The highs and lows (and everything in between) of being a parent By Mila Tuli Several years ago, when I was writing up my doctoral thesis on Ethnotheories of Parenting young children in India, I was struck by the findings that despite the popular reference to the idea of parenting as something unique that parents […]
Category: Childhood in India
Childhood and socialisation: Naomi Quinn
“This article delineates four universal features of child rearing that together explain how child rearing everywhere so effectively turns children into valued adults. Cultural models for child rearing, so variable in the substance of what they teach, are all equally designed to make the child’s experience of those important lessons constant, to link those lessons […]
Announcement
Dear Readers, We are very happy to announce a new article by Nandita Chaudhary, Sujata Sriram and Jaan Valsiner on Oxford Bibliographies Online. Please find the link here: Cultural psychology and human development – Childhood Studies – Oxford Bibliographies. We look forward to your comments. Team Masala Chai
Come home to Gilly’s grandkids
Dear readers, Moving home is tough and the last month has been devoted to a shift from Mumbai to Delhi, or rather to NOIDA (also known as NOt-In-Delhi-Area), the poor cousin of the grand capital city. There is a chill in the air as the seasonal smoke from Punjab farms is trapped in the region. […]
Happy Diwali
A very happy diwali to all our readers. From, Team Masala Chai
“I want him to be a Rambo-baby” Conversations with a young mother- Part Two
As parents in the present times, we all struggle with the directions in which children should be guided. Should the focus be on leaving the child relatively free, should we have a firm hold on moral training from the start, what focus should be placed on academic learning, should we allow children to play freely, […]
How I Became a Long-Distance Runner: Conversations with Nandini – Part One
Nandini was born in 1989 in a village in Coorg. For her graduation, she came to Bangalore where she now lives with her husband and one and a half year old son. This first part of our conversation with Nandini explores her views on life, relationships and running. She works as a Senior Product Engineer […]
“Hal kabdikabdikabdikabdi….”
Of morning walks and memories “Hal kabdikabdikabdikabdi….” At least that’s what it sounded like at the time. So many of our childhood games were learnt by osmosis that one cannot be certain about whether the aural memories are accurate. Like LOND.. London, we never questioned why the ON was dropped from the spelling in our […]
The Road to Nirvana is Paved with Snakes (and Ladders)
Background Recently we proposed to use the Snakes and Ladders’ game-board for an International workshop about children’s development planned for early November, 2020. The primary purpose of using the template was to play with the notion of risk (snakes) and ladders (factors that promote resilience) to engage an audience of experts online. The idea seemed […]
Introducing Nautanki Mom: Storytelling in Singapore
One of our objectives on Masala Chai is to support fresh, spontaneous, informal and independent projects the field of family life and children’s care as well as children’s activities. In this category, we have featured authors of children’s books, features about children through photo stories, mothers who have initiated online ventures, as well as creative […]
Goddesses are Us: Maitrikas in Indian Art
In a recent conversation about museums, I remembered one of my favourite exhibitions at the National Museum in New Delhi from 2014: The Body in Indian Art by the incredibly talented Naman Ahuja, Associate Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. In the catalogue, Dr. Ahuja writes: “The body and its […]
School Readiness 2.0?
In a recent discussion on Facebook, I posted a thought about the concept of School Readiness. The testing of young children to assess whether they are “ready” for school, whether it comes as a masked evaluation of the Centre, or a “group evaluation” aimed at evaluating the teacher, is something I have found profoundly distasteful […]
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