As we settle into more of a rhythm here in Mumbai, we are finding opportunities to explore beyond our compound. Jasper and I have considerably more time on our hands than Dylan, who only gets one day off a week, although Jasper has now started a nursery Monday to Friday mornings, so really it’s only me with no formal commitments now! He is joining The Mango Tree, at their new campus in Thardeo where he has already attended some ‘summer camp’ classes and where the teachers are wise to his curiosity and disinterest in staying still.
To get to school we no longer need to carpool as we are now the proud owners of a KIA Carens, and more importantly, a car seat for Jasper. Riding in taxis with Jasper was an adventure, but it was not something I enjoyed. It’s amazing how long a 10 minute journey can feel when you have to stop a toddler from fiddling with the door handle, digging age-old sweet wrappers and fruit peels out of seat pockets and hurling his soft toy into the unidentified grime on the floor of the cab. On top of that there was the stress of trying to book Ubers at the precise moment that would ensure they were there at the right time; not calling incessantly to tell me they were waiting for me, while I grappled baby and belongings, nor taking detour after detour, getting further and further away before cancelling my booking at the exact same moment Jasper would decide he’d had enough of waiting. And then of course there was the issue of the struggling air con melting Jasper and I together like a rosy blancmange in the back seat. There is no elegance to taxi travel in tropical heat.
Car seats are easily available here, and many of them, if not all, meet European safety standards. But they are not mandatory. Something I have found shocking is how many of the families from our compound allow their nannies to sit in the front seat with the children on their lap, while an unused car seat protects their shopping bags in the back. It baffles me. And it’s not only because I want Jasper to be safe in the case of a collision. There is nothing better than knowing that regardless of how much he wriggles and complains, Jasper cannot escape from his seat, open the door or head-butt me in the face. His new car seat is really a gift for me. And for him. But mostly for me. Of course, I’ve seen taxis crammed full of multigenerational families, and scooters carrying any number of children and babies wedged between their parents, but my assumption has always been that those people don’t have the choice of a big spacious car and expensive car seats. That’s what makes it so bewildering that people who do have the car, the space and the seat, don’t feel the need to make proper use of them.
Jasper rides in style now, in a teal green throne that complements his eyes (and also meets European safety standards, which was lucky considering we chose it based primarily on colour). He loves the view from his window and, in his own unique mix of sounds and signs, calls out the birds, the umbrellas, the motorbikes and diggers he sees. What’s not great is when we stop at traffic lights and the beggars come tapping on the windows. Jasper doesn’t know to look away, or to wave his hand to say ‘no thank you’, so he gets excited at the face bobbing around on the other side of the glass. There is a mutual fascination, because the beggar or hawker was almost certainly not expecting a pair of cornflower blue eyes to shine out at them, and the more they stare, the more Jasper plays. It’s uncomfortable but bearable when we are in the car, which is more than I can say for the time we were waiting at a pedestrian crossing. I am sure that all parents go through the experience of trying to stop their children interacting with random strangers, but given how much attention he gets here, Jasper should be forgiven for assuming that anyone within a 5 metre radius is there to play with him.
I conducted an interesting experiment this week, by attending a kind of design exhibition and clothes fair at the Four Seasons Hotel just near our home. I have in the back of my mind that I would love to take Jasper to a market here, for the sensory explosion of sights, sounds and smells. But I am also concerned at how I would stop people from touching him in a bustling, busy environment. I should mention that I failed miserably to stop people touching him in Waitrose in Jersey during the winter pandemic months, and that’s dealing with relatively educated shoppers in a place where he’s just a regular Joe. No sooner had we entered the exhibition space, Jasper perched on my hip, than I felt people go still and heard coos of “oh my god he’s so cute”, “look at the baby he’s so cute”, “oh look at how cute he is” (and the odd “she”, of course, but I don’t blame them. He was clutching his standard cricket ball and flower combination, so they had a 50/50 chance.) Out came the phones to take photos, and the crowds parted as we walked through and people stopped their conversations to stare at him. As we passed one stall, the owner approached with a smile and held out her arms. As she joined the chorus of “oh my god he’s so cute”, she reached out her hands and went to take him. I shook my head and muttered “Oh he won’t like that, please don’t do that, he won’t like it”, but the next thing I knew, she had managed to grab him and was pulling him in for a cuddle. As expected, Jasper’s face began to crumple, and he started to cry “mama, mama, mama”. I got louder and firmer with my “He doesn’t like its” and pushed past a paparazzo to grab him back. He gripped me like a little koala and buried his head in my neck. I think I was still smiling because my default mode here is to smile so as not to offend anyone. But I was livid.
