Expansion of life and learning

Whether divorced or still in marriage, some of us feel stressed with parenting single handedly. It takes away lot of energy and you feel drained at times. You wish you could get some support from your spouse. You feel lonely in this whole battlefield of parenthood. To add to that is also the guilt of not being a perfect parent. Does that ring a bell? I have been a single parent for 14 years, 10 years in the marriage and 4 out of marriage. I know it is draining not because of the children, it's draining because of the expectations and disappointments. Yes, it does help to have support in raising a child. My question is, does the support have to be from the spouse only? They say you need a village to raise a child and that means a mother and a father are not anywhere near enough to raise a child 😁 . We need more people in the team.  So how about adding the first team member in your parenting team...  your child . Yes, your child can be your team member or consultant in your par...

On a bright Sunday morning, a bunch of high-enthu kids gathered to paint a wall. Kids between the ages of 6 yrs and 68 yrs. The topic for the day was Gond Art. Gond, meaning green mountains, is an art style from Gond region of Madhaya Pradesh. The tribals in Gond region paint animals and nature using natural colors. Inspired by the Gond tribals, we decided to paint animals and nature. Hmmm...what do we draw? How about elephants??? How about making some part of nature emerge from the elephant’s body!?!? There was no teaching of how to draw. No review or correction. The only instruction was to draw an elephant out of their imagination without using an eraser. Then add the elements of nature to your elephant. Everyone drew their version of elephants. We had elephants bowing to another "Guru" elephant, an elephant who was going crazy,  we had elephant meditating, entwined elephants, an elephant turning upside down, one elephant wondering where all the elephants came from....one c...

In one of the Masti Ki Paathshaala(MKP) sessions we asked parents to draw different lines. Draw any line that comes to their mind when they listen to some random words. It’s interesting to see that all of them could interpret various emotions, thoughts and feeling by just drawing lines. Every word was shown with different formation of lines and it showed different expressions.  A possibility of using art as a tool to express, to reflect and introspect, to connect to oneself   and much more.