Short or Tall

Dear Raunak,

You are 12 and at that age when some of your friends have hit their growth spurt while you wait for yours. I totally enjoy observing the seemingly giant sized girls, adult looking boys and a lot of others like you who still look like kids -- all in the same class. It also pains me when elders tell you that you will never grow tall if you don't eat well, which is not a really bad thing to say, but the moment they compare you with someone who is tall and muscular already and how they are better than you, my invisible claws get ready to tear them apart.

I want to take a moment today and tell you whether it is really matters if you are tall or short. No sweetie, it is not important and I will tell you why. Almost all of how we look is genetics, and we have no control over it. Never ever stress over things you cannot control. It is pointless. You might as well learn to accept them gracefully. But things you can control, always do everything you can to make the most of it. Your personality, your demeanour, the away you treat others, your temper, the way you carry yourself through ups and downs of life, the way you handle success and failure -- there are loads of fun things that can be controlled in life. These will make a much bigger impact in your life than uncontrollable things.

There will always be 2 kinds of people in the world around you. 1) Someone who will be better than you and 2) Someone who would want to be like you. You can be tall with smashing good looks -- well, there will always be someone better looking than you. You may be enviably successful -- there will be so many others who will be more successful than you. Don't worry about people who are better than you, draw inspiration from them if you can. Instead, focus on people who look upto you. It is an incredible responsibility to set the right example for those who think you are better than them and want to be like you someday. I am pretty sure that people who look up to you don't really care if you are tall or short.

While not worrying about looks and height is important, what is even more important is to try not to be prejudiced about others based on how they look. I will be more proud of you if you can look past other's looks than if you are confident about however you will end up looking like as an adult. I know for sure that you will be a beautiful person, whether you end up being tall or short.

- Mummy






Batman!

Dear Raunak,

It is so amusing how much trivia you know! Here is a conversation I just had with a friend and you contributed to it. I love it when you show me you are smarter than me sometimes.






Parenting an Adolescent

If pre-teen years are this bad, I am *very* scared of Raunak's teen years. This boy is driving me up the wall these days.

This particular comic personally pushes the envelope for me in a few small ways. I have mustered courage and shown the faces of characters (Raunak and me) for the first time ever -- it is way harder to manage all the expressions on faces than to simply show the back side of the head. I have also taken some slight creative liberty when creating this -- my cartoons are exact replications of real life anecdotes but this particular one is 2-3 events put together. It is still a pretty accurate replication of the actual incidents.

Context: Just in case you don't know about Indian traffic, there are no cycling lanes and the route he took looks like the picture below the cartoon strip.




The inspiration for making these cartoons are real life instances in my son Raunak's life. This is my way of capturing little magical moments and developmental milestones as he grows.

The rest of my cartoons are under the label 'Cartoons I Draw'



Preferences

What Raunak said today, really broke my heart. I am telling myself it is too early for him to develop strong preferences. May be if I make learning computer science fun, he will not feel this way. We rushed to prep for his weekly test and he must've gotten bored. Computer theory can be boring sometimes. We will fix this.


The inspiration for making these cartoons are real life instances in my son Raunak's life. This is my way of capturing little magical moments and developmental milestones as he grows.

The rest of my cartoons are under the label 'Cartoons I Draw'



The way our brains are wired

It is interesting the things Raunak sometimes says. Reminds me that I belong to the last generation that understands life before and after computers.

On a different note, I am trying to refine the way I make these cartoons without messing with the style I have created over the years. I like what I ended with this time.

The inspiration for making these cartoons are real life instances in my son Raunak's life. This is my way of capturing little magical moments and developmental milestones as he grows.

The rest of my cartoons are under the label 'Cartoons I Draw'



I don't believe in God, you do

Dear Raunak,

I don't believe in any religion. God for me is my moral code and sense of right and wrong. I don't hope for anything after my death. All I want is to take right decisions as long as my mind is the right state to evaluate. I am not scared of being imperfect and let my inner compass guide my decisions. Sometimes I am nice to people and sometimes I am selfish. There are times when I give selflessly and sometimes I hurt people's feelings but at the end of the day, I am carefully weighing my options, desired outcome and doing what is best without looking at any rule book.

But you are not like me. You are a Christian. You believe in your savior, you believe you will go to heaven and on a daily basis believe that whatever is happening happens for a reason and there is higher power that controls everything. The good thing is, we get along real well and neither of us has an issue with our beliefs and I hope we keep it that way.

We have loads of common interests but the strongest is our love for science. I always think about best way of teaching science is without messing with your religious beliefs but suddenly I understood something deep the other day. I was trying to teach you acoustic levitation and was showing you some videos that demonstrate this in a mind blowing amazing way. Somewhere in the middle of the video, I thought if you had to articulate the wonder you were experiencing, what would you say. I would've said that with logic and reasoning, we can discover, detect and prove phenomenon that we cant even see and that thought blows my mind! But then I realized you probably would say 'what an amazing world the God has created'. My first instinct would be to argue against your thought but then, how does it matter? Both of us now know what acoustic levitation is and how it is useful in our daily lives.  It does not matter much how we connect it with our definition of our world. We are unique individuals and our comprehension of the our environment and beyond is different. We may stay this way for the rest of our lives or we may change.

