I'm growing up with my son!

With the Board Exams going on in some parts of India, how do the moms feel? Here is one mom getting nervous over her son's future....

From my book Rays and Rains available on Flipkart and Amazon etc.....

A few days back, my son returned from school, his face flushed with excitement, his hand clutching a sheet of paper.

“What’s that in your hand?” I casually inquired as he headed straight for his room. It was very unusual of a boy who routinely loiters for an hour before going to freshen up.

“It has the lines ma’am wants me to deliver on the School Annual Day”, Dev said solemnly.

My son, all of seven years, who had earned a reputation as a sharp, but highly-distracted and happy-go-lucky boy, who seldom put in his best efforts, caught me by surprise when I overheard him practicing his lines again and again in the confines of his room. Was this the same Dev who had to be prodded for everything right from having his meals to catching his school bus?
The same week a parent-teacher meeting enlightened me that my son was only one of the few hand-picked by the teacher for delivering the opening lines for a program and that only the best one of the lot would be given a chance.

I didn’t have the heart to tell my son that his speech could be snatched away by his class-mate any time. “Who would be the lucky one?” I kept thinking.

Meanwhile his practice continued and his speech approached perfection. I had no choice but to get carried away with his dedication and determination for a flawless performance.

Surprisingly, I managed to find time to pray for him to be the luckiest one to bag the coveted role of the introducer of the program. Rarely having had the time to mull over such trivial things in the past, here I was secretly wishing that Dev’s oration impressed the teacher most. I forgot there are other mothers too who too are hoping, might be praying just like me. I forgot that my son is just in Grade Two and there might be hundreds of such opportunities coming his way.

And then it struck me. What if there is someone even better than him in his class? What if he loses the opportunity to deliver the lines on that special day?........

The rest is in here....

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Renowned life coach Dr. Ali Khwaja's review on my book!

  

Was it taxing for your eyes? Here follows the more eye-friendly review:

CRICKET MADE ME A CHANAKYA!!

“I used to be the football captain team during my college days. Wonder why Dev isn’t crazy about outdoor sports the way I used to be,” thought aloud my husband. Dev is our almost ten-year-old son. That was some months back. Our son kept showing more interest in “Cops and Robbers” and a little bit in basketball and most in running around the whole neighbourhood and building a Bey-blade stadium with his friends, who too incidentally showed only a moderate degree of interest in cricket, uncharacteristic of pre-teens of our country where Sachin Tendulkar is a
household name and has a nation glued to TV on the days the Indian cricket team plays a match anywhere in the world.


“Even as a small town boy I was more into cricket than him,” lamented Dev’s father recently again. That most of the boys of our neighbourhood in our Bangalore city would give their right hand to their moms to be allowed unlimited hours of cricket and that Dev strangely was still happy with evenings of ‘Police and Robbers’ entirely didn’t help matters. This time I too couldn’t blame my husband for his comment. All he wanted to do was to watch a particular cricket match on TV – for which he had even returned home two good hours before his usual returning time - when our son decided not to be generous enough to switch from the Cartoon Network channel even for a while, not even to know the scores! Please don’t make the mistake of asking me what match it was, since I’m afraid I don’t understand much of cricket (almost nothing, actually) and therefore am never updated about what goes on in the world in this field.


Of late, playing inter-apartment complex-cricket matches has suddenly become the rage in our locality. The glamour of rubbing shoulders……..

The rest is in here....

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The magic of spring!

In the last few brown leaves

I’ve found my shelter;

When the world’s too busy

To stand and stare,

I rain upon them

dry leaves in sudden shower.

After a year I’ve arrived

The new year I’m here to ring

in; celebrations all around -

I’m the much-awaited spring!

Draped no longer with greenery

The trees had withstood the wind so cold

When winter left, the flowers blossomed,

and a new story is about to unfold.

Rich is the blue sky above

Pouring out sunshine so bright

Fragrant is the breeze blowing

All around waits beautiful sight.

I’m here around you and everywhere

Only if you care to stop and see

The festival of flowers is back again

Pleased are the butterflies and every bee!

