Growing up with Masha

Gauri Parasher Joshi

MY mother happened to show me an animated film of a little, mischievous girl called Masha, who is brought up by a patient and harried bear. We could relate to the film, having with us a naughty 17-month-old of our own.

There is no doubt that one babe at home provides raw material enough for a study on the ‘Bizarre deflections in the life trajectories of boring adults’.

With the myriad musical variations to nursery rhymes that veer away from the lilting folk or the classical and bring home to today’s tech-friendly baby soft-rock and hip-hop, the family found itself going back to its youth with some literal and metaphorical out-of-time head-banging. On any day at home, and alarmingly, but thankfully rarely, even at work, you could find the four adults humming the imp’s rhymes even when they were not attending to her. Grandpa, going to place his coffee mug, was found humming about Mary’s little lamb with a look of seriousness and purpose on his face, much to the consternation of the house help. Father, poring over a bulky document, suddenly found himself remembering wistfully a twinkling star, right in the middle of a bright sunny day!

Like the burly, affectionate bear that tries to catch up with Masha’s mischief, new parents may find that baby-rearing helps discover and hone skills they didn’t know they possessed. So mother, who was never a cricket watcher, let alone a cricket player, discovered one night, that her raised hand had caught the onslaught of the sleep-time somersaults of the little one in the form of her heel. At which, mother congratulated herself on having escaped a landing of the said heel on her huge nose, a vulnerable target for baby’s heels and wrench toy for her fingers! Let mother not forget that moment of ecstasy when it was revealed to her that she possessed cheekbones as an arm whammed into her cheek sending a vibe all over it for some moments. There’s a beauty benefit for you with no lasting side-effects! Congratulations were also due for how such vigil, even in sleep, had revealed a hitherto latent fielding ability. With this opening of green fields and pitches, mother could almost see herself in white, positioned behind the stumps, at which point the dream warped into the vagaries of baby food. At least, that is how she remembered it.

But there are times when baby boo just cannot help you realise an ability that you once had. Grandma’s burgundy spectacles were wrenched off her face with such regularity that grandma was found squinting at things that morphed into different shapes, colours and even, well, things. You could have an inspiring conversation with spectacle-deprived grandma about why a piece of blue tapestry was not a green leaf!

So may be, growing up means you go back some steps, to be able to take the steps that lie ahead.