An opinion arising from a show that I do not watch.

I don't watch tv. I don't own one. I may have mentioned that before over here. So when MasterChef Australia Junior began being broadcast on Indian television recently, I couldn't quite understand the raptures into which people went. For two reasons, or three, maybe. I am not a fan of regular TV, I do not find shows on cooking interesting and thirdly, but perhaps most importantly, I am entirely loath to encouraging reality shows that feature kids.

Yesterday, on my very lively Twitter timeline a bunch of handles got into a bite-sized brawl (which I think is called a debate these days, if not a twibate) on the issue. One bunch of people, who I believe enjoy cooking and the show itself, saw nothing wrong in these kids in being cast in a reality show. That faction believed that it was okay for the kids to do so as long as it wasn't a reality show where the kids were being judged on their dancing/singing skills. This was a "life skill" and these kids were "prodigies" is what was being said. That may be so. I can't decide. (I honestly believe no one starved because they couldn't cook. Not in recent times anyway.)

The other side, as I see it, argued more than one thing. That these kids were "competing" and "being judged" and "rejected in front of the whole world." Another thing that came up was that they would be better off spending time studying/in schools instead of missing weeks of "normal" school-going time.

I feel very strongly about this kids and television/reality show issue. I'll tell you why. First let me make clear that it is not the competition issue that gets me all in a twist. Ideally, of course, I'd be happy with minimal competition but that's probably a perfect situation if I am living on a far flung island with its population being only my family. Even then it's probably unavoidable. If, as a parent, I can inculcate a sense of self in my child that allows her or him to deal with competition without thinking that's all that ever matters, then I'd not only have done part of my job as a parent, I'd have probably helped create a less unhappy person. My beef, then, is not with competition.

My objection is to putting kids in a situation that is very obviously harsh for them. Being in a studio or on a filming set is not easy. Starting from something as basic as the set lights being extremely harsh (for adult skin and hair among other things, leave alone for kids) to being closeted for weeks on end in an atmosphere that is not only unnatural on many levels but is also blinkered. Someone on the timeline argued that kids going to schools and giving exams are not natural either. I don't entirely disagree but I don't entirely agree either. I have two kids of my own. As someone with a curious enough mind, I've tried with experimenting by breaking rules (the ones that I was aware of and didn't see as the "natural" thing to do, at least) as far as parenting is concerned; I've experimented with what the books told me, just to see if parents around the world and parent-authors around the world were trying to create cookie-cutter children. One of the things I experimented with is the notion (one that comes highly recommended by paediatricians, parenting books and generally any parent who has gotten past the toddler age sane) that routine gives you happier, more relaxed, healthier (?) children. One needn't have absolute regimentation; the books say if the child knows what to expect next -- that after bathing her in the evening, she's going to get into pyjamas and then a story's going to be read after which you will cuddle... -- then a child feels more at rest, has a greater feeling of security and is generally happier.

I tried to shake that up a bit; I changed order around, timings were shunted this way and that, routine was twisted in every conceivable way. I tried it for a few weeks - this controlled mayhem. It was me trying to reinvent a wheel by making it square. My kids, people, were pissed off kids in the weeks that their routine was tossed aside. The weeks with routine? My kids responded beautifully. They were less clingy, they were easier to get along with, ate better and all of that. My point, then, is that something like a school provides a part of the routine that kids can predict and be secure with. It's like sleeping and waking. If you're going to argue that sleeping and waking are also conditioning, give me some credit and please take your argument elsewhere. You and I both know, your waking mind and body do better with sunlight than your sleeping one. So while a school setting may not be the most desirable or natural setting for a child, it provides the comfort of predictability. Apart from a whole lot of friends with people exactly like you.

