Twenty- five Seven

Sprouting Wings

May 8, 2026

Today I went to school for one of the last few times that I will be going to the Junior school. There will possibly be just one more function – the graduation before the Little Ones go to Middle School.

I felt a little sad as I got off on the 4th floor where the fifth graders were having their exhibition. Unlike the exhibitions of our childhood, these were actually projects done by the children themselves on topics that they were passionate/interested about.

There was an overarching theme about connecting India but the subjects were something that the children chose themselves in which they not only showcased their learning skills over the past five years but also displayed their own distinctive identities.

Little PO

Little Po spoke about music and healing, in particular the Mozart Effect or rather a variation of it. His premise was that Music heals and particularly wards off the loneliness and isolation that people in old age homes, palliative care or even institutions for the differently abled feel.

His own visits to three such homes not only brought much joy to the people living in them but gave him a sense of purpose that his gift of music could make a difference in the lives of others albeit fleeting.

Ms Papaya

Ms. Papaya on the other hand, with a passion for fashion discovered that unnecessary expenditure on clothes is not only wasteful but environmentally damaging as well. As part of her learning, she decided to conduct a clothes donation drive and donate the clothes to a non-profit that re-uses, re-purposes and re-cycles old clothes.

This was met with a huge response with literally a ton of clothes from both the junior and senior schools. Some children even sent their old clothes home to save us the hassle of carrying them back from school. So yesterday it was my task to deliver the clothes to the collection centre.

And the others

The hall was full of parents and children and as I visited each stall, I found all the kids so different from the toddlers they were when they first met each other in Upper Prep.

These confident young boys and girls were taller than me, spoke with authority and moved with a confidence that was truly remarkable. They answered questions without ums and aahs. Their presentations were polished and truly it was a joy to see how then had grown so beautifully.

As I got out of the lift, I felt a twinge of sadness. It won’t be long before I will have little to do with helping them with school work. No longer will they be my babies who have to be dropped off or picked up.

They are slowly going to spread their wings and finally fly away.

Goodbye little ones. Should I re-christen you to Big Little Ones?

Ciao
A mid morning scare

May 2, 2026

My friend C believes that exercise should be done the moment you get up so that you have it out of the way. I try to follow her advice but some days like yesterday things tend to go awry . No matter how hard I tried to get my best foot forward, there would be an unexpected hiccup and I would kick my exercise resolution down the road all the way till I missed it altogether. This was a real shame because I had woken up well before dawn. So I felt really bad that in all the 18 hours that I was awake, I couldn’t manage more than 4270 steps. And about 15 minutes of lazy yoga .

So this morning I was determined to walk before I got distracted with the day. And luckily I did .

After a beautiful work out, with my halo shining even more, I went about my day – visiting a sari shop from where I got a few saris printed. This was one of the shops I used to visit regularly with my mum and spending time there is truly a blast from the past. MK&Sons is an old established shop on Girgaon’s Main Street that keeps the most exquisite prints in cotton, Chanderi and Kota. And for this season, there’s nothing to beat a cool cotton.

Testing times

After half an hour or so, feeling pleased with myself, I was walking towards a taxi round the corner ( the road was dug up and how !) when suddenly I got a strange buzzing sound from my phone which was vibrating with an urgency that sent my heart racing . Unable to identify the tone, I picked up the phone only to see a notice with an exclamation icon on the left of the message. A strange woman was talking in a strange language and I tried desperately to turn the phone off .

With so many messages warning us about strange messages, I was sure this was a scam. And since last week my friend Dee was victim of a scam and by end of day, had half her bank accounts cleaned out, I was worried the same thing would happen with me !

In a panic I got into a cab and tried frantically to figure out what the message was and where it came from. No amount of jabbing and scrolling helped and I got even more of a scare when I was closer to my destination and the phone gave out another sound.

The message was in English this time and could understand what it was – a test message to alert all citizens about impending disasters.

I asked my taxi driver if he had received such a call but he hadn’t . This made me panic even more! My whole identity was on my phone . Had somebody hacked into my phone ? Would my money go? Would my identity go?

Luckily a watchman recognised my fright and said that he had received a similar message and that it was announced in the morning papers. But I, in my haste to get my exercise out of the way, didn’t read the morning papers !

Aaaaah.

I came home to find everyone calm and collected.

As usual it was only me who didn’t know what was happening.

Ciao
RIPPED

April 17, 2026

In today’s world RIPPED means having extremely low body fat combined with high muscle definition, creating a lean, sculpted, and muscular appearance.

In our times Ripped meant being made a fool of.

In my vocabulary, it means opening the seams of a blouse so that it can fit!!!!

Honestly, before any function that requires a Sari, I spend at least a week deciding which sari I should wear. This normally depends on which blouse fits.

Luckily, these days, the scope of wearing saris has increased because of the trend of wearing any blouse on any sari as long as it is aesthetically pleasing. Thus, you have people wearing T-shirts, tank tops, boat-necked tops and even regular collared shirts as sari blouses.

In fact, the additional material that comes with the regular sari is so insufficient for my blouse that I pair it with another blouse piece (or match some fabric) to make my own boat-necked blouse to wear with my trousers.

Why Can’t the Tailor make a blouse that fits?

For years, I held the belief that sari blouses shrink. Especially when the cotton ones came back from wash. Or even the silk ones with cotton lining.

So to counter this problem, I insisted on the tailor making the blouses an inch looser rather than the skin-tight fit that is the norm. For a few blouses/years, the tailor followed my instructions till one day the garment began to look decidedly ugly.

My tailor of course came up with another idea “Madam,” he tells me,” You should not make blouses larger than you require because you then expand to fit into them. Perhaps you should make blouses a tad smaller so that YOU shrink to fit them!”

So till I find the perfect solution to the perennially fitting blouse, I shall have to resort to the RIPPING the blouse in double time so as to get ready for the function in time.

Ciao,