Our Diary
A daughter’s memory of her father’s slow-cooked kheer
Rain clouds have emptied themselves, returning the sky to a washed, bright blue hue. Dragonflies fill the air and the unmissable saffron of genda (marigold) flowers sitting in wicker baskets on roadside stalls beckon the most-awaited festival of autumn - Diwali.
As the moon wanes into amavasya in the night sky preparing for the luminous festival, the memory of my childhood Diwalis come to mind. As a little girl, after I’d bathed and dressed for the festivity, the first scene in the morning that welcomed me every year when I entered the kitchen was my father in his crisp, white kurta pyjama squatting in front of an old kerosene stove.
Why there is music
[Photo credit - Nirmala Patil]
Sitting in the dark, my hand softly stroking my belly, I often whispered my love to the tiny infant blooming inside me. I think that’s when music in the form of a mother’s voice first dribbled into my daughter’s ears. That, along with the echo of my beating heart. It’s been four and half years since, and music still continues to fill her ears and our days in myriad ways.
A 2016 study at the University of Southern California’s Brain and Creativity Institute found that musical experiences in childhood can actually accelerate brain development, thereby impacting a child’s intelligence and leading to improvements in other areas – an idea known as “transfer effects”. Repeated studies show that early music exposure and education in young ones ignites their intellectual, social, emotional, motor, language, and overall literacy. It helps in self-expression, strengthens memory, and refines discipline and patience.
This wisdom acquired instinctively over centuries is perhaps why music is such an intrinsic part of our culture as a country, and is already present in many aspects of our lives - be it festivals, worship, seasons, celebrations and ceremonies - which naturally lends itself into a child’s world too. Then there are regional compositions like rhymes and lullabies, pass-down through generations, that respire through every child’s childhood. Thus, right from the time of birth, music is traditionally used to calm and soothe children, to express love and joy, or to simply engage and interact.
To us as a family, music translates into a more personal yet expansive, and a proximate daily experience. Although our daughter isn’t enrolled for a formal musical training yet, many sounds resonating around us weave to become our everyday rāga. Right from waking up to the song of the morning birds, which to my little girl is an invitation into a new day of playful adventure - to all the diverse tones we use to converse with her; loving, stern, or comical. Together with, the softly murmuring breeze between curtains, the orchestra of utensils in the kitchen, the gurgle of water at bath time, the melody of silence at sleep time, flapping of pigeon feathers in the balcony, the cacophony of construction on the hill, roar of an aircraft passing overhead, the chime of the doorbell when papa returns home in the evenings, crickets chirping at nightfall, and many more sound textures making music of our everyday. Each sound subliminally educating our daughter of our rhythmic alignment with nature.
Most mornings, she spends time with her Nani learning Kannada rhymes. And on our outdoor walks we love to play a favourite game, where I encourage her to close her eyes and identify as many sounds around us. We also include a good dose of music-listening, both Indian Classical and Western Contemporary, to evolve her senses. Some days, we sit with translations of Rabindranath Tagore’s extraordinarily beautiful children poems and marvel at its meaning and lyricism. All this seamlessly contributing to the melodious garland her days wear around their neck, thereby nurturing her heart and brain through osmosis.
But what truly makes music so indispensable to our family culture, apart from it’s developmental benefits, is the joy it brings. When I hear my daughter crooning her self-composed songs on the swing, when she glows with love on hearing her favourite ‘twinkle twinkle’ because it reminds her of her infancy, when she cascades with laughter at bedtime listening to my amusing version of an old rhyme, when she picks the manjīrā (Indian hand cymbals), softly clanks it and holds it against her ears to listen to it’s trembling song. Utter, limitless joy. Transforming our ordinary everyday moments into small musical celebrations, and gently reminding me of why there is music in this world.
“When I sing to make you dance, my child
I truly know why there is music in leaves,
and why waves send their chorus of voices
to the heart of the listening earth”
- Excerpt from Rabindranath Tagore’s Crescent Moon
[Nirmala Patil]
Summer, a one word poetry
[Photo - Nirmala Patil]
Summer, like one word poetry, stirs so much in the heart. It comes, making its intense presence felt in its very coming. Nothing about this season spells subtlety. Mornings feel like the kindling of a fire, noons are fierce and parching, even the evenings and nights are unruly, furling earth’s dust in their wake. But they’re kinder than the day. And fleur-scented. I love summer’s abundance of flowers and the peals of laughter that fill the air as little children frolic outside all day and late into the night. It always brings back my own childhood summers. Of long school holidays spent wandering with friends and playing in aangans (tree-lined courtyards), hot afternoons relishing melons and mangoes, freshly plucked guavas and berries, and painting our tongues and fingertips purple with wild jamuns. Of going to summer fairs, visiting the zoo and having picnics in the park. Of eating ice creams and sweet dripping popsicles wearing summer flowers in our hair, taking up small jobs of making paper envelopes from used book pages for local shopkeepers to earn a little and save for the coming school year, and every night dining under starlit skies and ending our days with songs and stories.
I wish such summers for my daughter too; wild, carefree, brimming with friends and amidst the heart of nature. Nevertheless, I’m aware of its rarity in today’s world. Although children still flock outside more this time of the year, playing extensively and making the most of their end-of-the-school-year holidays, summer feels a little bland without its many-hued indulgence. Instead of whiling away most of their precious, untethered summer hours in front of the screen or wandering aisles in city malls playing electronic games and eating fast-foods in over-crowded food courts, I wish we could see more of our children playing hopscotch by the wayside or sitting under the shade of a tree making a sticky mess from a ripe mango. I wish we could reintroduce our young ones to traditional homemade refreshments, fragrant of summertime, like nimbu pani (Indian lemonade), chaas (spiced buttermilk), lassi (sweetened yogurt drink), shrikhand (strained yogurt desert), aam panna (raw mango sherbet), kulfi (frozen dairy desert) and falooda (sweet basil seeds and rose syrup drink); letting them help us cut fruits and stir as we make, in lieu of store bought aerated drinks and processed treats. And instead of frequenting cafes and restaurants, I wish we could gift our children habitual visits to the parks and gardens, have afternoon picnics on the grass and alfresco dinners under the canopy of stars.
Summer… the season of blossoming branches, bees and butterflies, of flower-carpeted grounds, of long light-filled days to make merry with family and friends, of sweet-nectar fruits, of waking up to the song of the morning birds, and sometimes, if the sky’s in the mood, of summer storms anointed with rainbows to look forward to. Isn’t it a glorious picture to behold? A perfect antidote to the season’s unforgiving heat. The very thought of it comes to echo in me the notes of a koel (Indian cuckoo) singing from the deep shade of a neem tree and leaves me yearning to initiate my four-year old into the art of making summer memories. So this year and in the summers to come, there will be an abundance of seasonal fruits to stain her hands and heart, summers flowers to perfume her tresses, picnics with friends and dinners in the balcony drinking in the far-scented evening breeze. We will be splashing in the pool, gathering fallen flowers from bejeweled trees, going on evening rides to watch summer sunsets and savoring unthinkable amounts of nariyal pani (tender coconut water), and when night falls, we’ll garnish our brimming day with a sweet dose of storytelling.
What memories do summer awaken in you? And how do you hope to guide your children to live and celebrate its poetry to the fullest?
[Nirmala Patil]