In addition to being subjected to the tough conditions of a TV show, the kids are then faced with judgement. Sure, kids get judged all the time; by their parents, by their friends, by the kids they go to school with. But there's a kind of humiliation that is bigger than all of the above when you're judged for the rest of the world to see. A child has the right to privacy even when it's being told off or in some situations, depending on your parenting style, being humiliated. Reality shows take that right away. Moreoever, going back to school after being eliminated in a show cannot be easy -- kids are cruel, I've always maintained -- and the kids who don't do well will go back to face a fair amount of bullying, if not some idol worship for having been on TV. All this could happen to someone who didn't go on TV but you'll agree the intensity is multiplied when you've been a "star".

I once read a piece on how kids hanging out with adults was a good thing. I am still undecided. I am not too fond of precocity, a personification of which lives in my own home. But that has never stopped me from answering any question that my daughter has put forth. In a way, that could be counted as treating a child as an adult but I am confused about that. I think if she's smart enough to ask a question like the ones she asks, she may also figure out a way to process my usually carefully-worded answers and understand it temporarily, till she later figures out loopholes and elaborates. On a filming set, there are other kids, sure, but there are more adults than there are kids. After a point, adults that aren't part of the family grow immune to the presence of kids and behave like...well... adults. I strongly believe that can't have the best influences on a child, especially if that behavior is radically different from what the child has seen in his or her home environment. You might ask can you control your child's environment all your life? Of course not and I  hope no one ever will. But go to a set where stuff is shot; spend some time there. Maybe you'll agree with me.

Masterchef Junior aside, there are shows closer home in India that are by no means set to any standards. Whether it is a code of conduct that states what a child can perform/do on stage or the amount of time a child spends at a set acting in a show, there are no rules. In the latter case, I am yet to discover why making a child act in a TV show or a film isn't considered child labour (just to be specific, I do not talk of the Masterchef show here.) And that's my problem with reality shows in particular and children acting in TV shows specifically. How long are these kids spending in studios, what kind of conditions and codes of conduct are laid out for them, how are the parents treating all the competition, do they feel normal when they go back to their life, do their aspirations take a different turn once they've tasted fame to whatever extent? I don't know. And I believe those answers, in general, might be uncomfortable ones.

My take:  if it's healthy competition and the child's virtuosity that you want to encourage, then aren't school, interschool, state or national-level competitions enough? What extra thing are you getting from putting her or him in a studio or a set and then their perhaps-humiliation/jubilation being telecast on TV? I do believe being part of a shooting schedule that focuses on a child entirely takes away a little bit from your childhood. The examples are many. You may eventually turn out to be an adult, one that has got all the rubbish and rehab out of the way, but you've pretty much lost much of your childhood, one that you had every right to, had your parent understood that a parent's responsibility is to know one's child and nurture the capacity to make decisions by increasing subtly and gradually the scope of where a child can make them. Till such time, a parent bears the cross for making a decision that may not have placed the child as the most important factor in the decision. 

Mummy for a mirror

I wrote this piece here. Cross posting it here. Also, head on over there are read more love for mums. 

***

I try not to make too much of a deal for mother's day, although last year I got my mum a pretty silver ring. Like I said, I try not to. After all, how is it fair to put your children in a position to do something for you, many times with them not wanting to because they don't believe in Hallmark Holidays? Because, hey, they didn't ask to be born, or nappy changed, or fed, or vaccinated or rocked to sleep. You were the self-indulgent, clueless cretin who decided a baby would totally complete you. 

But no point flogging a dead horse, is there, even if it's a mummy horse? Jokes apart, every single day, I make tons of decisions about my kids. I try not to make any at all, of course, but the fact that I'd mildly appreciate if they didn't grow up to be serial killers or Chetan Bhagats demands that I make some key decisions every day. I need to decide whether to tell them the truth all the time, I need to decide how to be on top of the game without letting them know I am quickly running out of skills and patience to beat them at it. I also need to figure out how not to give them a little smack -- sometimes more than -- once in a while. Apart from the other dozens of regular decisions such as what to feed them, how i can trick them into sleeping longer, what to do with them come evening time and it's too hot. 

