OUR PETS

OUR PETS

Recently a friend of mine queried the need for keeping a pet. This was raised in the context of a parrot dying and the owner feeling very disheartened and dispirited at the passing away of the pet bird. 

My friend queried if the habit of keeping bird pets (or any other for that matter) is healthy at all, as children would feel really blue at the death of pets whom they loved with all their heart.

ORIGIN OF THE WORD:

Since 1530, pet meaning animal companion, it was possibly from Scots and dialectal Northern England.

Did you know that a dog lover is called ‘cynophile’ and a cat lover is called ‘ailurophile’. The term ‘Phile’ means ’like’ as against the more familiar ‘phobe’!

PETS IN CHILDHOOD:

Though we associate pets mainly with children, all sorts of people keep pets. 

We have always had dogs as pets (Cynophile!) as far as I can remember. 

My sister and I, as kids, had a dog in particular - a mixture of cocker spaniel and dachshund - a black friendly being called Gilly . She used to come with us wherever we went, sleep under our beds and patiently wait for dinner time. We used to drop whatever food we disliked and she used to gulp it all from under the table from the prying eyes of my mother! 

I met the owner of the dog 30 years later; Molly's parents gifted Gilly as a pup to us. She recalled the dog after so many years with ease, including the name of the dog!

Keeping up with the tradition, my boys grew up with dogs too! as does my grandson now! My sister somewhere along the line has switched over to cats!

AS PETS:

Cats in fact are more popular than dogs all over the world.

Even in India, the incidence of pets have tremendously increased ass evidenced by a visit to a PET store or a Veterinary doctor. There are plenty of pet lovers with their pets for advice and for seeking help.

Other pets include fish, birds in India. I have heard of even pet leopards, snakes, alligators etc specially from abroad.

ARE PETS GOOD FOR YOU?

Pets afford us comapanisonship. There are studies to show that the physical and mental health of the owner improve. 

Pets also gives the lonely elderly folks the desire to take care of someone, the need to exercise, someone to speak to and to feel the warmth of a living being next to them. 

Pets train the child owners the responsibilities of life - like feeding, taking care when sick, the need for exercise and the general hygiene, socialization and the need to train well.

Pets are known to decrease blood pressure levels, lower stress levels, lower triglyceride levels and even lower the incidence of heart attacks. 

For the blind, seeing eye dogs help to make them live  with independent mobility.

People in hospice and nursing homes too benefit by physical contact with dogs. These therapy dogs may of different types - facility therapy dogs, animal-assisted therapy dogs and therapeutic visitation dogs.

In fact having pets increases your love for any living beings ! Friends of mine Lydia(Mumbai), Tusna (Chennai) collect stray pets and shelter them till suitable families adopt them.

Many of us pet lovers leave food and water outside our homes for the stray animals on the street!

NEGATIVES:

There are negative aspects to keeping pets too - like lung disorders, fractures to the eldery by collision with friendly heavy dogs, bites or nail injuries, parasitic infestation of the pets.

I have in this blog, only covered the pets from the prospective of a companion and not as a working animal. That is very different. 

I do not keep dogs for breeding or for winning prizes at the animal (dog shows) , nor for selling! Many friends do ! 

DOES CAT HAVE NINE LIVES?

The average dog life is like 10-13 years, the smaller ones live longer than the larger breeds. Ours generally live long than this period! 

Cats live 2-16 years! 

And when the dogs pass away, it can be a heart wrenching experience! 

With the passing away of the pets , the child learns to grieve with the family and I guess this helps the child later on to overcome immense sadness, failures and to face such emotions!

Acknowlegements - Pictures taken from internet

DO OUR ‘HEROES’ HAVE THE MORAL FIBRE?

DO OUR ‘HEROES’ HAVE THE MORAL FIBRE?

'Hero' is a person who is admired for courage,outstanding achievement or noble quality! In mythology, it is a person of superhuman strength and semi divine origin.

Hero also is a champion, great man, man of the hour, conquerer in war, a man of great physique!

Hero may be found in a book, story, play, history or film with good qualities.

WHAT WE TELL OUR CHILDREN:

We teach our children to be like some hero, when they grow up. After we grow, we long to be that hero! This is natural. All of us do this all the time!

It is only the concept of hero worship that I question.  I do not wish to upset people by dropping names of some of the heroes! Our concept of hero or role model may be like some particular superstar in Tamil or Hindi movies. Or to be rich and live luxuriously like the Ambanis. We may dream of our kids to become the most famous politicians of the country (whoever they may be).

There is no doubt that we wish our children to have great qualities such as punctuality, honesty, integrity, valour, leadership, great courage, magnanimity in victory, grace in defeat, curtsy, patience, tolerance, politeness, good health!

We keep telling our children to be like the first ranker in class while we ourselves as adults dream of achieving the status of some of our own heroes.

THE TRUTH:

But I am certain that the people we allude these characteristics to, may be totally be lacking in some, if not many of these qualities.

For instance, people with political nexus may accumulate surplus money, influence and acquire popularity in no time, set up large factories, multiple businesses or health industries!  We know the kind of ‘wheeling and dealing’ that goes on to achieve these ends!

Recently a couple of famous, young cricketers were dropped from the national team for want of decency about women. Remember, they were ‘heroes’ till 5 days ago! I have no doubt that they will get back to their ratings given time. 

We have had a sample ‘sneak shot’ of our real heroes in this instance in real life! Heroes in real life seldom expose their weakness in public!!