Another post we should read a few years from now to see where our beliefs stand.

Love
Mom


Recipe for success

Dear Raunak,

I am going to start updating this post on what traits I typically see in someone who is successful at workplace. May be useful for me to introduce you to a few of these when you are of appropriate age. May be this post is for me and not really for you. Whatever it is, here is what I want you to know about things I learnt from my career.

Remember that not everyone will have all traits and when things go wrong, nothing can save you. You just wait for the phase to pass, be optimistic and truly believe a new chapter and a new beginning is round the corner. You can't see it but it will be there and it will be fine.

Be genuinely nice to people, help them grow, mentor them, always wish for the best things to happen to them but keep a professional distance. You will have to take hard decisions sometimes and it will be impossible to execute if you look at everyone as friends. You have to make it easy on yourself to look at things objectively sometimes. If you are running a business or working for a company, profitability and the values you have for your customers are paramount. Some people fit the role they need to play, some people unfortunately don't and you will realize that after hiring them.

Be humble. Really really humble. Titles, recognition, fame, nothing matters. You will be the happiest if you are oblivious to the halo the world puts around your head sometimes. Always look at your position as just one of the wheels that is needed to keep the machine working and you are as important as any other part in the system. Resist the urge to show off your title. When people accept you for who you are and not for what role you play in a particular company, you will really make friends.

Be creative and bold while building a vision but be organized and controlled while executing it. If you focus on details while building a vision, you are not being ambitious enough. If you are creative and have a free flow style of execution, you are a making a mess.

Project management and knowing details is the most valuable skill you will need as you grow in your career. It is also the hardest to manage a project because managing people is easy, managing a process is easy but managing people who influence various processes and driving all of it towards one goal is tough as hell.

Know your numbers. It does not matter which industry you end up working in, no matter which profession you pick up, you will have to be data savvy. If you don't have this skill, you will never reach your full potential. Period.

Be articulate. In your first 5 years of your career, let all the articulation be about curiosity, learning and showing results. This is also when you will slog day and night but don't shy away from it. You need a strong foundation for your career and this is when you build it. Next 5 years, articulate your goals, and execution plans. This is when you will be building your leadership skills and if you can't articulate goals and execution plans, you should consider not aspiring to be a leader. The 3rd 5 years is when you will get real leadership opportunities. Articulating to influence and inspire is what you will need at this stage. Also don't forget about all of the other things I mentioned above. Every single one of them will not only apply at this stage but will be essential for you to survive.

Network deliberately, enjoy meeting people genuinely. Being known as a good person with a clear mind of what you want to achieve is a lot better than being known as successful. Success and failure is cyclical. If you have a healthy mind, you will learn to cope with this.

Prioritize family. If work does not allow you to give due quality time to your loved ones, you are in the wrong job.

I can't wait to see what you end up becoming when you grow up. It will also be fun to see if this post remains relevant 10 years from now when the world would be an altogether different place.

Love
Mummy



It is time to write your birthday post for the 10th time and this time, I thought I'd list out some of my wishes that involve you.

I wish you fail hard. I do not want you to think success is attention because it is not. When you have a choice of picking something that is easy and something that is tough, pick the tough problem that has the maximum chance of failure. Getting smarter is a continuous elimination process, the more you know what not to do, the better you become and you will really know what not to do only when you fail. Fail and persist.



Facepalm

He knows he is not a kid anymore but he doesn't know what he is now.


The inspiration for making these cartoons are real life instances in my son Raunak's life. This is my way of capturing little magical moments and developmental milestones as he grows.

The rest of my cartoons are under the label 'Cartoons I Draw'


Who is the wiser one?

My comic strips have moved into a new phase now. Philosophy and moral values -- a new developmental milestone in Raunak's life. More importantly, the ability to articulate them.

Also, trying a new format for the comics attempting to capture his height and hairstyle as I make more of these comics. This one is the longest by far.






"It's raining"

Raunak's sarcasm -- sometimes I laugh it out and draw a cartoon, sometimes he gets a whack. Today, am in a good mood.



The inspiration for making these cartoons are real life instances in my son Raunak's life. This is my way of capturing little magical moments and developmental milestones as he grows.

The rest of my cartoons are under the label 'Cartoons I Draw'

New Milestone?

Raunak and I seemed to have switched places today. Looks like he hit a new cognitive milestone. He is going from memorizing interesting facts to being able to think about them logically. Feeling like a fool never felt this good.



The inspiration for making these cartoons are real life instances in my son Raunak's life. This is my way of capturing little magical moments and developmental milestones as he grows.

The rest of my cartoons are under the label 'Cartoons I Draw'

SciencePorn

I wanted to teach Raunak some Science but I did not imagine this is what will end up happening. Here is the video I was showing him and it's really cool (and innocent). Don't know why I am feeling so guilty.

