My one year old daughter S has picked up a
trait from last couple of months. She will open her mouth for khichdi ‘only’
when her favorite songs are playing either on the telly, laptop or mobile. Now,
before you super good, uber efficient mothers pounce on me, asking ‘HOW could
you introduce her to this habit’, ‘Kids should be trained to eat without any prop’,
and so on, let me please clarify (fellow mothers are welcome to vouch for this)
that I DID NOT train her this way. It just happened. I realized that babies, no matter how
toothless and tiny, know how to get their fair share of entertainment. What I
also realized incidentally, is that the kind of entertainment varies with each
generation. Our parents’ generation ate while being showed the birds, trees,
butterflies etc. Our generation maybe stretched it to watching adverts on TV.
The newest generation, let’s face it, loves movie songs. And the kind of songs
they love are so unlike what you would like them to. I am not a fan of these
‘Anarkali Disco chali’ numbers. The raunchy steps and the garish almost non-existent
costumes of today’s item numbers are so unappealing. Having said that, I would however,
not dismiss the music element of these numbers. Some of these item, dhinchak
songs have amazingly peppy music which prompt me to leave the music channel on
for some time during the day. Fellow mommies, please don’t grudge me this adult
entertainment. As much as I am mentally tuned to shield my baby from the Telly
belly, I have realized that it’s extremely difficult to be on baby-friendly
behavior all through the day, more so when you are the primary caretaker
stationed at home.
So these songs are played during meal
times. S loves the music so much so that she recognizes the songs as soon as
the first background score heralding the song is played. If it’s one of her
ultra favorite songs, she will give me a ‘Hey, it’s our number!’ look. Or the
‘you know what, let’s dance to this’ look. And we dance. Mindless of her half-eaten
bowl of food that’s running cold. Or mine which is still uneaten. And the fact
that lunch hour has passed. Everything can wait till the two minute song gets
over. So what if it’s something we dance to three times a day, every single day!
The look on her face hardly suggests that.
I have been asking myself why I can’t let
her see some child-friendly song that may offer the same level of musical joy,
sans the suggestive steps and other adult paraphernalia. I YouTubed and found only
a couple that were timeless and appealing to kids of multiple age groups. The
unmatched ‘Lakdi ki Kaathi’. The otherwise friendly YouTube which keeps
suggesting ‘other songs that you may like’ based on the song you play, was
surprisingly mute. I didn’t take long to
find an answer to that. There are hardly any kid songs these days. You do get
some 1950s, 60s children songs like ‘Nanha Munna Rahi’, ‘Eechak dana’ , ‘Lalla
Lalla Lori’and the likes. But take a step beyond the 60s and such songs are
hardly there. Bollywood seems to have forgotten about our tiny clients who had
to be entertained as well. A very rare exception being ‘Bum bum bole’ post
2000. Perhaps we as a society, have taken for granted that the new generation
has lost its innocence and hence doesn’t need to be exclusively entertained.
It’s sad.
Babies have an uncanny knack I discovered.
They can tell you if a song is going to be superhit by listening to it just
once. They can compare nuances, and all abilities of the song including
hummability, recallability, dancability and watchability. They can effortlessly
pick ‘Jhalla wallah’ over ‘Aa re Pritam Pyare’, ‘Tumhi ho Bandhu’ over ‘Chikni
Chameli’, ‘Anarkali disco chali’ over ‘Dhadang dhang’. So here’s to you Music
directors –
1.
Get your near and dear tiny
tots if you want to churn out a highly likeable number
2.
And please , please put
together some infant friendly songs, people! How long can we listen to Lakdi ki
kaathi???