FAULTY SHIFT IN FOCUS:

Would you like your child to achieve greatness, but lose his moral fibre as he ascends up in life?

We have always retained the knack of teaching our children great qualities , but have wrongly shifted the focus to follow heroes who are presumed to have these qualities. 

Despite good parenthood,  the children may have also got mixed signals from films, television channels about the rich and famous! So they tend to look upto ‘actual real heroes’ rather than ‘hypothetical heroes’ with such qualities.

‘If my hero can cheat, smoke, womanise, kill, why not me’ would be the logic of such a child! This  leads to crime not only in adulthood but also in the teens!

RESULTANT SCENERIO:

Such a behaviour results in

• lying,
• stealing,
• copying in exams for better marks,
• cheating in real life to win at any cost,
• poor choice of friends,
• disrespect to parents ,law and property
• alcoholism,
• drinking,
• cruelty,(in beating up the father for film money to see your hero in the silver screen at the first show, the first day!) 
• in writing unprintable responses in social media on items of politics, events, occurrences, 
• in poor quality debates almost every night on television - with crass, gross, loud, argumentative, abusive language, ( when they grow up !)
• in murders for revenge on opinions of people with contrary belief to our own!

It is time for us to turn away from reel personalities for qualities to fairy tales personalities with ideal qualities! Let us continue to teach our kids great qualities of life, but keep the ‘real heroes’ at bay!

IN SUMMARY:

In general,

• don’t compare your child to other children in class or school!
• don’t dream want to be like someone in real life!
• instead, teach them to long for the qualities in such a hero-person !
• teach them every hero has a good side and mediocre side! Just follow the good side!
• don’t put heroes on too high a pedestal!
• higher they stand, greater the heroes fall!
• be aware that an ordinary citizen may become a hero with an extraordinary action!
• lead  your life with satisfaction, you are better than many!
• set an example with your own life! &
• spend more time with family so that children get the flavour of how to behave!

And last of all, it is high time that our dictionaries and story books stopped referring to the hero as ’man’! The ladies are equally good (or bad)!

IF ONLY THE DINING TABLE COULD SPEAK ......!

If only the DINING TABLE could speak

The dining table is where modern family namely the parents meet the children and eat together with a thankful  heart.

Dining table is where the guests are entertained as it is always in a room with access to the kitchen.

Though known as the dining table, it is used for purposes far more than dining.

The table is where the family says a prayer for the meals.

Joyful events like births, engagements are announced.

Daily events are shared by the family at the end of the day during meals.

Television is watched together for news, matches, movies and events.

Sad news too - accidents, ill health, deaths are shared, tears shed at the table.

Children study at the dining table, do the last minute home work before the school.

Progress cards surrptiously shown to the parents at the last minute just before school at the eleventh hour for the signatures!

Children watch the parents communicating with the near and dear and learn how to communicate.

Dinner time is the best, when the unwanted food is shoved below the table to the dogs without the knowledge of the mother! ( giving special meaning to ' we are not worthy to pick the crumbs from under Thy table!'......)

MId-night forbidden raids to the fridge and the stolen food gulped in the dark at the table, watching midnight movies!

Dining table seats visitors dropping for a chat, news, gossip and tea.

Every birthday is treated with cake cutting, singing, good wishes and unpacking around the table.

Formal prayer meetings demand more seats around the dining table for singing the thanksgiving.

When children leave for college, there is loneliness around the table and the feeling of emptiness is palpable.

Children grow up to be young men, and get married; their families join in and more joy pours in.

Grand kid/s come forth into family. 

Music, happiness and laughter around the dining table yet again.

And life goes on!

If only the dining table could speak ……!

IS DECENCY STILL AROUND?

Is Decency Still Around?

Decency is defined as the behavior that conforms to accepted standards of morality or respectability. It also means modesty and propriety.

A recent incident to a close friend made me wonder if decency is still around. If not why not?

Air travel is where one meets the affluent. Everyone is in a rush to get into the airline bus though the seating in aircraft is assured. There is a scramble to stand up as soon as the aircraft has halted even before the ladders are fixed to the craft. And this is the cream of the society.

While boarding trains and buses, we never form queues to stand in line. ‘Survival of the fittest’ appears to be rule. A lot of elbowing goes on and a new comer would head up before anyone else. The NRIs who return to India become like the rest of us the moment they land , and break lines to mob counters in airport.

If one is polite and stands around, you have to wait till the end of the day.

To prevent this, we have to teach our children AT HOME, how to be polite. My mother used to make me walk an old lady home after she used to visit us. Beatrice Pattiamma used to visit us at our house and I had to walk her back…. I still routinely help the elderly across as this is part of my training.

Respect to the elderly, not staring at others in the face, saying please and thank you are all things one learns at home. Unless we teach this in earnest to our children at home, and practice it in our day to day life, all advice will be in vain.

Yet another way of teaching our youth morality and propriety is to inculcate compulsory military ( or community) training at an age of 18 years or so; every youth who is fit should serve in army , navy or air force for a year. If not fit physically, should serve as volunteer in a hospital or home guards for a year before continuing education, similar to the Israelis. I am not sure if this will ever materialize in our country.

‘Be the change you want to see’ is what Mahatma Gandhi said. 

Children are like plants. They need our good behavior to follow and the more we feed them with good manner at home, the better they will be.

At dinner, I used to read the manual for good manners meant for Air Force personnel to my two boys. I do hope all that has paid off; and they teach their children too!

In UK, teachers used to say, "Child should study at home, come to school to play". 

How true in life! They should learn manners at home, come to the real world to practice the manners!