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Day 2@Bookaroo: All about letting go and enjoying the moment!
I was back at Bookaroo yesterday, and it was a whole different experience. Why? Because this time, I was accompanying Aadyaa. Not only is she a totally different person, but she is only four and a half. And a crowd of people looks very different from the eyes of a child who is four and a half. No no, she isn’t shy or afraid of crowds. But I didn’t really see many little ones that age or thereabouts who could concentrate on a story being told in a venue with nearly a hundred people listening in. The kids got there by enthusiastic parents, the parents who would have enjoyed the narration but for their anxiety that their little ones weren’t paying attention and looking here and there, or eating, or wanting to go elsewhere.
So this is how the Sunday visit to the Bookaroo played out for us. We attended the first session with Anupa Lal was telling the children stories in Hindi. Now, this got Aadyaa’s attention as she is most familiar with Hindi as a language of narration and conversation. At home, I have to tell all her favorite stories (Peter Pan, Clifford, Rapunzel, Lion King..) in translation. So Anupa Lal’s story about a ghost and a boy got some of her attention, though she kept asking for biscuits and munching through this, not because she was hungry but because she wasn’t totally involved in the event!
We then took a walk through the venue and the sandpit, the steps, the green grass was far more interesting than any of the workshops, activities and narrations. The attempt to sit through Penny Dolan’s animal stories in which she used small soft toys as props, was not successful. I honestly think smaller groups would have worked much better for the little ones, but I can see how that is a logistics nightmare!
So I gave up, and decided to enjoy the sunshine and the charms of Anandgram as a location instead of getting stressed about how much exposure I was giving my little one! We migrated to the little raised platform with the large terracotta horses. And Aadyaa and her pal Eva proceeded to spend the rest of the outing playing ‘ghar-ghar’ at the Bookaroo, eating ice cream and running around!
Moral of the story: What will be will be, go with the flow and without expectations, if you are to truly enjoy time with a bunch of kindergarten children 🙂
They will make up their games and play. Company, outdoor spaces, interesting spaces and unconditional love from a trusted adult, and maybe some food and drink thrown in (and ice-cream), that’s pretty much all they need!
Anupa Lal’s story telling session in Hindi was a good way to start the day…
Playing ghar-ghar was a lot more fun for the little ones…Bookaroo be damned!
Udai was also kinda done. On Day 2, he simply bought the nonsense book he had heard about on Day 1, and read it in the sun 🙂
Enjoying the direct simplicity in Jeffrey Archer’s writing: Clifton Chronicles
I can be a literary snob, turning up at my nose at people who read Sidney Sheldon or Danielle Steele. But I have my bestseller favorites as well. Jeffrey Archer certainly is one. A master story teller, he never fails to create stories that keep you hooked. I finished reading ‘Only Time Will Tell’, the first book of the Clifton Chronicles on Diwali day. Amid all the madness of Diwali, I found myself stealing time to take in a few pages. What is it that makes some books so addictive and engrossing?
Archer’s formula appears, to me, to play on our close identification with certain values that we consider admirable, that evoke warmth within us. Values and traits like moral uprightness, bravery, sacrifice, loyalty, humility and I could go on and on, conform to our sense of ‘right’ or ‘good’. Archer creates a central character who is disadvantaged in some way (in this case, Harry Clifton is a fatherless, poor child). Then he builds another set of characters who play key roles in helping the hero overcome his difficulties (in this book, he uses the character of Harry’s mother to deliver a strong commentary on motherhood, female strength and the ability for the poorest and weakest to dream big). The negative character in the story is also human, in the sense that his scheming and meanness are all born out of certain explainable circumstances and of course, that famous English concept of ‘weak character’.
Add to this compelling set of people who push all our right emotional buttons, Archer sets a strong historical and social context. The 2nd World War is about to begin while the English are still reeling from the people they lost in the first. The play off between the upper class and working class backgrounds of the people in the book adds layers to the story (friends, lovers, colleagues from the two opposite ends of the social spectrum) and people everywhere in the world can relate to the conflicts this sort of situation creates.
And finally, Archer absolutely excels in using simple English, sticking to short sentence constructions but never boring the reader. In fact, brevity is something I really admire in him for we know too many authors who ramble on and on! Cannot wait to get my hands on the 2nd book.
ramblinginthecity 