan loves; ones we do together"
"Rohan loves airplanes. We wake up one morning, make sandwiches, take a bus from our place in Langford Town, look out of its windows and discuss places we pass by along the two and a half hour journey. Once at the KIAL airport, we open our picnic mat, lay out our sandwiches, watch planes landing and taking off, chasing them for a distance and talking about the beauty of taking flight - metaphorically"
"Rohan also loves trains. We wake up another morning, make several flasks of tea, hop on to my scooter and ride out to the main railway station, where Rohan distributes chai to porters. We then hop several platforms watching trains pulling in and chugging out. We repeat this at the Cantonment station, the Bangalore East Station, the Byappanahalli station and the White Field station. That's the day spent"
"Rohan loves playing cop. Together, we open up a map of the city and decide on an area that we want to explore - like J P Nagar. On the given day, we make lots of lime juice, put it a container, hop on to my scooter and drive out to J P Nagar. Here, they'd go to every traffic signal, greeting cops and handing over a glass of lime juice on a hot summer's day"
There were lots more along these lines. Simple acts of togetherness. Acts which sated a child's curiosity, bonded him with his parent, taught him the joys of sharing, while laying the foundations for character-building.
"It's simple really", Mahita says, "a child's biggest joy is spending time with its parents. It's only a matter of adding meaning to that togetherness - filling time with simple experiences that would make it a better person".
"If we want our children to turn out well, we need to learn to spend twice as much time with them and half as much money"
An outsourced parent had just discovered her 'do-it-yourself' version.
"It's simple really", Mahita says, "a child's biggest joy is spending time with its parents. It's only a matter of adding meaning to that togetherness - filling time with simple experiences that would make it a better person".
"If we want our children to turn out well, we need to learn to spend twice as much time with them and half as much money"
An outsourced parent had just discovered her 'do-it-yourself' version.
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