Margarita with a straw - my view

English Vinglish, Queen and now Margarita with a straw, though different and distinct in terms of storyline, characters and other aspects, yet all these movies had something similar at their intuitive core. It might not be a conscious decision by director to portray the central character struggling hard enough to achieve desired social stature amongst stereotypical Indian mindset and hence a western exposure proves to be a life altering event, but this is something which is common to all three movies and it is probably also emerging as a new cinematic trend.

So, is it really true that an Indian woman need to have her passport stamped in order to feel existent and empowered? If it is true, then does this mean that majority of Indian women population which does not have any chance of exploring west stand no chance at all to acquire deserved social importance?

While it might be true to an extent that people in developed countries like USA and UK are more tolerant, accepting and are able to see an individual beyond her limitations, but it can certainly not be drawn as a universal law. All societies of world have all sort of people, otherwise these first world nations would have been free from menaces like racism and crime against women. It could just be a happy co-incidence that protagonist of our cross culture films happen to have their respective encounters with only a mature lot of people among all. Having laid down the base for benefit of doubt to director Shonali Bose, it is now just a question of whether she has been able to tell this story of a differently abled girl in an entertaining and thought provoking manner or not.

Margarita with a straw is a bold film with an intent to emphasise the need of equality for differently abled and their desire to be looked upon as equals, recognised for their abilities rather being sympathised for their disabilities. The scene where Laila flips the rock show judge for announcing her band as winner just because the lyrics were penned down by a disabled girl was really impressive and could have set the tone for what's coming ahead, but unfortunately what started as a promising tale of making a mark despite all odds soon turned into a monotonous timeline of routine carnal accomplishments.

It would be cruel to say that we don't expect differently abled to feel the same human instincts as we do, but the fact that entire length of film was kind of dedicated to only this superficial aspect of human experience just let me down. One of the reasons for this disappointment could have arisen from all the hype created for the film. When legends like Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan praise a film, it is quite normal to expect something extra ordinary from the film.

In the end, I would like to congratulate Kalki Koechlin for such a heart felt portrayal of the character Laila, though the minor hand gestures and physical limitations were not carried on consistently throughout the film, but Kalki did a fabulous job. The only other character that managed to equate Kalki was Revathi as Laila's mother. Indian cinema is finally seeing a paradigm shift towards experimental avenues, and hopefully Margarita with a straw is just a step forward.

5 things we might be doing wrong to our kids

No matter how exhilarating the feeling of becoming a parent might be, being a parent is not as easy as it looks. As the famous phrase goes ‘dealing with a baby is like dealing with a drunk person, all the time’ and despite there being innumerable books and internet material claiming to be guides to good parenting, probably none provides the exact solution for exceptional problems. Based on my personal experiences, I have tried to list down a few pointers about what we might be doing wrong, may be sub consciously, unintentionally, but if we somehow manage to overcome these trivial loopholes in our strategy to raise kids, it might make a lot of difference to their lives.

1. Play by their rules: Play by their rules, or no rules to be specific. Babies and toddlers often enjoy and celebrate simple and modest games like peek-a-boo, or make funny faces, or throw the ball but in our attempt to keep them amused, we end up thinking that kids are like adults and hence have a mature thought process and may get bored, just like we get bored doing any activity again and again. Thus, we try and change the game and offer variety. They might not be as neophiliac as we might think and are pretty much rudimentary in their approach to have fun, thus they can continue for hours playing the same game, repeating same things again and again. This is just based on observation though, and there is no fixed formula, they could be quite adventurous as well. The attention span of kids is very short, therefore it is best to continue providing them what they want unless they themselves move out and demand something else. Doing same activity for longer duration only helps enhance their focus and ability to concentrate.