The inspiration for making these cartoons are real life instances in my son Raunak's life. This is my way of capturing little magical moments and developmental milestones as he grows.

The rest of my cartoons are under the label 'Cartoons I Draw'

The Titanic

I am quickly reaching a stage where am not sure if I want to know what Raunak is learning these days



The inspiration for making these cartoons are real life instances in my son Raunak's life. This is my way of capturing little magical moments and developmental milestones as he grows.

The rest of my cartoons are under the label 'Cartoons I Draw'

Accidentally Coordinated Cartoons

This isn't necessarily the funniest of the cartoons but it is a very special one. Raunak and I were learning about GIS and GPS, we took a break and I started working on this cartoon based on what he said when I was explaining triangulation. I came back into the room to notice that he was drawing a cartoon too! We must practice this more. May be we can start a series where I can make a cartoon of an anecdote from my perspective and he from his perspective.

My cartoon:



Raunak's drawing just after we learnt about various GIS data models (specifically the tiger model):






The inspiration for making these cartoons are real life instances in my son Raunak's life. This is my way of capturing little magical moments and developmental milestones as he grows.

The rest of my cartoons are under the label 'Cartoons I Draw'.


Happy 10th Birthday!


Dear Raunak,

Happy 10th birthday, young man! What a fine boy you are turning out to be and am loving every second of watching you grow.

You are sharp, sensitive, responsible, super high energy and very creative. You are also not organized, don't yet get the fact that scoring well in exams in important and love the TV and computer a little too much. Last year you were into hundreds of Pokemon characters and this year, it is birds and animals. You spend hours on your computer trying every single query combination to find an animal you did not know about before.

Outside of home, you are beginning to navigate the complex social scene. Your friends are getting into cliques. If you are a part of one, you can't be a part of another one and you struggle so hard with this because your natural instinct is to make friends with everyone you meet. Many of our evenings end up with you crying for being booted out of one group or not being accepted into another.

While you will continue to learn to blend and stand out, I will continue the tradition of dishing out free advice to you on your birthday. I have 3 things to say this year.

1. Peer pressure is good, use it smartly and more importantly, don't be afraid of it. The word is used with a bad connotation but what it really does is it challenges you to move out of your comfort zone and take risk. While the effect of peer pressure is going to be the highest in the next few years, it really stays with you throughout your life. If you deal with it well initially, it will become your friend. There is only one thumb rule to remember when handling this: Don't do anything you will not be proud of later in life. Do everything else.

2. Don't ever let go of creative expression. Life will be busy, it will squeeze all the juices out of you, it will make you work hard, will make you obsess over silly things but don't ever let it take out the creative expression out of you. Keep your hobbies alive, don't ever stop learning a new skill every now and then. When all else fails, this will keep you sane.

3. There is nothing called luck. Don't ever depend on it, don't give it too much credit. The real things are an open mind, right attitude, curiosity, commitment and optimism. And then there is probability and chance which is really a branch of math and not the mystical names people give it.

I promise to make the year as fun as I possibly can. We will have loads of outdoor time, cook, travel, we will continue to attempt to get you to show interest in reading books. And of course we will watch a lot of TV and find excuses to skip doing homework once a while.

Hope you will have a great time today and I can't wait for the year to unfold! Love you loads.

-Mummy

Too young. Too old.

Am not taking Raunak along for shopping anymore.


The inspiration for making these cartoons are real life instances in my son Raunak's life. This is my way of capturing little magical moments and developmental milestones as he grows.

The rest of my cartoons are under the label 'Cartoons I Draw'.

Healthy Habits



Just when I was thinking Raunak doesn't need my help to do his homework anymore...


The inspiration for making these cartoons are real life instances in my son's life. We don't communicate in 4 boxes with the 4th one exactly ending in being 'stumped' but it is more or less an accurate representation of an anecdote that happened at home. This is my way of capturing little magical moments and developmental milestones as Raunak grows.

The rest of my cartoons are under the label 'Cartoons I Draw'.


Chemistry???


The inspiration for making these cartoons are real life instances in my son's life. We don't communicate in 4 boxes with the 4th one exactly ending in being 'stumped' but it is more or less an accurate representation of an anecdote that happened at home. This is my way of capturing little magical moments and developmental milestones as Raunak grows.

The rest of my cartoons are under the label 'Cartoons I Draw'.

Yes, Blame it on Parents!

Sometimes Raunak's innocence can be mistaken to be pure wit. I bet he will grow up, read this and will say "Of course I was messing with you, mom!"


The inspiration for making these cartoons are real life instances in my son's life. We don't communicate in 4 boxes with the 4th one exactly ending in being 'stumped' but it is more or less an accurate representation of an anecdote that happened at home. This is my way of capturing little magical moments and developmental milestones as Raunak grows.

The rest of my cartoons are under the label 'Cartoons I Draw'.