And every day I wake up wanting to ask my mother if she'd be too uncomfortable if I made a shrine to her and garlanded the thing five times a day. And hire a priest to do Vedic rituals four times a day in her honour. And drown the shrine in gold and gems a la Tirupati. I know, with kids below the age of three I have no right to feel like this already but I do, so all you parents of teenagers, stop nodding your head smugly and saying, "Wait till they get older". Uh anh, I am not waiting. I can't. There's no time, see? Because between trying to raise them and thanking my mother to the nines of being as strong as she was in raising me to be my own person, I am losing hair, appetite and general focus that might lead me to sell the kids to a circus thinking the money they give me with their tricky, gypsy hands is more important than hearing the ear-splitting screeches of my screaming banshees. 

From having taught me to make my own decisions (which I am sure she regrets) to introducing me to the arts -- music, writing, reading, dance, colour, dressing up -- my mum deserves tremendous credit. I've seen where she could have done better but I also know she did the best she could. In my becoming a mother, I have blindly imbibed some things that I want to pass on to my kids such as music and light and independence. And yet, there are things I would like to not do with my kids that she did with me. That said, the first outweighs the second, of course. And therefore, I'll wish I am half the mother to my kids that my mother was to me. 

Happy mother's day.

Indeed, a mother for all seasons

Once you’ve borne children, you can never go back to feeling perfunctorily sorry for something terrible that happens to children. The kind of sadness you feel on hearing some child somewhere has had to suffer something terrible when you don’t have children of your own lasts perhaps a few days, or maybe a few weeks if you’re deeply empathetic. But then it goes away. Not because you are mean or don’t feel deeply but simple because your life gets in the way and these things that don’t directly affect you tend to gradually hide in recesses that keep safe the things you can’t explain or do anything about.

But once you’ve had children, no matter how un-maternal you may feel or consider yourself to be, every child’s misfortune is dramatically superimposed upon your own child, albeit momentarily. Every mother’s pain becomes your own. I might sound like Captain Obvious right now but it’s the truth. Just like you’ll find a whole bunch of heads turning in a roomful of mothers if a there’s a loud “Mama”. A hopelessly ill child, stories of infanticide, of mothers who have just discovered their perfectly beautiful children are not entirely “normal” and don’t know how to deal with it, abandoned children, orphans: the list is long as it is excruciating. I’ve lain awake at nights after hearing of two women having killed their own daughters in infanthood wondering if I could have helped them in anyway; if anyone could have done something; wondering how those mothers live with themselves for the rest of their lives, understanding that the children got lucky and it is the mothers who are the victims of lifelong hellfire.

I read a piece by Shobha Narayan, a journalist who refers to herself as a story tellers (as opposed to demographer) who wrote women from cripplingly poor backgrounds have lived such hard lives that they have no maternal instinct. That they believe and understand the lives of their daughters and themselves will be unadulterated misery if these babies are allowed to live. And so they suffocate their little bodies a few hours after they are born, or lace milk with poisonous extracts that kills the little things in an hour (Narayan mentions this in a heart-breaking way in her piece where she says women in Usilampetti in TN feed their children milk laced with an extract of a plant and the infant “sucks on it greedily”.) If you’ve fed your child, or watched a baby being fed you’ll know how intensely dear that whole picture is – of a child sucking hungrily and greedily at whatever it is being fed, trusting its caregiver to appease hunger. It broke my heart completely to imagine these women doing that within few hours of giving birth. And living with it the rest of their lives.

A dead child in a washing machine, an orphan baby left in a dustbin, fetuses stuffed in a bag, children sold to prostitution, hundreds of dead baby girls: I have heard all this and more this past week. I have had no peace of mind. Largely because I can’t do a thing about it but talk or write or cry. Also because, at the risk of sounding dramatic, my heart bleeds for the mothers. I see my beautiful babies laughing, growing, thriving; I see my husband and I struggling to give them the best, I see my parents helping us out in wonderful ways to make them comfortable and it humbles me. What is a greater struggle? To live with the knowledge that you child is better off dead, or to live every day cosseted in your little world believing everything is well?

