Today’s Pick – C or Chubby Cheeks!

Today’s Pick – C or Chubby Cheeks!

Is it confusing? Hah! C is there, so Confusing can be there, after all beginning with C.

But if I’m to start, I say C for Cat. That’s what baby Guddi was learning from her mother. Mother was saying, “C for Cat, repeat after me,” and Guddi was religiously following her mother’s words like chanting some mantras.

Guddi, the two and a half year old daughter of Mr & Mrs Sood. Mother, a homemaker, having good educational qualifications, but prefers to stay at home for her daughter.

No words for Mr. Sood as I hardly talk to him. He is an office goer like most others, a handsome young man in his thirties, pleasant personality, gives respect (secretly, to me which I so much want, true, false, true, false, judge it for I part my lips to give a smile), and…

There I leave the man and I’m after Guddi now.

Guddi, bubbly, fair, chubby, head full of curly hair,always in colourful dresses…her mother’s choice on her…and what more, a new learner with alphabets.

I think she has got stuck with alphabet C and so her mother is bullying her. Bullying, no no, a mother bullying a little daughter. Maybe, over ambitious mother wants this little thing to learn soon and move up the rung fast…if she could she would say, Bhaag Guddi bhaag at top speed.

Alphabet C makes me think so much today…cold, car, camel, course, cable, colour, candy, court…I’m moving from primary to secondary to the highest level. Words with C are no longer like my Kindergarten days, they have grown with me coming with different and difficult spellings and meanings.

For Baby Guddi this simple Cat is difficult. She has that playful mind and can forget it when her mother comes back to tutor her.

I wonder why present day parents are so much after a child. They want the child to learn and know everything; they want the child to top the class, get the most percentage and make parents proud.

Why, my parents never nagged me with my studies but I had done what I had to do, study while it was time for it and play in the evening. Fun and frolic was the added spice to life.

And now, bags weighing more than the child hung at the back. Tuition classes after school hours, and, again sit down to study till parents want. No playing hours, all the time indoors and only recreation playing computer games.

I wonder when I see the burden on today’s children…the study burden…how sad, how they cope with it. A question I cannot answer.

The pace of life has become fast and everyone wants to move on the Fast Track with this kind of Bungee Jumping…I can be wrong in calling this Fast Track life as Bungee Jumping…but’s that what I feel about it.

From Alphabet C I’ve moved so far away but Guddi will not stop at C. She will move on till the twenty sixth one and then…from playschool to High School. From there to College, then Higher studies and Guddi will one day sit at an office desk doing her work and taking back a fat pay-packet at the end of the month.

…and her mother too will be an office goer once this chubby cheek is old enough to do her own work.

Let’s move on too!!!