Chicken Soup For the Indian Teenage Soul - Teens talk, Growing up

They say experience is the best teacher and what better way to learn than learning from others experiences. So, here is the latest in the Chicken Soup series - Teens talk, Growing up. Something which parents can gift their young adults....share the emotions, triumphs and failures while enabling them to tackle the trials and tribulations of being a teenager. Happy Reading :)

Stumbling Upon Something 'Down' right Heartwarming

Today, I stumbled upon a really heartwarming blog called: http://mylittlenavya.blogspot.com/. This is a lovely informative blog about Pallavi and her 'differently abled' daughter Navya. 

Her blog made me realise that with the right parenting support there is nothing that can deter a child from achieving whatever he or she wants. Pallavi has nurtured her daughter so well that it is really inspiring for any parent.

I found some more inspiring stuff which shows how with the right kind of support and love can help children become  extraordinary achievers and well known personalities. 

1. Christopher Burke: Despite down syndrome, Chris Burke is a great role model of good self esteem and success as an actor. He plays the role as Corky Thatcher on Life Goes On, an ABC-TV series in which the character he plays has down syndrome too - only they call it 'Up Syndrome'. 

As Chris Burke’s mother, Mrs. Marian, mentioned, “In 1965, when my son was born, there was very little outside assistance available for our family. It was difficult to make the non-challenged world aware of a person like my son, who needs to be recognized and understood the same as anyone else and for him to be comfortable in the presence of all the facets of society. Integration and inclusion had to be, and were accomplished in the social aspect of his life and in the community-based programs we sought out. We have to make life as normal as possible for our children". 

(http://ambassadors.net/archives/issue24/educators.htm ) 

2. Karen Gaffney, born in 1977 successfully swam the English Channel when she was 23, as part of a six-person relay team; making her the first person with Down Syndrome to do so. In addition to her trisomy-21, she also has a short crippled atrophied left leg and hip dislocation.

3. Stephanie Ginnsz:  the first actor with Down Syndrome to ever star in a film. She got the lead part in a film when she was twelve. 

4. Max Lewis:  is a twelve year old boy with Down's Syndrome from London who broke into Hollywood through participation in his local community theater. To begin with he was was chosen to play a child with Down's Syndrome alongside Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy and Judi Dench in the movie "Notes on a Scandal". That movie has already premiered and been nominated for Golden Globe. Because of his role in the film, Max been cast for the role of a child (without Down's Syndrome) for the movie "Trial and Retribution XIII" for which shooting will begin soon.

5. Paula Sage, Scottish film actress and Special Olympics netball athlete. Her role in the 2003 film AfterLife brought her a BAFTA Scotland award for best first time performance and Best Actress in the Bratislava International Film Festival, 2004

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_are_some_famous_people_with_Down_syndrome#ixzz1LBjxCu5V

6. Miguel Tomasin - the Down Syndrome guru of experimental music. He led an Argentine band Reynols which earned a measure of fame with a series of high concept art projects.

7. Judith Scott - became an artist who used materials to hand and spontaneously invented her own unique and radically different form of artistic expression. Her special creativity was quickly recognised and she was given complete freedom to choose her own materials. Taking found objects (often stealing them from other people at the Center) she would wrap them in carefully selected colored yarns to create diverse sculptures in many different shapes. Some resemble cocoons or body parts, while others are elongated totemic poles. Scott's work has become immensely popular in the world of outsider art, and her pieces have been acquired by several museums for their permanent collections. Her pieces now sell for $15,000 or more at auction.

More on http://www.cdadc.com/ds/high-achieving-people-with-down-syndrome.html

8. Sujeet Desai - 29 year old Sujeet Desai is an accomplished professional musician and self-advocate with Down syndrome from New York, USA. Sujeet plays 6 musical instruments including the Bb and Bass Clarinet, Alto Saxophone, Violin, Piano and Drums and has just started to learn his 7th, the trumpet. In addition to his career at home, he travels the World giving solo performances and leading self-advocacy workshops to rave reviews. 

His website: http://www.sujeet.com/

More on: http://www.ds-int.org/news/900

After all, differently abled children are the special ones which are even more unique. 

Get Some Shame or Get a Room

Just read this awesome note written by my school senior and friend: Rajnigandha Shekhawat - rajnigandha@gmail.com

As a parent, this really well written article made me realise how difficult it is to safeguard our childrens' innocence and how their can actions affect us as parents. This article also highlights the changing priorities and moral values of Indian society.  