Oh, brother! Sister concerns

So, call me masochistic but I am ready for a third baby. Bio-rhythmically, that is. In every other way, this is complete insanity. I don’t have enough money right now to make my family a single-income one, I don’t have manpower to look after kids in case I do have a baby and go back to work, and I definitely don’t have the kindness to have another year of sleeplessness or to breastfeed every two hours. But I am totally ready to be pregnant.

Apart from the process of getting there being rather fun, being pregnant is one of the best things I’ve done. I’ve looked great, felt great, and apart from being utterly and totally humiliated during my C-sections by “brothers” seeing every bit of me waist below, the end results were fantastic.

Maybe I’ll have a third child a few years from now. Maybe I’ll have one biologically or maybe I’ll adopt. Or maybe I just know too many people now who are pregnant. All this broodiness got me thinking about many things. You know, it really saddens me to see how many of my friends want just one baby.

Before I launch into a full-fledged lecture, let me give you a little background. I was never crazy about babies. I see 25 years olds, even 30 years olds go gaga over little babies and I keep thinking I must have been odd because I really didn’t do that to every little kid that went by. I looked at cute kids, and said they were cute and I moved on. I even had uncharitable thoughts that some ‘chubby’ babies looked like pigs and once, even as I held a really tiny baby, remember thinking, how easy it would be to snap such delicate bones. What? I didn’t do it! I just thought it.

I love kids a little more now but am still not crazy about them as some women I know are. Don’t get me wrong. I think they’re fantastic. And watching my kids grow and learn and notice every little thing in this world around them has me in awe. I adore their smiles in general, and my kids’ in particular, but I am still not nuts about them. I prefer having conversation with them to coochie cooing with them. I prefer letting them be than to overly make them.

And for someone like that to want baby number three is surprising, even to me. So when I say it saddens me that more and more people are opting for one-child families, I honestly don’t know where it’s coming from. But I do know that the sadness is genuine. Some time ago, when I was in India and thinking about this, I saw with distress that The Hindu had done a piece on it just as I was about to write a post. But having read it, I realised it was just a defensive piece rather than one with any reasoning behind it. (Not that mine is going to have scientific fact or any such evolved things.)

So I decided to do this post anyway. I honestly believe kids with sibling are better kids. Call me a generalising so and so – all though that is not what I am doing -- but that has been my experience. I find kids with siblings are more open to things in general, less eager to please, are more likely to grow up not having a rather large sense of entitlement and overall have a more healthy understanding of love.

I know some fantastic people who were single kids. But we’ve never been friends for long. Something about them, even before I know they don’t have siblings, rubs me up the wrong way. Maybe it’s that they forgot to be children after a point because they hung out a lot with their parents. Maybe it’s just that the parents annoy me with their, “We want to concentrate all our love on our first and only baby.” Maybe it is the fact that invariably I find a little awkwardness, a certain defensiveness, when I speak to a person who grew up a single child. Maybe it’s all in my head. But this is also my blog.

Of course, the above could be said of people with siblings too and we all know having a sibling can do nothing to reduce the irritant quotient of some people but the intrinsic difference is that you may be able to tell a kid with a sibling that he’s a snotty little piece of nothing and get only a punch in return. But telling a single kid that might make you responsible for him turning out to be a psychopath.

But jokes apart, and people who grew up single, excuse me, I love you all equally but you guys just don’t cut like we sister-brother types do – look around you and tell me. The happier, more well-adjusted, less fake ones are almost always those with a sister or a brother they can absolutely not stand but love.

My advice? The population can take a walk*. Go make babies.

*One of the first things I worried about when I knew I was surprise-pregnant with my second kid was the population. “Crap! I am damaging my country by having more kids than it can sustain. I am moving to Australia.”

Star bright, star mite

I was in Kerala few weeks ago, in Cochin, where my daughter and I went out to lunch one day. She’s 30 months old, rather pretty (I say this as statement of fact and not with any conceit) extremely expressive and animated. An hour into our time at the restaurant, another guest who had been watching us for sometime walked over and said he was a ‘director’ and is currently working on ad films; would I be interested in having my daughter be a part of an ad he was making? I am not sure he was just doing it for entertainment – because I did see him go up to other guests and talk as well – but I said no.

He said, “Oh it’s not you we want, it’s your daughter.” I said yes, I perfectly understood that and wasn’t interested. “Don’t you want her expressions and antics to be recorded and for all to see,” he pressed, looking puzzled. I politely declined again but said I’d check with her father and let him know. He left it at that but I left the restaurant amused at the shock on his face. Really, has no mother said no before to him?

But it brought to fore something that troubles me more and more. Children in the media and child actors. With a slew of reality shows that are geared at finding “super” talent in children – dancing and singing, primarily – and a hit film that stars a child meaning instant celebrity a la Darsheel Safary and the like, I find this exactly the kind of hazardous profession that the Child Labour Act in the Indian law talks about. The Act, last touched upon in 1986, lists out, among other things, the categories in which a child (defined as below 14 years) should not be employed. The most widely rejected category is the army but others include eateries, cinder picking, fire and match works, and diving (?) among other things. The categories, however, do not include feature or ad films.

There’re two things that worry me about this issue.

a)      That parents are so struck by the immense potential of fame, the intoxicating idea of their child becoming the next big sensation, that they don’t think twice about pushing their kids towards public performing – whether it’s acting, singing our dancing.

b)      That adults – parents as well as others involved in employment of a child in entertainment – may have very little awareness, or give little credence, to how this whole experience shapes the child’s personality.

As a child, when I happened to watch an interview of child stars of Hollywood, I remember being awed at their poise, what seemed like maturity and their quasi-adult mannerisms. Today, I feel sad for them because I believe they spent their childhood being adults without being allowed to do all the things that adults do.

Which is why I believe this should also be on that list of hazardous professions in the Child Labour Act. Why should a nine-year old or even a 13-year-old have to hang out with adults for extended periods of time? Bad enough that they’re adults, worse that they’re so-called actors. A child may love to act, it may be exciting for her to be chosen to play a certain part, it may be fantastic to not go to school. But are those reasons enough for you to deny your child of all that is bound to give her basic skills she can hone on her journey to adulthood?

Like each one of us realises as we get out of college or school, education is so rarely about what we learn from books. It was in school I learnt that there are as many kinds of people as there are different ways to deal with them. It was in school that I learnt that teachers are not gods but if you found a good one, you definitely should worship him. It was school that taught me that children are unkind; that I too was capable of being unkind if it meant being popular. In school I learnt that if you played a sport, your confidence, your outlook towards the rest of your life would be different from those who didn’t play any. Heck, it was in school that I learnt boys can be complete asses but I would still like them. And that girls have it tough and pick up how to be mean little bitches very, very early, but they’re fun as hell.

Take that environment away from a child and you’re gearing her or him up for near-disaster, I believe. On one hand, home schooling appeals to me greatly because I honestly believe there is a lack of schools that will nurture children’s individuality. The cookie-cutter robots that come out of prestigious schools in most Indian cities are academically sound but largely lacking in softer skills to lead happy, content, holistically successful lives. But on the other hand, like someone long ago – on a blog too – pointed out to me, home schooling severely restricts social interaction, which is beyond essential to a child. Unless you have six kids yourself and a couple of neighbours with as large families, home schooling is a bit of a double-edged sword.

Home schooling a child actor on the sets and taking time for lessons during their “shooting schedules” ensure you might get your child past class 12. But is she going to have the opportunity to be a child? I am not sure. If nothing else, it really isn’t healthy or normal for a child to get exposed to all that grown-up talk. The definition of being a child is vast and so I will not attempt to elaborate on that too much here. But I think what I essentially mean is for the child to have the space and time to find herself and her source of confidence and inspiration from learning to deal with situations that might seem mundane to adults but are entirely new to children.