Cold winds no more keeping home

the animals; many a happy bird

bursting with full-throated song

Across meadows and fields they are heard.

Scorching rays would arrive to tire the Earth

and she’ll begin to moan in pain

The sky would relent and hide the sun

and down would come the fine light rain.

Harbinger of the monsoon it is

-       the sudden spell of rain

Winter, spring, summer and monsoon

India’s seasons are all bound in a chain

Behold the numerous hues in falling leaves
And celebrate the welcome changes in everything
Celebrate the buds and flowers

as lovely moments roll in with spring!

Dreams.....

I had wished I could dream

I’m glad now I carry many a dream……..

A long morning I’d have with our daughter

Away from the routine

Giggling and exploring gardens

Where we’ve never been….

An afternoon of tea with memories of the years

That we’ve left behind as the calendar had to change

The ‘cell’ and the phone kept on ‘mute’

As stories with my husband I’d love to exchange

Evening would slow down

With our son holding the oars

Our boat rowing in dark blue waters

Before night opens her doors….

A long letter to some childhood friend

To wipe off the decades and the miles

My heart will be poured out, wounds shared

with words wrapped in tears and smiles….

A night I’d be under the moonlit sky

As stars would twinkle and shine

Constellations I’d watch and count

and click the silver mine!

To search for a meaning in life

I dive deep into my mind

More dreams keep cocooning there

With time, wings they’ll find!

From my book Rays and Rains :: by Aparajita Bose​ - Swimming Saga

Summer came visiting again and this time it was the swimming class that caught my son, Dev, and his father’s fancy. Our neighbour’s son, Dev’s best friend, swam superbly well without any training and had impressed my husband with his swift moves in water more than once. It was not only him, but me too who secretly wished our son too would swim equally well, given a formal training. I still don’t know how to swim, and Dev’s father knows a few tricks, but has a lot more to learn. Secretly we wished Dev would make up for that.

My eight-year-old rushed down the steps in his swimming costume, a mass of energy and enthusiasm, my husband in tow. After an hour, the father returned, looking happy and satisfied. In three days the smile vanished! Within a week, his face had knitted eyebrows and my son began coming home with a glum face. What was going wrong?!

“You’re not following Sir’s instructions properly,” the father grumbled to which Dev said meekly, “But I am.”

“He is not concentrating during the class,” my husband complained the very moment I opened the door to the duo next day.

My little daughter Vini had been keeping me busy and so I didn’t really know what was going on in the pool. Forever patient with his children, I had no reason to doubt my husband was wrong in judging Dev’s efforts to learn the art of swimming. I didn’t take it very seriously though, and said some words of encouragement. But I thought he didn’t really need that because he was most likely not focusing enough but would be compelled to do so by the trainer soon. There wasn’t any significant change in the next few classes though. Time was running out, because there were to be around twenty classes in this session. Now I felt I had to be a little firm.

“Why aren’t you observing Sir’s movements?...............

Grab a copy of my book 'Rays and Rains' from flipkart to find out if Dev could tackle the unsavoury situation.....

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Have you ever thought of yourself as a 'BAND-AID'?

Have you ever thought of yourself as a 'BAND-AID'?

"A crestfallen mother had to reluctantly accept the truth – I was only the hurriedly put “band-aid”. Dev’s “cut” actually healed with the magic word “Sorry” from his buddy.

As I leant back in my armchair, peals of laughter of two happy souls from the lawn came floating up to me. I smiled at my
selfishness (How could I be pleased with their fighting!?) and my foolishness (How could I even think of replacing Ravi!?).

I took up my long-pending book, relieved that my son is finally learning to forgive and forget, but staying prepared to serve as a band-aid once again, just in case he felt the need for it anytime.

As long as mothers existed, there will never be a dearth of these special “band-aids” in this world!

***************************************************
Some years ago, when I was a full-time working mother, this small event in my son’s life helped me accept that a child’s friend can relegate the mother to a backseat in her son’s world, at least temporarily…………."

Grab a copy of my book 'Rays and Rains' from flipkart to find out how you too can be a BAND-AID.....

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