Get some shame or get a room

“Modesty is overrated” screams a billboard. The copywriter Guru has summed up life in three little words of wisdom. The neighboring billboard, fearing fate worse than death, that of being ignored, goes a step further…it has a guy pushing a girls legs apart with the tag line “He wants in, she wants out”…really now, if she truly wanted out she would not have posed for that billboard. But she and the guy have just finished college, they don’t have time to waste in daily commute to a boring office desk, a boss that will most certainly make them work hard, atleast 12 hours a day on trainee salary. But hard work is for the boring average joes who cant make it to TV! America has already shown the way to fame and money - all you need to do is take off your clothes, talent be damned. Whether you’re an actor, model, singer, dancer or the new breed called the reality TV star, everyone is hanging it all out to get noticed. And when everyone around you gets naked too, its time to up the ante with provocative gestures accompanied by abusive speech …the more sex you bring to the table, the more crassness you ooze from your being, the more you offend others, the more your chances of getting noticed in the crowd of other naked people. And being noticed is money in the bank, for branded clothes and cell phones. Who said nudist colonies are not allowed in India? They thrive in our midst, from our mehendi and sangeet party to the office HR function to the dance reality show on a family channel to the college festival, they are whistling from the billboards, blaring from the news headline.

Oh my God, I must be that lecturer type tightass who wears khadi sarees and big bindis, who brands everything cool as anti Indian culture! Surely the next thing I will do is file a petition and get random things like jeans, dancing, clubbing banned to feel a sense of achievement! But a tightass usually doesn’t use words like ‘tightass’. So then I must be a politician who will crash the next party and reprimand girls to wear something more than a spaghetti. Because normal people don’t get vocal about what makes them cringe….besides, who is going to listen to a non famous person anyway? Actually I am the average Jane who is still in shock, wondering how that model must be making eye contact with her parents when they cross her lit up billboard all across town daily.

It wasn’t that far along when people had a sense of shame. The ‘Jhijhak’, that little warning voice of conscience that arose from the pit of the stomach and said “don’t do this, if your parents find out you will not be able to face them”! That voice doesn’t exist for so many, as eager parents, having themselves missed the Bollywood bus, encourage their own kids to gyrate and shake their booty to get on that coveted screen, starting with the wedding sangeet for practice. When the sociologist said “the Hindi movie vamp is dead, the heroine does it all now” some of us were foolish enough to think that was just about the movies. Because normal people don’t get to touch a movie star in their entire lifetime, that’s how far away that world was. However, what the cabaret dancer did to seduce the hero from the pious heroine, suddenly jump-cut into the college festival in the blink of an eye. The sociologists were so wrong. The vamp never died, stupid, the heroine did!

Lets face it, being bad has always felt so good! That eye contact when no one is looking, that phone call when no one else can overhear, watching that porno movie with friends, that holding hands by the beach, doing it while the folks are away…Going after the forbidden has always been so exciting, but half the excitement came from keeping things hidden, of not getting caught doing the naughty. But clearly if Munni’s ass rubbing dance step was performed for a limited audience of one, so many crores would have not exchanged hands! Why should Rakhi make all the moolah alone? More power to the independent girl and her right to do as she pleases, but are we not ignoring that little knot in the stomach that comes if these gyrations start when our parents are in the same room or the little nephew is watching? When I see a 12 year old child thrusting his or her pelvis and heaving the non existent cleavage, I HAVE to look away.

The popular dance show with the diva herself as a judge, gives a perfect 10 score to the girl who has, in her dance with the matka as prop, been roughly felt up across her thigh by a male dancer as she picks up her saree to help him get better access. It’s not even visually sensual, no soft lighting, no favourable camera angles etc that one would defend it as an artistic expression of the beautiful thing called lovemaking. Its blatant, its crass, its gross. And its in the episode that supposedly represents the, hold your breath, “culture of India”. More like the culture from an infected Petri dish of our neighborhood sever. With bigger cities not even providing options for studying genuine arts like pure classical dance and music, the only “culture” available is that what is defined by Farah and Saroj, with a generous dose of Chinni. In college festivals the “cultural segment” is includes heaving chests of not one or two but atleast 5 contestants’ ode to one Sheila. How a contestant can start her jazz dance by spreading her legs wide, and everyone not falling off their chairs in disgust, is beyond me. The festival coordinator gives a sigh of surrender and ignores. Luckily the jazz dancer doesn’t win but one of the top heavy Sheilas certainly does. Sorry, I noticed, the T shirt was too tight.  And how can we forget the guy who wins the “Talent” round by showing his one true talent – a smooth move with which he removes his T-shirt to show the 6 pack abs! In this contest, they are all winners.

Really, with every fair coloured 21 year old wanting to be a model, is there hope for the average girls and boys who put a 14 hour work day? They, the non glamorous, the non exciting? Is there a place for the fully covered girl who gets uncomfortable if a man touches her arm or refers to her as ‘Babe’? Is there still room for two seven letter words called ‘respect’ and ‘dignity’? Can these words be monitised?

We know India didn’t get this over populated because people were holding hands all this while. But they didn’t rub their sex in other people’s faces either. More power to the guys and girls who are screaming for attention just to convey that they are “doing it” …its almost a free country guys, go for it, all we are saying is – spare us your exhibition, get some shame or get a goddamned room!