On another level, all the fawning that a child receives in a situation like that cannot be in any way tempered by any amount of level-headedness you may try to employ at home. Besides if the parents are star struck, I do believe there will be very little level-headedness at work in that home. I am judgemental like that.

And I am not even going to talk about too much coming too early – really, are children equipped to handle the fallout of fame, or just fame even?

Apart from the above, strong lights, make up, and the over-stimulation a set can induce can’t be very good for little children. Which is why I am appalled to see little babies in TV shows. No wonder they’re bawling all the time. I could, of course, be wrong. I have two kids of my own and I see how much they try to reach into an adult world to try and understand the things that go on there. While they may understand the words, I doubt it greatly that they understand context or subtleties of adult interactions.

On another note, I was faced with a slightly confusing situation a few days ago. My brother, who is an avid photographer, decided to start up a photoblog. The first post he had up was beautiful pictures of my daughter. Now, I understand his need to display the best of his work, and it’s very touching that he used pictures of someone he loves to bits. I was really very touched but I was also uncomfortable with pictures of her being put on as public a platform as a blog. I made it clear that I was uncomfortable with it but he refused to take the post down. His logic was if I could put pictures of her on Facebook, then he could put it up on his blog. Call me stupid or call me an alligator in the middle of a bad PMS, but I don’t see his point. Yes, I understand that if someone wanted, they could get right into my FB account and do what they wanted with the pictures, and that privacy settings might be only a false sense of security. But I’d much rather have that sense of security, however ephemeral, than have her pictures up for just about any perv to see.

Anyway, it so happened that I got a bit worked up about it and I am sure he totally misunderstood my reasons for asking him to take them down (which he stoutly refused to do till my mum intervened – yes, we’re grown up like that). Soon, morning came and I wondered if I had overreacted. I tweeted it to my  bunch (honestly, the things we know about each other on my timeline is disturbing if you think about it) and except for two people everyone said I overreacted and that there is no harm in having those pictures there. I am still not convinced although I feel bad and want to tell my brother he can use the pictures for his blog.

What do you think?

For a very special boy

Dear M,

Because you are six months old you have no idea who your parents are. As you grow up, you'll turn one of the two ways.
1) You'll spend the rest of your life wishing and praying fervently to god (yes, you will believe, because your mother will make sure) to give you a set of parents that are normal. My advice is don't wish too much for it. To your regret and utter disappointment it just might come true.
2)Or you'll strut around so bloody proud of your parents, of yourself and of the values that you've been given, that you'll probably live with them for the rest of their lives. In which case, I'll personally chase you out when you are 21.

Let me tell you a little about your father.
He is living proof of the fact that you can undo what parents do to you and become someone you want to be. So, if it ever happens that you think your parents screwed you up, please think again or I'll slap some sense into you.
Your father has a generous heart, a kind soul and on the days you think he is cruel, you will be bang on. He believes, sometimes, you need to be cruel to be kind. Trust him, whatever he's doing he's doing because he sees the outcome; because he has mastered his ego and inherent pettiness that human beings possess and has applied reason.
If you ever find yourself in a position where you feel you can't talk to someone, force yourself to go to him. He will listen to you, without judgement. At least apparent judgement. He will listen to you, try and understand you and then tell you that you're a complete idiot if that's what you've been. But if you haven't been an ass, he'll fight with you for you till his last breath.
Believe every word he utters in seriousness. He never ever says anything he doesn't mean. And laugh at yourself when he cracks jokes at you. Nothing is above a good joke, for him, thank God.
I am pretty sure your dad doesn't see people as men or women, first. He sees them as friends if they are that. Both get his respect if they deserve it. And his coolness when they don't. Similarly, age, position in life, money, are not reasons for him to respect others. And having any less of those are no reasons for him to excuse anything they've done.
Your father is mostly crazy. But he is also one of the strongest men I know. Lean on him. And when he's old and cranky and I am not around to tell him what a nutter he is, lend him your shoulder.

