Yesterday I took my son and his cousins to this movie - "Ghatothkach". As Sathyam Cinemas website was down I used their door delivery facility for getting the tickets which was very convenient and you had to pay only Rs.75 extra for the service.

In Mahabharat epic Ghatothkach is the son of Bheema (Pandavas). Ghatothkach inherits immense strength from his father and wonderful magic powers which he uses for good. With this one line story from the epic and inspired by the 1957 live action film Mayabazar, Ghatothkach movie gives a clean entertainment for kids. The movie is directed by legendary director Mr.Singeetam Srinivasa Rao.

My kid loved the scenes where Ghatothkach and his pet elephant utters the magic words "Ambilica Bambulica".  Having seen the Tamil Mayabaazar movie and the song "Kalyana Samayel Saatham" (Same video clip in Telugu here) I expected the scene in the movie to be more grand and entertaining, but it was very brief here. The movie ends kind of suddenly before you expect the end. There is nothing for grown-ups in the movie other than the superb animation and music. My wife slept through the 90 minutes film. Good time pass for kids in the summer.

I have been enjoying "Archie" comics for over two decades now. I was introduced to them during my high school days by my cousin "Anand" who is now working in USA. Those days (and even now in Indian Rupees) they used to be very expensive and not available in Chennai. So the option was to rent them from book lending libraries and my favourite was Raviraj Lending Library in Usman Road (Opposite to first GRT Thanga Maligai). Those days the membership was like Rs.25 or Rs.50 and even if you take half-a-dozen books for reading you paid only few rupees (which itself was got after a big fight with my mother). Nowadays whenever I take my nephews to "Eloor" lending library in North Boag Road I still take few of them and I still enjoy reading Archie comics once in a while.

And whenever I travel to USA and shopping in Safeway I end up buying the latest issue. At $3 per issue they are expensive but then cheaper than a Starbucks coffee, right?. Last week when I was there I bought Feb '08 issue of Pals 'n' Gals double digest. What pleasantly surprised me was seeing the main theme to be "Raj" an Indian Student whose parents where Dr. Ravi Patel and his wife Mrs.Mona Patel. The character "Raj" is shown as a tech whiz taking a school film for fun.

I have travelled in Chennai ECR road several times, but not even once I have stopped to go inside the Crocodile Park which is there. Today being a Sunday I was thinking of a place to take my son out and came up with this place. Though I have seen Crocodile parks in many zoos around the world, my only recollection of seeing them in Chennai are in my school days at Guindy National Park. So it was exciting for me as well to see them in Chennai

Madras Crocodile Bank (as it is called) is located 40 km from Chennai city (or 10 Km from Mamallapuram) along east coast road with the Bay of Bengal as a backdrop. We started off from my home around 3:30PM, reached 15 minutes to 5:00PM. The park is open till 6PM, so we spend nearly an hour going around the park. I was expecting a small collection of Crocs, but was surprised to find they have hundreds of them and of many species. The place is also quite spread out and neatly maintained. The Entry fee for Indians - Adults (Rs.30), Children (Rs.20), Still Camera (Rs.20). The place is worth going with your kids.

Dakshina Chitra

Last year or so, again one of the Sundays I went with my family to Dakshina Chitra. This is also in ECR Road about 21Km from Chennai. This is a cultural village that have replicas of South Indian Houses, heritage items, etc. replicating the cultural settings. All 4 southern states have presence here. I found it to be interesting for the first visit. If you want to learn about South India this is a must see place.

For last two days my son has been down with fever. As any parent will know it is very difficult to get them retain (without vomiting) what they ate when they are unwell and to make them have their medicines.

My son is now 5 years old and can understand things if told to him in simplified fashion. So today I told him that if he takes his food and medicine, they will combine together as friends and fight with the germs (bad guys) inside his stomach. Since they  are now two against one, the germs will be defeated and his fever will be cured. Luckily he bought into the idea, took his food & medicine. He kept repeating the story to the entire family and that probably gave him psychological comfort as well. Oh what an idea!

Update 1/April/2008: He has recovered and fine today.

How times have changed?

When I was in school, we had this orange cool drink called "Gold Spot" that was hugely popular. They had a campaign at that time - to collect the stickers inside the crown of each bottle, stick it in an album and exchange them for gifts. The gift I was eagerly collecting the stickers for months was a full colour book of Walt Disney's Jungle Book. Remember at those days we had no CD/DVD and books were fancied items that had mystical powers to tell you a story, transport you to a new world. And the world I wanted to be in (just like every other kid around me) was to the wonderful jungle world of Mowgli.

