Friday 4 July 2008

glad this one is almost done

the week i mean. oh yes, i have dispensed with capital letters for a bit now. just bored of them. the purist in me is getting a bit annoyed and i am thinking of the hundred times i have written 'subscripts' on people's reports and angrily returned it to them, but hey, its friday, its july (yes, truly, these are my excuses).

again this morning an advertisement in the magazine to 'loose weight the natural way' how annoying is that. will that make my pants lose?

yesterday was a good day. i felt a great sense of achievement, although it was partly vicarious, at a successful culmination of four years of efforts. a long time ago friend was here too, as part of the same work event, and i had a great time remembering old days and plotting to take over the world together.

the upper k.g. thing is so far so good. there are a lot of books. hindi. english conversation. rhymes. scrap book. colouring. pencils and erasers. a slate. four-lined book. total cost thus far is Rs. 1382 (school fees + books and other materials). i have had some misgivings, very occasionally, when i see other children wearing smart new uniforms and going off to schools orders of magnitude better (they must be no? they cost two orders of magnitude more money). am i denying my child something?

i have to wake her up in the mornings, something i have never done, except when we have flights to catch. but she is ok. she springs up. the school year is still new enough for her to be super enthusiastic about. this morning i told her about how i used to totally lurrrve going to school (which is true) and she smiled, maybe thinking me real silly, or perhaps in agreement of the feeling.

its rainy off and on out here, nothing too unmanageable thus far. hope it stays like this. i want the reservoirs to get filled and the bloody bmc to be made to realise how wayward they are in their road repairs (which seem to have been done using cardboard, or toilet paper even), but i dont want it to flood and have to make a gazillion phone calls and worry and worry.

anyway i don't worry for too long about the school thing. i figure i am there to supplement school. last night we read all about light and sound and stuff. having bought a nice looking encyclopedia sometime ago. do you guys remember that the reflected image is ulta on one side and seedha on the other side in a curved spoon. because of the convex-concave thing. that was fun though i thought fleetingly that i need some new shiny spoons.

the hindi school book has this strange letter that i never met. for rishi. the husband thinks its hr. as in hrithik. comes up after the aha.

domestic goddess-ing has been very tough this week though. clothes, bags, kiddie books, its chaos. i was out of town the past weekend. that screws things up a fair bit. we leave early in the mornings so i literally have to oust the maid from the house so i can lock up. she, of course, insists she is too sleepy to come earlier. blast her. the milk fellow, lazy bum that he is, waltzes in usually by 9 am so we have not caught him a few days. had to rush out last night at nine to the supermarket and pick up a nestle milk thing. fuck. it costs nearly twice as much as the packet milk.

four to five meetings later will be the weekend. hope no one calls me to remind me of things i have not done, like read the billion things they have given me. have to have to have to go shopping, this is real bad, made out my list three weeks ago but kochi and blore and what not took priority. have to make a crisp plan for it though, accommodating all possibilities including rain.

6 comments:

Ludwig said...

> am i denying my child something?

Hmm. One really has to wonder, are we the products of the schools that we went to, or are we the products of the kinds of homes we grew up in? Looking back, one tends to think "home". But schools had their impact, but it was probably in unexpected ways i.e. switching from the 'hep' school in the city to the not-so-hifi school was (in hindsight) a good thing. Exposure to another set of people, life etc.

Dunno...

dipali said...

am i denying my child something?

Yes and no, I guess. But 'more expensive' definitely does not mean 'better'. As long as you feel comfortable about the school and your child is reasonably happy there ( which she seems to be, I guess things are fine.And you are teaching her really interesting stuff! Bring on the shiny spoons, I say:)
Yes, the weird letter is hr.
Since it's pronounced r I wonder why it exists at all, but I guess the Hindi alphabet is still less funny than the English language!
Maybe there's a historical reason for it.

Choxbox said...

oh in kannada there is hr and long hr too. what abt the letters at the end of the k and ch lines? what do they sound like and where on the blessed earth are they used?

anyway as i'd told you there is major excitement for learning of kannada. hopefully will not get murdered.

Choxbox said...

oh i think i confused 'hr' with 'ri' as in rishi. for that there is long and short in kannada.

btw i just thought of hrishikesh - your branchie. he used to insist it was HRishikesh and not rishikesh every time a particular prof (who was paavam types) called out his name.

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

cb-
sad story is that hrishi passed away in a freak accident in the swimming pool few (several) years ago. of course that is no reason we should not think of him or talk about him or remember him (which is what i tend to do..) and yes, he was very insistent on the hr!!

i think i know the kannada letters, the rr are used in ruthu (english is so limited, that is NOT the way it is to be pronounced!) as in season - same word in hindi too i think. but this thing comes in the vowel category it seems, after the aha. looks new.

regarding that ngya and so on at the end of the ka kha ga gha, the text book cleverly gave coloured pictures for that letter and not a picture of a word containing it!! You know ka Kamala and lotus happened in lurid pink but NOTHING for these. should indicate how useful they are. :-) :-)

i only remember it in Sarvagnya - which uses the ka kha wala last letter. never used the cha ja one. the kannada word for fly uses the na at the end of ta tha da dha...

i stop my mini-post on weird nasal letters, and young people who went away and left holes in our heart, now.

Choxbox said...

yup kenny. ru as in ruthu but what abt the long ru? where is it usd if ever? why is it still taught?
yup was oign to say the same thing - no pictures for those letters, they are just printed in big bold font. whats the point?

the ne at the end of t th d dh is used pretty often at least in hindi and gujarati (esply in gujarati) and also in telugu.

i knew abt HRishikesh btw, but as you say why not think of him anyway?

ta. am off to hog breaker in this highly recommended southie joint. may the wkend bring us all some sanity (ha! who am i kidding? our furniture arrives today).