And what do I say about your mother?
I think she was born a mother. I have never seen a woman who lights up like she does. And I don't mean she smokes. A phone call from someone who mattered, a drink, a film, a photograph, a candle, a pair of earrings -- anything can make this gorgeous woman blaze like a brilliant summer sun.
When you grow up and tell her to stop being a child, you won't be wrong. Because that's something she doesn't know she is, thank god. There is so much of the child in her and as you grow older and meet more people you'll know how important it is to retain that. And you'll love your mum for it.
If you ever suspect, and I challenge you that you won't, that she's digging her heels in and not going to budge, you're probably right. You'll never see her being stubborn; she has a very quiet way of doing that. But when she does, you can threaten to main yourself and gouge your eyes out with an icecream scoop and the only thing that will happen is you, er, being maim and blind.
Remember to get her gifts, especially the ones you make. She's such a sentimentalist. But try and push her around and you'll have to come to my place to spend the night because she will ask you to sleep on the verandah.
She's the kindest, softest friend I have and if you turn out to be a good egg, believe me it will so much her doing.

*****

This letter is to the lovely boy who just added to an already love family that I spoke about in this post.

A readymade family

It rarely happens in my life that two people who I love are married to each other, unless it is someone in my family. So I consider myself extremely lucky to have as friends a wonderful couple who have been married to each other for 10 years. I will not mention their names here for many reasons although I am sure they wouldn't mind for the most bit.

Being a mother to two children, I am beginning to understand why a lot of people don't want kids. I also get why many do. And I also understand that some people are totally okay with not having kids even though they want them.

My friends just had their adoption go through and brought home a gorgeous little boy. Something in my stomach is dying to break free and put his name down here to tell him how special he is but I can't. Privacy is sacred.

Adoption is a hugely sensitive issue in more ways than one. No one wants to think that they can't have kids. No one (I know) wants other people to think that they are being 'charitable' by adopting a child. No one wants to surprise themselves and find that they can't actually love their adopted child when she acts out or displays traits that neither of the parents think they have.

I have always wanted to adopt a child. I went as far as deciding I'd be a single mum putting the adoption process in motion before I married. I could never tell why it is that I wanted to adopt but I knew I did. Is that okay? I realised it is not. One needs to know exactly why they want to adopt. And unless the answer is clear, it would be the wrong thing to do.

I know people believe that one shouldn't adopt as charity. I agree, but only if the prospective adoptive parent is going to treat the child like it should be grateful. But if a person is capable of love then I don't see anything wrong with a person adopting because they want to give an unfortunate child a life of love and security. Adopting a child is a fantastic way of rehabilitating it, providing it with food, shelter, education, opportunities but most of all, love.

At last count, there we 12 million abandoned children in India and if reports are to be believed a horrific 90 per cent of this number was girls. And take a wild guess at how many adoptions happened last year. Go on. Less than 4000. Can anyone explain those two trends?

I am a relatively new mother, both  my kids are under two years of age. And I've spoken to many, many mothers recently and almost all have said they were hoping to have a girl when they were pregnant. I have a few friends who have opted to adopt and have all ticked as their gender preference, girls. Maybe I am living in a pretty little well that's urban India, maybe all these girls that are being abandoned are coming from rural areas. But can someone explain why this dichotomy exists? Why am I meeting women who actively want daughters and at the same time 90 per cent of all those kids abandoned are girls?

Have any of you been to an orphanage? I went before I was a mother. I don't think I want to go back as one. I don't think I can look at all those mad monkeys there and wonder how they're smiling like diamonds even though they have no families to call their own. I don't want to see little babies rocking themselves to sleep. I don't want to see a baby cry and cry and cry and it be attended only when the poor overworked attendant can.

I am still considering adoption but I don't know when. I need enough money first and then I need to know that my existing family and I will accept the new child as our own.