2. Don’t scare them even if you need to: Babies and toddlers might get into tricky and troublesome physical situations. It could be putting their hands or head on or in the toilet bowl, or sitting or moving just around the edge of the table, getting hold of some dangerous tool or any other such situation. Where at first hand we should always avoid them getting into such a situation, but nevertheless even if they get into one and we happen to observe them from a distance, we generally shout out loud in the fit of the moment and scare them. Giving them a shock from a distance would never help, on the contrary it could make things worse like make them fall, make them hurt themselves or at the least make them cry of fear. This might also have implications at their subconscious minds which we might never come to know about. It sounds difficult, but why should we practice something which can do no good, but has potential of doing much worse to our kids? I don’t know the ideal way to deal with this, but probably a more composed approach is required. In one of the episodes of Koffee with Karan, Shahrukh Khan once said some really meaningful words related to this, he said “If I see a speeding car coming towards my friend, I might shout and warn him, if I see a car coming towards my family member, I might run and push them out of the way, but if at all I see a car coming towards my kids, I won’t shout, I won’t push them, instead I would stand in front of car and make sure it doesn’t gets pass through”. No matter how idealistic this might sound, but our children deserve this level of attention and pampering from us.

3. Don’t make promises you can’t keep: We Indians are habitual of creating unnecessary hoaxes to keep our kids away from certain things or activities, or simply to pacify them on certain occasions. We often make fake promises to them just to keep them content, and very conveniently forget about those promises. The problem here is not visible with an immediate effect, but it certainly keep on piling up and might result in long term breach of trust. Our words might keep on loosing the credibility as our kids grow up and in the process we might end up creating an unbridgeable gap between ourselves and our kids. Well, making promises is not difficult, but keeping those is, so ideally we should only promise what we could fulfil. It doesn’t matter to kids whether we are promising taking them to Disneyland or getting an ice cream for them, as long as we stick to what we promise. We all have busy lives and owing to continuing imbalanced working life styles, we find it easy to get away from demanding situations and keep on postponing promises. It really breaks kids’ heart when they don’t get that promised remote controlled car after having so many imaginations of playing with it.

4. Be flexible with what and how they eat: It is commonly observed that babies and toddlers tend to play with food and try to eat everything else. Like anyone else, kids are inquisitive too and for them this experience called life and the perception of universe all around has just begun. It is normal for them to explore everything including their food, and exploring comes best through the sense of touch for them, and hence all the mess. Don't be too much worried about how they eat, whether they spoil their clothes, or they spill the food. It is also normal for them to develop a liking for certain kind of food eaten in some particular peripheral arrangement, like having only potatoes while watching cartoon. This could be improved by disguising other food forms in the form they prefer and by engaging them in something more interesting than cartoon while they eat. Associate their food with little stories and actions, like my son reacts very positively when I give him a bite while making helicopter sound and making a round hand movement. This is time consuming and requires patience and probably that's the reason we normally choose to take a short cut and offer kids quick and junk food thinking that they will eventually start enjoying all kind of foods but we forget that this actually results in kids getting finicky about their food choices. So, even if it's cumbersome to feed the kids the right way, it shouldn't be avoided because all of it seems worthy enough when we see a smiling healthy kid not dependent on junk food and having the same variety as we do.

5. Don't feel embarrassed: There might be a scenario where our young ones don't behave appropriately in public places like malls, cinema halls, restaurants, and no matter how hard we try to control their behaviour they just seem to be unstoppable, and among all the public admiration that it attracts, we just feel like melting down out of sheer embarrassment. Well, there is no reason to be embarrassed at all, firstly because people around really don't care and at the max they might just be sympathising with us, and secondly because our actions resulting from our embarrassment might have even more severe impact on our kids than we might imagine. It must be understood that kids don't cry or create a scene for no reason, they mostly do so to exhibit their discomfort, and in this process if they are made to feel as the source of shame and shouted at then it won't solve any purpose rather it will bring more discomfort to them and the scene would just escalate. There is no routine remedy for such situations and such situations require different treatment every time, but feeling ashamed and blaming kids is certainly not one of those. We must remember, kids learn from us, we are their biggest role models, so we should always treat them the way we want them to treat us.