Unlike today's kids I was not given any pocket money, for that matter I was hardly allowed to handle currencies till I was grown up. So there is no way I could drink those many Gold Spots to collect the stickers needed that would have got me the book. So whenever I got a chance (which is not so often) I drank a Gold Spot - I did this months but I could hardly collect more than few. That's when I sought out the help of a local Pan shop vendor who gave me permission to collect thrown-away crowns in his road-side shop. Living in Ranganathan Street, T.Nagar had advantages like you being known to every shop keeper in the bazaar. Then one day my mother came to know that I was scavenging (can this be called scavenging, I was on a mission) and I was warned severely not to go to the shop and my cousin warned the shop keeper not to let me near the shop anymore. With this supply cut-off, I was deeply disappointed. Then thanks to my maternal uncle Nandakumar who knew someone in Goldspot office, who got me the book directly. Though it removed the fun associated with collected the crowns and exchanging it with friends, I was delighted that I got the book.

OK, why I am going in this nostalgic journey now?. Recently when I was in Canada I purchased the Platinum Edition of Jungle Book (DVD) for $23 for my son and that's when I remembered these childhood memories. Just now I told the story and played the DVD to my son who is enjoying the fun. Coming to think of it, what a timeless piece of work Walt Disney has created. His work captivated me 25 years back, today it is being enjoyed by my son and I am sure it will be magical for future generations as well. Interestingly I noticed it in shops today that the DVD is available for Rs.600 ($15) in Chennai itself, I needn't have bought it abroad.

I am not the only one who is nostalgic about Jungle book and Goldspot, when I googled I saw many other posts who feel the same (one more). Finally my son today didn't scavenge, he didn't even ask for it, yet he got the DVD on his bedroom. That's why I started by saying - Times have changed.

Regular readers who waste time reading this blog know that I have a 4 year son and I buy lot of DVDs (CDs) for him. We try and restrict his TV viewing to an hour or two per day, not easy many times and requires all tricks of parenting.

Few months back I bought from Amazon (USA) a series of DVDs titled "Max and Ruby". This series has appropriate content for kindergartners, the main characters are two rabbits (Max the boy and Ruby his elder sister). Max is a usual next door mischievous boy and Ruby tries to teach Max lot of basic etiquettes and behavior on daily settings. My son loves the series and it reduces his time watching Chutty TV (Sun TV's Kids channel, which most of the time has content not for his age).

OK, let me come back to why I started this post. These original DVDs that I bought should be ideally commercials free, at least  not disturb me before the main story. The DVDs start with half-a-dozen commercials promoting other products from the same company (Nick Jr), which I will have to keep skipping it till the main story starts. With some other similar Kids DVDs they start with promotions for movies which are not appropriate for kindergartners. When the content producers and Hollywood keep complaining about piracy, they should understand to respect the wishes of a paid user. 

Do you feel the same way? 

I always liked the lifestyle and health articles shown in top area in MSN.COM. This week MSN published few interesting articles relating to raising kids, all had some unconventional wisdom that I thought it was worth to link from here.

• Turning to nannies and day care, many working moms have mixed feelings about leaving the kids at home. How to handle this? 
• The other article was on The Making of a Modern Dad. The article says there is more than what meets the eye of fatherhood. In fact there seems to be considerable hormone changes happening in a father just like it happens to a mother after pregnancy. Fathers tend to become more caring and loving than before having a child.  Being a father of a 4 year old boy, I tend to agree with this article, though I don't understand the biological effects. The best part in the article was the phrase "Honey, we're pregnant"
• This is a question that all parents have - how good or bad is Television?. This article says that Television viewing is not encouraged for kids below 2 years, but can be good if moderated for kids between 3 to 5.

Everytime when I travel especially abroad, I make it a point to buy some toys for my son who is now going to four in few months. But after few purchases of cars, dolls, CDs, the purchase becomes same and boring. So I try to search for some new or different items to buy.This time during my London visit, I saw one such interesting but simple item. It was from ELC called Let's Go Shopping.

The objective of the game is to simply shop. Click on the back image of the box for more instructions.

Last Sunday, I had some quality leisure time to spend with my son. I started by opening a Tom and Jerry Puzzle that he has - boy I didn't remember that puzzles were fun and also tough. Being a 3 year restless kid, after 180 seconds he became bored by it and started playing on his own, but I spent the next 20 minutes and completed the puzzle. In this materialistic world, we miss out on these simple activities like a Puzzle. To prove that I did complete it, here is the photo:

The next I did with my son was to watch a DVD with him. Some how the cartoons I consider otherwise kiddish, becomes fun while watching with him. In his School (Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan) for Pre-KG that he is studying they are teaching him Vegetables. So he is excited whenever he sees a Vegetable (with the 't' pronounced bold by him). So while shopping in LandMark my wife picked up this DVD on Vegetables, though I buy many CD/DVD everytime I travel, my wife gets lucky in picking the good ones.  Past experience for me with buying Indian made Kid CD/DVDs were not good - the CDs were not made as interesting to kids as the western made one's like Oswald/Barney/TeleTubbies. The exception to this, was the hugely successful "Hanuman" DVD. To my surprise, this DVD on Vegetables was made very well - the DVD has made a boring topic like teaching Vegetables fun, as it was told in a story format with good animation and characters. I recommend this for any kid below 5 years. I wishes to the maker of this DVD - Gipsy.

(Click to view the cover and story brief)