It seems that COVID means nothing to people, and neither do boundaries. It confirmed my doubts about visiting some of Mumbai’s more crowded hotspots. Sadly, there will be no sightseeing or market shopping for Jasper until we’ve both learned a decent level of self-defense.
On several occasions since we’ve been here, Jasper has been compared to the baby from the movie Baby’s Day Out. I think it’s a combination of his bright blue eyes, his wispy blond hair and the ‘I’m on a mission’ expression he often wears. His independent spirit makes him an object of interest to everyone. Around the compound he is known as the baby who chooses and points at where he wants to go and then is allowed to set off in that direction, as opposed to being manhandled through doorways or pushed around in a toy car. In the weeks before we found Jasper’s nanny, I observed how other nannies interacted with the children in the compound and found two characteristics I desperately wanted to avoid. The first was that they grab the kids by the arm and quite forcefully move them from A to B. Our former house boy tried this with Jasper and was met with a very frosty reception. He’s spent the last 18 months developing his autonomy and I didn’t want anyone to dampen his feisty little spirit. I can see how it’s quicker, but Jasper makes a game of the negotiation. The second was that a lot of nannies just waft around silently while the kids play (even when they are shoving them into elevators or through doorways) - there is no conversation, no encouragement, no fun. I don’t know if their remit is purely to stop the child from killing itself, or to clean up any mess they make, but I certainly didn’t want to hire Jasper a shadow. Jasper’s nanny is animated, fun-loving and patient, and from what I can tell, is often probed about how Jasper eats (feeding himself), how he sleeps (on his own in a room), and how comfortable he is in the water (we swim every day).
I hadn’t appreciated what a big deal baby-led weaning, or self-feeding, was until a recent experience in a restaurant. I had been to lunch in a neighbour’s house and had watched a 3-year old being hand fed by a shadow (silent nanny) while Jasper spooned rice and curry into his own mouth and gulped down his mango juice from an open cup. And I had been warned by the nanny that many children here can be hand-fed up to as old as 5 years. But the penny only really dropped when we booked a table at the wonderful Bombay Canteen. I called to make the reservation and asked for 2 adults and a high chair. It’s relatively rare for places to have a high chair, as we had already established, so I was relieved, but it would never have occurred to me to ask what kind of high chair. We arrived to find a chair that was a foot taller than the table, and without a tray. Then it clicked - this was the perfect chair for hand-to-mouth feeding. No back ache for the feeder, no neck ache for the eater. Dylan and I’s mouths fell open while we took it in and we both stammered for some words to explain the issue. Dylan finally managed to say “er, he feeds himself”. “Ohhhh…he feeds himself?” came the wide-eyed, incredulous reply (Jasper looked like a ragdoll flopped over my shoulder at the time, so I can understand if they thought we were overreaching on his behalf.) After some hesitation, we decided that the cocktail menu was worth the complexities of feeding a Jasper levitating somewhere at about shoulder height. Jasper slept through the starters and first round of drinks, and thankfully, by the time he woke up, the manager had borrowed a regular high chair (or medium height chair) from the next door restaurant. As stunned as we had been by the initial very-high-highchair, the waiters, the bartenders, and patrons of the neighbouring tables were equally mesmerised by this small (and slightly crumpled) person tucking into his rotis and curries with his own fingers and spoon respectively. There was quite the crowd by the time he had finished an entire sharing platter of mango (without sharing, I should add). What’s most impressive about this experience is that the restaurant manager sent me a WhatsApp message a few days later to let me know that they have since bought an IKEA high chair and thanked us for our feedback. At the time, she had apologised not only for the lack of a sensible chair, but also for the wider Indian feeding culture which, in her words, “not very developed”. I am only sad Jasper never got to lord over us in his very-high-high-chair, but I am sure there will be other occasions. And I have now learned to ask if a restaurant has a ‘normal high chair, the same height as the table’, as standard procedure. When I can’t call to book, I do some google searching for photos that show the tables to see if I think we can safely clip his portable chair on without causing lasting damage to either him or the furniture.
I enjoy taking Jasper out and about, and I definitely think it’s important for him to experience as many things as he can without being mobbed. But for now, I think I will stick to places I can assess in advance as being relatively clean, relatively empty, and with staff who look like they have quick reflexes. Travelling, as he does, with a cricket ball in hand, Jasper often says hello by bowling a quick spin ball at anyone (un)lucky enough to make eye contact. I have real fears for the very sweet granny we sometimes see in the lift. She needs both hands on her walker and I dread the day we get a bill for an octogenarian nose job.
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