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I never believed in girls loving dolls and make ups and boys loving cars myth. Maybe I never paid much attention to kids before. I was never a ‘doll’ girl myself and don’t remember ever having a doll to play with! My collections were small silly things which seemed precious at that time like the small red shiny stone parts which I used to break off from granite, scraping off the red maroon parts from granite, broken bangle pieces, collection of match box covers which had pictures on it, the small animals that comes inside Binaca toothpaste and of course candy wraps too!

We have a little girl now at home who came to spend some time with us. She is my sister-in-law’s elder daughter, a 6 –year- old one. She is totally in to Barbie dolls and make up things! What surprised me was her ability to get dressed all by herself (her choice of dresses /color combinations etc) and her way of combing her hair and applying kajal on her eyes and her collection of bindis! She does all these in almost perfect way. Until I saw this I did not believe it myself. I might do some adjustments in dressing here and there and might go for a mix and match myself, but she is very particular about what dress goes with what sandals and the matching bangles and hair pins and all that. Maybe this is a surprise only for me who never bothered to wear matching blouses and saris or churidars with matching shawls. This little girl is not interested in cars or jeeps one bit!

On the other hand her brother a 4-year-old boy is a typical boy who is after cars and spider man. Before he left to his paternal grandmother’s home he stayed at our home for a day and before leaving I saw his pockets full of small toy cars, (which I bought all the way from US as they were all my son’s toys when he was little). When I saw this I told him it’s okay to take all those little cars but he has to bring them back after he is done playing with them. He looked at me in surprise as if this is the first time he is hearing this. He said -NO, I can’t do that. I said, well then, you cannot take them with you if you can’t bring them back to me. He paused for a minute and then said - Then I don’t want any of those cars:). I said that’s okay and he pulled out all the cars from his pockets and gave it back to me. I tried hard not to laugh seeing his serious face and he looked so dignified and proud. I felt I had to help his bruised ego. So I secretly told him he can take one car and he does not have to bring it back. He said okay, and took two cars! I couldn’t part with those little cute cars which my son played with and feel bad the rest of my life that I lose them. Those things have memories attached to them. I might have looked like a monster to him but that’s fine.
But it’s nice change to have this little girl at home who has a thousand and one questions and keeps repeating those same questions again and again!