It’s a simple enough object: a pencil box that looks like a smartphone. The box’s lid looks like a smartphone screen decked out with app icons, the ones that all of us smartphone users are used to: the phone, the messages, the various entertainments, the calculator, and so on. Pencil boxes have been decorated andContinue reading “Of Children’s Pencil Boxes And Ersatz Smartphones”
Tag Archives: childhood
On Avoiding Conversations With Children
Yesterday afternoon, as I rode back from Manhattan to Brooklyn to pick up my daughter from daycare, I noticed three children board the subway car I was seated in. One of them was a friend’s son, all of nine years old; he was accompanied by two younger children. An older woman, clearly their chaperone orContinue reading “On Avoiding Conversations With Children”
On Meeting An ‘Illiterate’
As my daughter approaches that miraculous stage in her cognitive and intellectual development when reading independently will start to become a possibility, opening up a portal to a world whose outlines she has, with some astonishment and delight, started to sense, I am reminded of a childhood encounter which first made clear to me the singular importanceContinue reading “On Meeting An ‘Illiterate’”
On Learning The Meaning Of ‘Delirium’
I learned the meaning of the words ‘delirium’ and ‘delirious’ when I was nine. The spring of that year, I came down with a viral fever of an unknown variety. My body temperature rose sharply, and my mother responded with the usual battery of treatments: antipyretics and cold cotton wraps for my forehead. But theContinue reading “On Learning The Meaning Of ‘Delirium’”
On First and Second Languages-IV: Bringing Up Baby
I am often asked, by well-meaning friends, “Are you going to teach your daughter how to speak [Hindi, Urdu]?” My answer, invariably, is “I’ll try.” So I’m trying. My efforts at teaching my daughter Hindi-Urdu consist primarily of speaking to her in it, with occasional lapses into English. These lapses have become more frequent. IContinue reading “On First and Second Languages-IV: Bringing Up Baby”
Can An Adult Read a Book Like a Child?
In ‘The Lost Childhood’ (from The Lost Childhood and Other Essays, Viking Press, New York, 1951), Graham Greene writes: Perhaps it is only in childhood that books have any deep influence on our lives. In later life we admire, we are entertained, we may modify some views we already hold, but we are more likely toContinue reading “Can An Adult Read a Book Like a Child?”
Parents and Children: Perfect Strangers
A couple of days ago, I received news that a gentleman who had known my father during their years of service in the air force had passed away. A dozen or so years ago, we had established a brief correspondence by email; in his messages, he had briefly detailed the extent of his contact withContinue reading “Parents and Children: Perfect Strangers”
Babies, Personalities, and Power Dynamics
One of the central, and most familiar, ironies of the parent-baby relationship is that despite the seeming imbalance of visible physical power, its actual contours are quite clearly regulated and determined by the child. Indeed, the very ‘weakness’ of the child, its utter and total vulnerability and dependence on the parent grants it this power.Continue reading “Babies, Personalities, and Power Dynamics”
The Baby Industrial Complex
When you bring home a baby, you bring home something else as well: a subscription, a ticket to a strange new domain, one populated by goods designed and manufactured for babies–and their parents–to better equip them for all of life’s supposed challenges, to train, dress, entertain, edify, and amuse them. An industry of industries churnsContinue reading “The Baby Industrial Complex”
The Child’s Photographic Record and Personal Narratives
Like any doting first-time parents, my wife and I went a little photography-batty in the hours and days following our daughter’s birth. We had three cameras: two in phones, and one little Panasonic digital unit. We clicked away madly, recording every little change in expression, ever bodily movement that seemed significant. Those three cameras allContinue reading “The Child’s Photographic Record and Personal Narratives”
Samir Chopra 