The Peaceful Forest

Where a tiger and a rabbit stay in harmony.. or as much harmony as siblings can stay anyway :).

That is S's idea of a smile for the camera, not a growl because of the tiger costume ;). This was for a fancy dress "party" at their school. They have one every year at this time - and are very particular that it is a party and not a competition - so no pressure on the kids to perform and they can just have fun!

The tiger costume is what I made for D last year - had kept it because it was my first fancy dress effort :) and it came in useful. After last year's party, while D tried to start a discussion of what she would be next year:
D: Hmm so what animal can I be next year?
Me: You don't need to be an animal darling, you can be anything you want to be!
D: Ok, so let me see..
Me: (Quickly realizing the options this could throw up) No no let's do animals !! And please make it an animal without any stripes or dots or designs!
D: Cat, Dog, and so on and so forth
Me: Rabbit - that's one easy to make and you can have some pink (pink was/is her favourite color).
D: Yes ok - Rabbit!

And the memories of children (For things they want to hold on to of course ;)) are so amazing that every few weeks she would think about the fancy dress, ask me when the next one was and remember that she was going to be a rabbit. So last week, I finally made the rabbit costume. The ears were a bit tricky because of the size, but with a hairband, a couple of twigs pasted on the back to hold it up stiffly, we managed to make them stand up decently.

After this years fancy dress, conversation as follows:
D: S can be a rabbit next year, you can use this same dress!
Me: Well, maybe the poor guy deserves his own costume next year.
D: What shall I be?
Me: You won't be at this school baby. You'll be at a big school next year and won't have a fancy dress party like this one.
D: I don't want to go to big school!!

She's in a montessori school and will be finishing this year, so will have to go to a bigger place for her 1st standard. Keeping fingers crossed that school admission works out like we're hoping it to.

Siblings - lessons on love and rivalry

I am an only child and I learn something new about siblings everyday :). Just some random thoughts and memories -

• Leave D & S in the same room for more than 2 minutes and you will hear loud incessant giggling and nearly immediately afterwards crying or shouting from one of them with a follow-up complaint of "He did .." or "She did.. ".
• S loves to go and fall all over D wherever she's sitting. Sometimes she's also in a tumbly mood and this leads to a lot of gymnastics all over our living room. Other times she's not so co-operative as she's more interested in what's on TV, and then the fireworks begin!

Though it seems like they're fighting nearly all the time, they remind me of the bond they share at times like

• when I scold D for something and S pipes up with : "Why you tell Damita that?" or
• when S falls and starts crying and D reaches him even before I do!

Passport saga - contd.

Much has transpired in this story since I last posted about this here - Passport for minor - quite a Major affair? so I thought it was time I shared a little more about this process.

I applied for my son's passport on 19th Aug 2010 so was not really expecting to hear much about it very soon. They also told me at the Bangalore One centre that it could take a maximum of 75 days and I wasn't in any particular hurry, so put it out of my mind for a while. Much to my surprize sometime around mid-September I got a call from the local police station that they wanted to do police verification for his passport. Now it says over and over again wherever I checked online as well as in the passport application, that "No police verification will be done for minors if both parents have valid passports" and of course these details must be entered in the application which I had dutifully done.

I was asked to bring two passport size photos of S, copies of the parents passports and of course S himself and land up at the police station. All through the process I kept asking why this was being done in the first place but they could only answer "If we get the form, we have to do it madam!". On meeting the police, I found to my irritation that S's year of birth had been amended from 2008 to 2000 according to their data!! (No wonder they wanted police verification for this 10 yr old who submitted a 2 yr old's photo?!) Apparently the person who did the data entry at the RPO or PSK (Passport Seva Kendra) made a mistake in that last digit. I showed the police the receipt I had got from B-One which showed that I had entered it correctly in the application - the policeman assured me that he would write a note and get it corrected before the passport is issued, but i'm prepared for the worst :(.

All formalities completed (which involved getting 4 more thumbprints from S!), documents submitted, and I walked away from the PS without paying anything "extra". To their credit they did not ask either, maybe because they realized my state of mind, and I was determined not to offer anyway. Now keeping fingers crossed and waiting to receive the passport before I get to know if the date of birth is correct or if I have to run around in any more circles for this.