Weekend

The weekend was busy. We were out the door by 9 am on Saturday. We split up for efficiency's sake - S with the kids to the doctor's for annual checkups and vaccinations, and me to Y's school for her Parent-teacher meeting. As you can tell, I gave him the harder job :) I had time to kill after the PTM since S was still not done with the doctor, and I had fun browsing through the huge collection of children's books on sale in the school. I don't know if this happens in other cities, but it seems to be a regular feature in many NCR schools. Outfits like Scholastic hold a day-long display and sale of books during the PTMs. In Y's school for example, a large Delhi kiddie bookstore called Eureka was selling books. Psychologically sound tactic I say. If the teacher tells me my son needs more work on his reading abilities, what are the odds I am going to come out of the meeting and grab a large pile of phonics books and early readers???!!! I'm a little wary of such stealth marketing, but that didn't prevent me from buying a bunch of books for Ads (early readers......what....he really DOES need to work on his reading!!!!) I also picked up a bunch of Hindi worksheets. Now that they have started maatraas for him, his lack of knowledge of Hindi words is showing up and at this point we are learning a whole lot of new words everyday and writing/memorizing them.

By noon, S had picked me up and we went ate a stupor-inducing buffet lunch followed by a long nap at home. On Sunday, we visited the Garden of 5 senses in Delhi - a long-overdue outing. It's near the Qutub, just a 15 min drive for us. The garden itself is very nice, very calm and peaceful; full of little steps and cobbled pathways and mazes, in addition to a solar park, a sundial, a lily pond and a chime 'tree'. I stared at the latter tree, forcefully willing it to chime but the air was so still and humid that not a tinkle could be heard :( Clearly, this is not a season for the outdoors. We were all dripping with sweat, me most of all. I kept biting my lip to avoid cribbing which is what I would have done if the kids were not with us. They were not complaining about the heat and dampness - how could I? Some people had told us that the garden was nothing great - Its just a park - that's what we were told. I think so much of what we do as adults, our prejudices and snobbishness, rubs off on our kids. Yes, basically and fundamentally it's just a park, it was nothing fanta-fabulous but if we go around saying " What the hell is this place, why have we come here, look at the lousy weather" and so on, well then we just teach our kids to do the same and NOT see the beauty in everyday things. So, although, I really really wished for some Bangalore-type weather right then, I kept my trap shut and the kids had a blast, climbing over rocks, running through the maze, playing with pebbles and leaves, spotting centipedes and disturbing the scores of cozy couples desperately seeking some privacy from nosy children! Y was most thrilled to spot a tree with lots of pink flowers and insisted on being photographed under it since she was wearing a matching pink dress!

We have bookmarked this place for autumn/winter/spring picnics. We'll definitely be visiting again.

Leaving you with some pictures of the garden.

The chimes that wouldn't!

The lily pond

View of the Qutub minar from the top of a hillock

Can you tell I am fascinated with this monument? It's so majestic!