Spider-Mania!

Spiders! Creepy....crawly.........how we........many of us at least.... despise these creatures! Little girls spying one nearby, would run ......screaming eeeeeeekkssssss!!! Not that some adults don't!

However, the funny thing is that Spider-Man, a comic book character that has the ability to cling to walls, has a superhuman strength, a sixth sense ("spider-sense") that alerts him to danger, perfect balance and other spider like abilities webshooters, night vision, etc. is now so popular and commercially so successful unlike the original creature on which it is based!

Spider-Mania has hit us real hard....we all love Spider-Man.....young and old. Kids, whether a girl or a boy, all want to emulate this Super Hero..... like the pictures on the left....one is my niece & the other is my neighbour's son!

Darnedest Things Kids Say!

Last summer I stayed for a few days with my College friend now married, on my visit to the Capital. Her young son calls me “Maasi” which is an Aunt from the mother’s side. Like all small boys he was fascinated with my mobile phone (which was of a different model from the ones which his Parents had) and the ipod (my travelling companion)……. and had thousands of questions.

When night came he didn’t want to leave when his mother told him to go to bed….instead he asked if he could sleep with me in the guest room. My friend explained that “Maasi” could not sleep with anyone. Not very convinced, he wondered aloud “What would “Maasi” do when she gets married?”

“Real” Father

My friend who re-married after her first disastrous marriage recently had a showdown with her only child, her son from her first marriage. The son, now a young teen on a visit to his grandparent’s village just found out while being teased by kids of his own age that his father wasn’t his “real” father. Who is a “real” father? Is he the one who left/donated his “sperm” or the one who gives his name and raises the child? How would those other kids have known about this fact as my friend had re-married when her son was just a baby which means that the other kids too would have been babies too or yet to be born? This leaves us with the fact that the elders / parents are the ones still talking about my friend’s second marriage and that too in the presence of their kids. Why is it a stigma to marry a second time especially for a woman in most of our cultures?