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Sylvia Khan

My kids are empowered. They have their rights!

I was a kid too, some time ago. I was brought up to believe in God, the Constitution and the Indian way of life. Within this framework, rights were things that, like cars and hernias, only adults could have. This whim of any parent or stander-in for that position, was my command. So, if they called "Child! Water!" I would salute, click my heels and lug in either a glass or a bathtub of the stuff.

Naturally, when I had children of my own, I assumed that the game was still played by the same rules. This is course, made me the owner of the bat and ball, in short, the boss. Forget it ! My kids are empowered. They have their rights.

It is my fault. I thought I'd carefully nurtured the wisdom of the centuries in my brood of doting children. I had many things wrong. For a start, anything considered wisdom by as non an entity as a mum, was to be jettisoned by the thinking child. Also, I clearly needed to look up the word 'doting' in the dictionary.

Many references are made in our home to the boy (10 or 12 years old) who divorced his parents for giving him inadequate care. I'm sure he had good reasons for doing that and I'm glad he got what he wanted. But what a precedent!

"This is India!" I agonise to my children. "Remember, we respect our parents here. When the Lord realised that one of his attributes was omnipresence, he created parents to stand in for him. That's me! The parent," I try to tell them.

They greet all that with a sad, pitying smile. A sort of graphic "all our lives have been devoted to educating this cretin. Where did we go wrong?"

"Mama, all that's anachronistic bull. Everyone knows that parents don't know anything. We didn't ask to be here.. We're here because you wanted to have children. You had the need to nurture, so nurture ! That reminds me, get me a Thums up on your way back from the kitchen. Thanks, Mama!" In the face of so much logic, I wilted, I fetched, I carried.

In the early days of bringing up my children, I would fantasise about the time when they would be old enough to fulfill their childhood duties (Mother's Little Helper).

That was several kids ago, when I was still innocent and untutored by Those Who Knew Better. Those were carefree days, when I was unaware that "No, I won't," "Don't feel like it" and "Why?" were all acceptable answers to simple requests like "Darling, go have a bath" or "Send the pigs home and clean up your room."

There are other times when I'm greeted with nothing - just a stare. Sometimes that gets me so mad that I can empathise with the woman who took a carving knife to her kids. Then, I understand, they've risen above the elaborate ritual of the daily show of strength:

Me: Put away your junk!

Them: Won't!

Me: This is your mother speaking. DO IT!

Them: Slave driver ! Bully! I have my rights !

Then there are times when exhortations inspire verbal rotten eggs and tomatoes, and horrific descriptions of how exploitative the older generation is. Of how the seven child family was a well-thought-of plan to harness a force of child labor, rather than a chaotic series of (mis?) conceptions borne to full term.

"Mama," I was sometimes told with breath-stopping candour, "you don't realise how embarrassing it is to have six siblings. It's so lower class! It's bad enough sharing our space - but to watch you exploit us is criminal ! We can't play the Elves to your Shoemaker !"

Illegal! Unethical! Exploitative!

I would just have to set the table myself.

So, they had their rights. Of course, it would have continued the tradition of exploitation to ask tenderly after my own rights. (Lost? Non existent? Wot's that?)

I was a two-generation loser. Too young and wimpy for one, too old and un-savvy for the next. I gave up trying to decode the legalities all by my little self.

I looked up the Yellow Pages. I got myself a lawyer. I'm off to meet her today. It's my morning off. The Huns are at school. When they return to my tender ministrations, Mommie Sweetie will have become Machinegun Mama. I'm going to get me some rights.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier